Awesome Country

There’s a subgenre of country music that’s all about beer, dirt, trucks, and women. There I Ruined It created what he says is “what bro-country sounds like to people who don’t like bro-country.” The track, Got a Beer in My Beer, features a dog that drives a pickup while wearing cutoff jeans. We hope he’s not drinking that beer while driving.

Hey-oh-way-o! In 1986, The Bangles had a hit on their hands with their unstoppable pop-rock track Walk Like an Egyptian. The song was quirky on its own merits, but this country-bluegrass performance from The Cleverlys on Country Road takes it to a whole new level. Like that? Check out their cover of CeeLo Green’s profanity-free Forget You.

The twangy sound of a pedal steel guitar is invariably associated with country and bluegrass. But as Noah Faulkner proves, it’s perfectly capable of playing alternative and pop music in the hands of the proper musician. Sit back, click play, and enjoy his covers of Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence, the Cure’s Just Like Heaven, and Don’t Dream Iit’s Over by Crowded House.

The 1973 Faces song Ooh La La is one of our favorite classic rock tunes, and introduced us to Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. Musicians Matt Steeves, Ryan Barnett, Jordan Brissette, Gordon Brissette, and Clint Zold performed this excellent cover of the track, with a heaping helping of acoustic guitar and a little country twang.

When it comes to the songs of the old West, there’s nothing quite like a deep baritone voice to set the mood. Singer Geoff Castellucci is able to achieve low bass notes that can rattle your bones, and his cover of the Stan Jones and his Death Valley Rangers classic Ghost Riders in the Sky makes perfect use of his vocal abilities.

The Charlie Daniels Band track The Devil Went Down to Georgia is one of the greatest country rock jams of all time. Guitarist Eric Calderone pays tribute to the 1979 classic with a powerful heavy metal version of the song about a fiddle-playing Satan looking for some souls to steal… minus the fiddle.

Musical mashup maker Bill McClintock took Survivor’s track Eye of the Tiger, slowed it down a bit, and combined it with the old Merle Haggard Goodbye Comes Hard for Me, turning the formerly energetic Rocky III theme song into a twangy bluegrass ballad.

There I Ruined It lives up to their name again by transforming Radiohead’s 1992 hit Creep into something you might hear coming out of one of Nashville’s Broadway honky tonks at three in the morning. The only thing missing is a cowboy hat atop Thom Yorke’s mop of blonde hair.

DJ Cummerbund combined the sounds of Green Day, Warren Zeiders, Metallica, and Randy “Macho Man” Savage to create a twangy, country-fied mashup of Ride the Lightning and Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

We can’t decide if Bill McClintock’s Van Halen-Hank Williams musical mashup belongs on There I Ruined It or if it’s the work of a mad genius. You’ll never hear Jump the same way again after you hear it turned into the twangy country ballad Your Cheatin’ Heart. Imagine if Eddie Van Halen played the slide guitar.

What happens when you load up an artificial intelligence neural network with lyrics to country music’s greatest hits, and then ask it to write its own tune? You end up with this gem, courtesy of Botnik Studios. We have to wonder if this is how Bad Lip Reading creates its song lyrics.

“In my sleep, I build machines. Nobody wants to hear about my dreams.” Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell and his band The 400 Unit dropped by NPR and turned in a relaxed, yet soul-stirring set of three songs about life and love from their wonderful album The Nashville Sound.

While putting the finishing touches on his album Swimmin’ Pools, Movie Stars… last year, Dwight Yoakam learned the news of Prince’s death. He decided then and there to add another track in tribute to the artist, a twangy, bluegrass version of one of his most beloved tracks.

The man behind Jean-Luc Picard and Professor X could make the Yellow Pages sound like Shakespeare, but we’re not sure we’d say the same for his singing voice. Thankfully, Cowboy Pat recorded this silly sampler of country tunes for a good cause.

With country star Blake Shelton as its guest host, Saturday Night Live had the perfect opportunity to create this uplifting ditty. Listen y’all to this story of “hope in the form of a little ol’ dirty boot.”

Nashville songwriter Sir Mashalot was thinking that so much of today’s country music sounds so paint-by-number, so he decided to see how similar some recent hits were by editing them together, then playing all six tracks at once.