Luke Bryan Says “Country Girl (Shake It for Me)” Was Illegally Downloaded As Many As 20 MILLION Times A Week… For Years

Insane.

Of course, Luke Bryan is a pioneer, if you will (for lack of a MUCH better term), of the bro country movement, and a lot it is thanks to the popularity of his hit album Tailgates & Tanlines, which was released in 2011 and included the massive hit “Country Girl (Shake It for Me).”

Co-written by Bryan alongside Dallas Davidson, it was released as the first single from his aforementioned album, debuting at #52 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. As of April 2014, it is the third best-selling song by a male country music solo artist, but you might be surprised to learn that, for as huge as it was, “Country Girl” never topped the country radio charts.

The highest it went was #4 on the U.S. Hot Country Songs chart, and it peaked in the top 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming a minor crossover hit there too. It’s honestly hard to believe that’s the case, because that song became so huge and was seemingly everywhere at the time, but in a recent interview with Elaina Smith, he explained why that was the case.

I think I honestly always assumed it was a #1 hit because I didn’t follow radio charts that closely back then (I was like a freshman in high school at the time), and you could hardly go anywhere without hearing it… as far as presumable “hits” go, and the expanse that they have, this song had it all and was played constantly.

But Luke says a large part of the reason that the numbers were so skewed is because so many people were downloading songs illegally at that time, thanks to software like LimeWire that allowed people to skirt around the early days of digital music, when you still had to buy individual songs, albums and music videos from iTunes instead of paying a flat fee for streaming of every king with Apple Music and Spotify these days. Spotify actually came to the States in 2011, the same year “Country Girl” dropped, but only had 24 million users by 2013. For reference, they reported a whopping 252 million subscribers, and 640 million monthly active users, at the end of last year.

I’m old enough to remember getting iTunes gift cards for my birthday, and honestly, I’m ashamed to admit I probably used one to buy Tailgates and Tanlines for my little iPod to make sure I had the perfect beach trip back then… the piracy aspect of music and other videos was obviously a much bigger problem then, because these days everything is easy to find, watch and listen via streaming, but that wasn’t always the case as many of us know:

“I think it didn’t go all the way to #1 just because I think a portion of people might’ve been a little reluctant to… just didn’t really know how to embrace “Country Girl (Shake It for Me).” And when I wrote it, I was kind of scared of it a little bit, because it was stepping out there.

I mean, when I stepped out there in it, when I put this thing out, that was what I was. When it didn’t get to #1, I don’t even think I was disappointed or anything. I mean, if you really wanna go backstage, I don’t think people really understand how much that song was getting illegally downloaded at the time.

That’s another thing that, early in my career, I was caught up in the illegal part of songs. A lot of my songs, and Jason Aldean, every artist of that time frame.”

Luke went onto explain that his record label predicated that it was getting downloaded illegally “20 million times a week” for THREE years… it’s hard to fully comprehend those numbers, in many ways, it’s also easy to believe, because it’s hard to really describe how big that song was. It should’ve easily been a #1 and then some.

I mean, why listen to the radio when you can just download the song and not even pay for it…

“There were times that my record label was predicting that it was getting downloaded illegally 20 million times a week, illegally. For three years that happened.

You can’t go back and have that, but when I look going forward, what a life altering song for me that I’ll get to play until I’m an 80-year old man getting to make some country girls have fun and dance. What did Waylon Jennings say? If I knew I was gonna live this long I would taken better care of myself.”

Death, taxes, and Luke Bryan wanting to make a country girl shake it when he’s well past the age most would find that appropriate… classic.

While he doesn’t seem to affected by the fact that it wasn’t a #1 radio hit, I have too imagine he can’t think too much about all the money he lost out on by having the song essentially stolen that many times…

You can watch the clip here, and it’s actually pretty interesting:

@elainadsmith Be honest…did you do it?? @Luke Bryan #countrygirlshakeitforme #countrygirl #lukebryan Read More