When Nashville songwriters Chase McGill and Matt Dragstrem are asked exactly how they wrote Luke Bryan’s new song, the countrified “gym, tan, laundry” anthem “Fish Hunt Golf Drink,” they can’t help but break the ice with a joke.
“Drag just opened ChatGPT and…,” McGill says, before he and his songwriting partner erupt into laughter.
They’re laughing for a reason: When Bryan dropped “Fish Hunt Golf Drink” two weeks ago, listeners wondered if such a caricatured country song was written not by flesh-and-blood humans, but by AI. (Spoiler: It was not AI.) The song, and its accompanying video featuring Bryan dancing on a dock, was ripped online, and launched a string of comments denouncing the track — about, yep, fishing and hunting, golfing and drinking — as the product of a large language model.
But McGill is not only defensive of the silly song he wrote for Bryan, he’s defiant about AI’s inability to capture the specificity and evocative nature of a great country song. “AI has never skinned a deer on a Chevy C-10 tailgate with their uncle,” he says, referring to his recent co-write of Morgan Wallen’s “Skoal, Chevy and Browning.”
“Fish Hunt Golf Drink” arrives at an uneasy time in arts and culture, one in which the phrase “that’s AI” is increasingly levied at anything seen as bland or formulaic. Assorted writers across professions are being falsely accused of using AI if their prose style happens to match that of a large language model. Commercial country music, a format of songwriting that is at least somewhat reliant on wordplay and the constant re-arranging of a familiar set of symbols (trucks, mud, whiskey, and so forth), can be particularly susceptible to the accusations.
Just look at the vitriolic response to “Fish Hunt Golf Drink.” “Wake up, coffee, fish hunt, Chat GPT,” one user wrote in a comment that received so many likes — more than 30,000 — that Bryan himself responded. “Well,” he wrote, “I’m learning that no one wants to just have fun anymore. I choose to have a damn blast! Either come along or go be blah.”
So, does it bother McGill and Dragstrem, two prolific Nashville songwriters who’ve written hits for artists from Hardy to Kenny Chesney, to see their song derided as AI slop? Not much, it turns out.
“When the hate is strong, so is the BMI payment,” quips McGill, alluding to the performing-rights organization checks that writers receive for their work.
During an interview with Rolling Stone, both McGill and Dragstrem are bemused by the reaction to the “playful, fun” song they wrote, protective of Bryan’s reputation (“Least artificial person I’ve ever met,” McGill says), and full-throated in their defense of the craft of country songwriting. But they’re also completely unafraid of AI’s impending creep into writing rooms. That’s because they view the technology as a not particularly useful tool in early-stage demo ideating, and nothing more.
Both writers say they’ve never used AI in their actual songwriting process. Dragstrem, who focuses more on production, has messed around with it but was left unsatisfied; McGill, who’s more lyrics-driven, wants nothing to do with the tech. (They also claim to have never so much as heard of any professional songwriter in their circles using AI to come up with lyrics.)
As they see it, the craft of creating country songs — whether it’s a heavy, tearjerker ballad or a frothy song about drinking and golfing — is inseparable from the human process itself.
“The only way I’ve actually succeeded in country music, ever, is by sitting in the room with good friends and enjoying making the song up that day,” McGill says. “I don’t believe that I would feel any fulfillment from saying ‘AI, write me a song about whatever.’ That’s not what I signed up for.”
“Fish Hunt Golf Drink” did start, however, with a different form of technology: emojis. “Luke was texting one of his buddies and the guy was like, ‘Let’s hang soon,’” says McGill. “Luke sent him an emoji of a fish, an emoji of a deer, an emoji of a golf club, and a beer emoji, and said, ‘You pick which one.’ Then he showed it to us. He was like, ‘Dude, this could be a cool song.’”
Dragstrem and McGill, who were touring with Bryan for on-the-road writing sessions with the star, adjourned to a nearby sports bar for chicken wings before Bryan’s show last July at Hersheypark Stadium and quickly wrote the song’s hook. “We didn’t think anything of it,” Dragstrem says. “We had the chorus, played it for him [later], and he was like, ‘This is awesome.’” According to the writers, Bryan himself then wrote the majority of the verses and had a large hand in writing the bridge.
Both McGill and Dragstrem view the song as an extension of Bryan’s hobbies and brand. “The dude loves to have fun. He can outfish most people I know, he’s awesome in the woods, I hear he’s really good at golfing,” McGill says, “and the dude can drink pretty well.”
The writers say the visceral reaction to “Fish Hunt Golf Drink” may stem from how it’s in opposition to what they describe as “sadboy country,” a form of self-serious, emotional songs currently popular on the radio.(Think Riley Green’s “Change My Mind” or Zach Top’s “I Never Lie.”) “It’s the antithesis of what’s going on right now,” Dragstrem says. “It’s really easy to pile on the hate if a new song is not [Miranda Lambert’s] ‘The House That Built Me’ or ‘Bluebird.’”
But, to hear Bryan’s cowriters tell it, that doesn’t mean it takes any less skill to write a silly song. “It’s easier to write some kind of heartfelt ballad than it is to write a four word, with commas in it, title, match the phrasing the entire time, and make it feel good,” McGill says of “Fish Hunt Golf Drink.”
“It’s not rocket science,” adds Dragstrem, “but it’s true to who Luke is.”
