When Adam Mac celebrated the release of his latest album, Southern Spectacle, with a live concert at Nashville’s rock outpost the Eighth Room last year, the queer country artist added a surprising cover song to his set: Hank Williams Jr.’s “Dinosaur,” a track off Bocephus’ 1980 album Habits Old and New.
“Dinosaur” falls on the “old” side of that title. While eminently catchy and barroom ready, the song, cowritten by Williams and Bob Corbin, is decidedly retrograde, with the singer pining for a simpler time where musicians are manly and attracted only to women. “You’re singin’ a song about makin’ love to your drummer/Well gay guitar-pickers don’t turn me on,” Williams sings in a lyric steeped in homophobia.
Mac, a native of Russellville, Kentucky, grew up loving “Dinosaur” but, as an adult, couldn’t square some of its lyrics with his personal truth as a gay man. So, he changed them. In a new interview with Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Mac explains why.
“I love that song, have loved it since I was a kid, and I remember singing it as a kid. At the time, I thought the lyrics were funny. I wasn’t thinking about… ‘ohh, maybe this is not ok,” Mac says. “I reclaimed ‘Dinosaur’ for my community because, in my comments, my biggest pushback that I receive from the haters is ‘Hank didn’t do it this way’ or ‘Hank wouldn’t have done it this way,’ and ‘Gay guitar pickers don’t turn me on,’ which is a line from the song.”
In Mac’s version, which he plays live and posted online, he sings, “gay guitar pickers kinda turn me on,” and alters a verse that disses a legendary disco queen: Mac’s update goes, “We can all get down with Donna Summer.”
“I thew up a cover of this song and did a little clapback moment, tweaked a couple words to bring it into 2026,” Mac tells Nashville Now. “And that rightly pissed them off.”
But Mac isn’t picking fights with haters. In his podcast appearance, streaming in full below, he talks about acceptance in country music and the joy that the genre can bring all listeners. On Friday, he’ll drop his new single, “Hate to See Me Coming.”
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Kings of Leon, the Black Crowes, Carly Pearce, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein, and Willie Nelson scholar John Spong.
