Little Big Town’s latest single Girl Crush has been at the tops of the country charts on iTunes for several weeks. However, the ballad is being pulled from country radio stations in America, after audiences have complained the song’s lyrics “promot[es] the gay agenda.”
The lyrics these fans are upset over: “I want to taste her lips, yeah ’cause they taste like you/ I want to drown myself in a bottle of her perfume/ I want her long blond hair, I want her magic touch/ Yeah ’cause maybe then, you’d want me just as much/ I got a girl crush.”
According to the band, the song isn’t even about a woman in love with another woman. It’s about a scorned woman who is trying to understand why her man left her.
In an interview with Vevo; Little Big Town’s Phillip Sweet said
“Country music was built on songs about heartache and jealousy. This woman is just looking at the woman her man left her for and wondering, ‘What does she have that I don’t have? What am I missing? What is it that she’s giving you that I can’t give you?'”
Fellow country artists and Nashville songwriters have chimed in on the controversy in support of Little Big Town.
Singer Charlie Worsham pointed out that fans should take more issue with the “boozy objectification of women” seen in many of today’s country tunes.
even if Girl Crush was some kind of lesbian-50-shades song (it isn't), how could it be more offensive than any of the boozy objectification
— Charlie Worsham (@charlieworsham) March 22, 2015
@littlebigtown #girlcrush is number 5 on country iTunes. Come on country radio. It's time to catch up and play songs we want to hear.
— Natalie Hemby (@nataliehemby) March 25, 2015
While interviewing the band, country radio host, Bobby Bones, expressed his frustration over the schism between what sells and what country radio airs.
“It shouldn’t even matter if it’s a lesbian song, is the first thing. Is it frustrating to you that here is your song — that is one of the Top 10 sellers for weeks and weeks and weeks — and people on the radio are still afraid to play it because they think it’s a ‘lesbian song?'”
The band agreed, with the lead vocalist Karen Fairchild saying,
“Just the fact that we’re still discussing that, number one, there’s so many problems with that whole issue.”
