Behind the Beef: The Short-Lived Feud Between Luke Bryan and Zac Brown

Country music artists are largely civil with one another, the genre being branded as more a family than it is a competition. But every now and then a rift occurs, and that was true for Luke Bryan and Zac Brown in 2013.

It all started when Brown made derogatory comments about Bryan’s single at the time, “That’s My Kind of Night.” The song features such lyrics as, Pretty girl by my side/You got that sun tan skirt and boots/Waitin’ on you to look my way and scoot/Your little hot self over here/Girl, hand me another beer.

“I love Luke Bryan and he’s had some great songs, but this new song is the worst song I’ve ever heard,” Brown told Canadian radio station JRFM (quote via Taste of Country). “I know Luke, he’s a friend. ‘[That’s] My Kind of Night’ is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard.

“I see it being commercially successful in what is called country music these days, but I also feel that the people deserve something better than that. Country fans and country listeners deserve to have something better than that, a song that really has something to say, something that makes you feel something. Good music makes you feel something.”

The song became the target of Brown’s comments against the tropes of modern country music. Brown vowed that he was going to “throw up” if he heard another song that referenced daisy dukes and tailgating in the moonlight. “To me, country music has always been the home for a great song,” the Zac Brown Band frontman continued. “There’s songs out there on the radio right now that make me ashamed to be even in the same format as some other artists.”

Bryan’s friend and “The Only Way I Know” collaborator Jason Aldean quickly came to his defense on Instagram. “I hear some other artist are bashing my boy @lukebryan new song, sayin its the worst song they have ever heard,” Aldean wrote in 2013. “To those people runnin their mouths, trust me when i tell u that nobody gives a shit what u think. Its a big ol hit so apparently the fans love it which is what matters. Keep doin ur thing LB!!!”

After the interview, Brown clarified his comments on Twitter. “My opinion is not about Luke as an artist, it’s about that song,” he said. “He didn’t write it. I’m a fan of Luke, but definitely not that song.”

Though Bryan himself didn’t make a public statement about Brown’s comments, he did share them with his longtime friend and one of the song’s writers, Dallas Davidson.

“When Luke called and told me about it, the first thing I did was sit there and soak it in,” Davidson told Roughstock. “A comment like that will hurt your feelings because when you write a song, it’s kind of like one of your babies. To hear a successful artist say it was the worst song he’s heard and it makes him want to throw up, that’s just not cool.”

But the harsh words came to an end at the 2013 CMA Awards. During their opening monologue, hosts Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley acknowledged the beef while playfully singing “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” that prompted Bryan to get up from his seat and run across the arena to give Brown a hug – and a kiss on the cheek – the two laughingly burying the hatchet.

Photo by Terry Wyatt/WireImage