Let the songs settle Aaron Lewis’ beef with new-country hunks

Younger and prettier, you can’t dispute.

But not as country? Let the songs plead their case, just like the guy who stayed out all night and came home to find his clothes all over the lawn.

Aaron Lewis telegraphed perhaps a wee bit of bitterness about looking out to the humongous main stage at this weekend’s Route 91 Harvest Festival from the tent that houses his secondary Next From Nashville stage.

It’s just as well the 44-year-old former Staind frontman plays Saturday, while Luke Bryan is Sunday’s headliner. Earlier this month in Colorado, Lewis introduced his single “That Ain’t Country” by calling out Bryan and other country hunks.

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Though Bryan “surprises me every once in a while,” he noted, Dan + Shay (who play the main stage at 4:30 p.m. Sunday) also made his list along with Sam Hunt, Cole Swindell and “every other (unprintable) who is just choking all the life out of country music.”

But is that really true? Or is it a matter of separating the video from the radio? The sound from the lyrics?

Let’s look at how the tunes break down in three tried-and-true country music categories. (Caveat: Yes, we know other people wrote a lot of them.)

Blood alcohol level

Let’s get down to it. It’s the whiskey that defines country icons such as Merle Haggard and George Jones.

So in “Sunday Every Saturday Night,” Lewis proclaims, “I like drinkin’ whiskey … because it fills up the cracks in my soul and it helps me forget all the damage I’ve done.”

Ah, but wait a minute. What’s Lewis saying in “Country Boy”? “I rarely drink from the bottle, but I’ll smoke a little weed.” Hmm.

In “Kick the Dust Up,” Bryan suggests skipping a fancy downtown bar’s $10 drinks in favor of a “jar full of clear.” We take that to mean either Granny Clampett-style homemade hootch or Everclear, banned in several states for being 95 percent alcohol. That’s a lot of soul spackle.

In “Show You Off,” Dan + Shay compare some lucky lady to a “cool drink of water in the summer.”

Water?

At least in “Road Trippin’” they reference “a little somethin’ in my old back pocket (to) break out later,” which we assume is backed up by a medical marijuana card.

The way to (mis)treat a lady

The manly country singers of old had no problem admitting it was their fault. They just weren’t inclined to change, thank you.

Today’s hits bear a noticeable lack of tear-filled suds. In fact, Bryan commands, “Girl hand me another beer!” in “That’s My Kind of Night.” But once they get to the river and catch his boat downstream, he promises “a little catfish dinner” and to “lay you down and love you right.”

Bryan isn’t averse to booty calls in “Crash My Party”: “Swing on by and I’ll pour you a drink. The door’s unlocked. I’ll leave on the lights.” Combine this with the $10 drink thing, and you start to think Bryan is cheap or something.

In “That Ain’t Country,” Lewis snickers about songs full of “good times and happy endings” because “my life ain’t like that.”

But in “Forever” he delivers that very thing. He worries that too many nights on the road made him “a stranger in your arms.” But at the end? “I can see it in your eyes. The sparkle shines forever. This is forever.”

The worst thing Dan + Shay can do to a gal in “Nothin’ Like You” is make fun of her “purple untied shoestrings.” Really? No boots? In “What You Do to Me” the singer can only be annoying by telling his gal she’s beautiful “a million times.”

And in “Can’t Say No,” the dude(s) can’t even sleep in on a Saturday morning. He’s getting dragged all over town because “she knows how to work them cut off things.”

George Jones might have been dragged out of bed a few times himself, but he never would’ve admitted it.

Huntin’, Fishin’ and dates involving pickup trucks

Country’s not a geography, it’s a lifestyle, you declare as you cruise up to Applebee’s in your 2017 Ford Super Duty.

But country songs at least know where you’re supposed to be: “Huntin’, fishin’ and lovin’ every day,” Luke Bryan proclaims in the song of the same name. “If I could make a nickel off a turning them bass, never worry about the price of gas.”

Lewis never leaves the house without a firearm, he tells us in “Country Boy.” And he takes his daughters fishing in “Endless Summer”: “I can’t think of any other better way for us to cleanse our souls.”

Dan + Shay at least drive a truck, and even help a lucky gal out of it in “What You Do to Me.” And while they’ll take their two-ton Ford to the riverbank in “Parking Brake,” they’re never needing a fresh lemon to wash their hands. We can’t find any musical evidence of them wetting a hook, let alone hitting their bag limit during deer season.

Real country bros will shake their heads, at least until they consider the substitute recreational options of “getting all barefoot busy” in the duo’s “All Nighter.”

The verdict

Lewis’ new album “Sinner” is alt-country cool, but Bryan, Dan + Shay remind us that modern country is for those who get the girls. Classic country is for those who lost them.

Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.