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A Nashville wildcard delivers down-home chest-thumping with a wink<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\tHardy<\/a>\u2019s tough to pin down. He\u2019s the Woodstock \u201999 of country hitmakers, someone who screams as many choruses as he sings, someone who is as likely to collaborate with Fred Durst<\/a> as Lainey Wilson<\/a>, someone Nickelback and boygenius agree on. He\u2019s headlining Madison Square Garden even though most of his commercial success comes from the Number Ones he\u2019s written for other artists like Morgan Wallen<\/a> and Florida Georgia Line<\/a>. He\u2019s as likely to write a hit about chugging beers as he is to write a song about how he writes songs about chugging beers. He\u2019s simultaneously the chest-thumping id of masculine country and a fun-house mirror poking fun at the whole enterprise.<\/p>\n \n\tTo get a sense of his whole deal, look no further than the half-mocking, half-earnest title of his latest album, Country! Country!.<\/em> In an era when country singers are forced to constantly redeclare their rural bona fides, Hardy has made a name for himself by tripling down on that premise with a wink (see his 2018 debut hit, \u201cRednecker\u201d). The LP has a half-dozen tunes with the \u201ccountry\u201d\u2019 in its title, including \u201cBro Country,\u201d his pour-one-out elegy to the subgenre he helped crystallize.\u00a0<\/p>\n