RAMBLE ON: "Undivided" by Tim McGraw and Tyler Hubbard

Folks, the Biden era has begun.

I don’t think there’s a single thing funnier right now than there being a song calling for unity called “Undivided” that’s literally by a divided band. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, the country music world was awash with rumors of Florida Georgia Line clashing and potentially breaking up over politics. In what can only be called insultingly on-the-nose writing from reality, it was Tyler Hubbard, the Georgia half of Florida Georgia Line, who went for Biden, while Brian Kelley (R-FL) affirmed his support for Trump. Kelley also demanded that live touring begin again, pandemic be damned, which surely must have rubbed Hubbard wrong as he recovered from a bad case of the ‘rona. Fans noticed that they had unfollowed each other on social media. They denied the rumors and affirmed the strength of the band, and yet another terrible song of theirs, “Long Live,” began climbing the charts.

And yet here we are. Hubbard, and not Kelley, was at Biden’s inauguration, performing the song he wrote in quarantine, “Undivided.” Hello, here is my song about how we need to come together, my longtime singing partner does not agree with this stance so he will not be joining me. I don’t know how or when country music’s dumbest act became a symbol for the state of the nation, but this is the world we live in now, apparently. Certainly I didn’t expect any kind of political stance from the douchier-looking guy from Florida Georgia Line, a band that has only ever sung about girls, trucks, and the way girls are like trucks.

Tim McGraw is not a guy you’d think of political either, but he is a lifelong Democrat. He did make one important statement during his career; deeply involved with the Katrina recovery efforts in his home state of Louisiana, he erupted in anger at President Bush for his botched handling of the crisis. This was a pretty shocking thing for a country star to say, just a couple years after the Dixie Chicks got Dixie Chicks’d; I remember it as my first clue that the neocons were losing their grip on America. (I was also shocked that Tim was joined in his fury by his wife Faith Hill, the most Karen-looking artist country music has ever seen.) In any case, he’s never let himself say anything that controversial again; he describes himself as a “Blue Dog” (the Southern centrist Dems that the left flank of the wing mostly regards as an obstruction.) Centrist or not, both Hubbard and McGraw are clearly approaching this song from the same side of the aisle. Does Kelley’s absence disprove the song’s mission statement? And, would the song be better if Kelley were on it?

No one I know is impressed with “Undivided.” Biden (and Tyler Hubbard) made a big deal about pushing for “unity,” and I voted for Biden, but I’m not much interested in unity right now. (I can’t believe it’s been less than a month since rioters stormed the capital and murdered a police officer.) I am writing this essay having listened to it a single time, and trying to listen it again just now, I immediately want to turn it off. The country song that speaks to me the most right now is “Not Ready to Make Nice,” and my mood can be summed up in a Drake meme I saw where he rejects “Reconciliation & Healing” and smiles for “MOTHERFUCKING CONSEQUENCES.”

In other words, I’m feeling far too divisive for “Undivided,” with its platitudes about how we can “come together and make a change.” The Trump era has made even country musicians feel brave enough to come out as bleeding-hearts, but only to some extent. My fellow YouTuber Mark Grondin called it “an anthem for appeasement.” On some level, I agree; the worst part is Tyler’s verse, which takes aim at the judging eyes of the world, “You either go to church or you gonna go to Hell/Get a job and work or you gonna go to jail/I just kinda wish we didn't think like that/Why's it gotta be all white or all black?” It presents as a half-assed ripoff of Kacey Musgraves’s “Follow Your Arrow”; what he’s trying to say is muddled. It suffers in comparison to “Follow Your Arrow” again with Tim’s verse, where he expresses sympathy for a classmate named Billy who was bullied “for things he couldn’t change.” This is a gay rights statement with an exit strategy; it glances at it but never gets explicit, where “Follow Your Arrow” had no such cowardice.

So that’s why it doesn’t work for me; it’s limp, it leaves no aftertaste. But an anthem for appeasement? Honestly, I think that’s a little unfair. I’m not ready to make nice, but MAGA Nation doesn’t appear to be either. If “Undivided” was meant by (and taken as) a call to forgive the unforgiveable, then wouldn’t the other guy be on it too, instead of avowed Democrat Tim McGraw?

I don’t blame anyone left of the aisle for being wary of this song. “Unity” has too often been a dog whistle, an implied attack on, for example, civil rights protesters as “divisive” agitators. But the Biden era has proven that it can cut both ways. After all, no one on Earth has been more divisive than Donald Trump. Biden himself has often stepped wrong in believing he can find common ground with people who want no common ground with him (and I expect he’ll get this wrong in the future), but he was very clear on this point in his inauguration speech; when he touts unity, he means it as the opposite of racism, of bigotry, and especially of Trumpism in all its forms. I don’t think there’s a single person on Earth who misses the implication, and similarly, though Tim and Tyler sing this song as tenderly and with as much earnestness as they can, I mostly hear veiled criticism in this song, perhaps unintentional, but still there.

Tim and Tyler both claim this song is apolitical, and it’s certainly an unimpressive and unchallenging song, but its sympathies are with Billy the bullied child, not the bullies. (Garth Brooks also claimed he performed at the inauguration as an apolitical statement; he could claim that in ’92 but I don’t think his feigned naivete fools anyone today.) Unity might not sound like a partisan goal, but neither does “increasing voting turnout,” a goal which is allegedly non-partisan but tends to favor one side, which is why only the Democrats fight for it. “Unity” can’t help but be partisan when only one side wants it.

So no, I don’t hear a call to hug Nazis in this. You probably won’t ever hear the other half of Florida Georgia Line singing this, nor anyone else in a MAGA hat; they understand the insult. If this song makes us less divided, it’s an invitation for those on the right to come join us, not vice versa. “Undivided” is bad music not because it’s too kind to the wrong people but because it pretends its politics aren’t what they are. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s useless. If Biden’s election has taught me anything, it’s that I underestimate the power of centrist rhetoric at my own peril.