Florida Georgia Line: The Cover Story

When you’ve been as wildly successful as Florida Georgia Line, and have multi-platinum singles, chart-topping albums, sold-out arena tours and a name-brand bar-restaurant just off Nashville’s famed Broadway to your name, you start to learn to take the chatter surrounding your band for what it’s worth. “Because people are either gonna say good stuff or bad stuff, but regardless, they’re gonna be talking,” FGL’s Tyler Hubbard says with a laugh of the constant opinions that have long swirled around him and bandmate Brian Kelley.

Yes, now seven years into a monumentally successful career, Florida Georgia Line have realized the best recipe for self-satisfaction is to tune out the noise and create their own. “We really just want to continue to push the envelope for ourselves and elevate what we do,” Hubbard says of their never-ending desire for musical reinvention. “We want it to be fun for us because if it’s not fun for us it’s not going to be fun for the fans. We don’t want to get bored. That’s why I think we always try to continue and push and take chances and do things a little bit differently.”

For FGL, doing things differently has long been their lifeblood, and while they insist it’s almost subconscious at this point, their need to evolve has been a life force in becoming one of the most commercially successful country acts of their generation. Still, to hear them tell it, the two musicians insist it simply stems from their stubborn insistence on never getting too comfortable.

“We just really don’t want to create the same album twice,” Hubbard says matter-of-factly speaking not only to their latest effort, the 19-track LP Can’t Say I Ain’t Country — a roller coaster of a tour through a diversifying modern-day South— but also to their discography at large. “I think it just comes natural for us to evolve running our business the way we do and making the music the way that we make it.”

Since they first arrived on the scene circa 2012 with their debut LP, Here’s to the Good Times, two brawny tank-top donning buddies delivering a dose of party-time flair with the omnipresent hit single “Cruise,” FGL have never played it safe. Specifically, it was their stubborn refusal to follow traditional country conventions, and instead collaborate with musicians across the musical spectrum, from Nelly (“Cruise” (Remix)) to Backstreet Boys (“God, Your Mama and Me”) that drew the most ire.

They insist, however, it was never calculated but rather the natural result of them having varied musical tastes. When it’s brought up that country and pop music have steadily coalesced together in today’s more diversified Nashville, and many of the collaborations that once yielded FGL flack are now regularly dominating the charts, Kelley says he’s hardly surprised. “Because music’s music and great music’s great music,” he says. “It’s nothing to be forced. We wouldn’t do it just to cross it off our bucket list. But if it’s a dream collab situation and the song’s there and everything checks off, hell yeah, we’ll run down that road for sure. Whatever that might be. But there’s no hurry to do that if it doesn’t hit your gut right.”

The beauty though of FGL is that despite their mega-watt success they continue to refine their craft. Case in point: while Can’t Say I Ain’t Country follows the gargantuan success of last year’s Grammy-nominated “Meant To Be,” been certified four-times platinum and having led the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for a record 50 straights weeks, it’s without question the most straight-ahead country effort they’ve released to date.

“It does feel a lot more country than some of our other stuff,” Hubbard admits. “And we kind of did that intentionally.” And yet, in typically eclectic FGL fashion, just when slow-burning traditional country charmers like “Told You” and “Simple” lead you to believe you have the album pinned down, they blend in elements of R&B and hip-hop in nuanced and subtle ways on standout tracks such as “Talk You Out of It” and “Small Town.”