Last year, Hardy recorded a cover of the 1975’s song “Love It If We Made It” and has since been performing it during his shows on the Jim Bob World Tour.
Originally released on the 1975’s 2018 album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships, the song is full of cultural and political references, from athletes taking a knee during performances of the National Anthem to protests against police brutality and even an allusion to the Donald Trump Access Hollywood tape. The song is a curious choice for Hardy, which led some country fans to ask if he was trying to send a message.
We asked him just that during his appearance on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, and Hardy replied simply, “Nope.”
“I just like the song. I knew it was a risky move, but I just love the song,” Hardy says. “I think it’s cool and those lyrics are so metaphorical that… my fans, they can go Google the song and go Google what all the shit means, but whatever. I literally took it at face value and said, ‘This is a cool song, I like, it, let’s do it.’”
But Hardy, who just released his new album Country! Country! last week, admits that it was eye-opening once he did a deep dive into the lyrics of Matty Healy, co-writer of the song and the 1975’s frontman. “I really didn’t know what I was getting into until I committed to that song,” he says.
Hardy also talked at length about what he’s listening to these days with Nashville Now. Top of his list is the melodic metal band Sleep Token.
“Metalheads love to shit on Sleep Token, but, man, it’s very fresh,” he says. “If you don’t tell anybody what genre it is, and just listen to it and make an assessment: it’s fresh and it’s cool and the melodies are dope. He’s got a very dope voice. There’s a big weird sexual energy with a lot of it, which I think is super cool. The fact that they’re all anonymous and in this spooky-ass shit… Aesthetically it’s really cool.”
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 Charley Crockett, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Margo Price, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, and Clever.
