It’s a big, amiable lunk of a song, one that lumbers out of your speakers, wearing a blinding ear-to-ear grin, overconfident in its own modest charm. The top country hit of all time may, in fact, be the most generic song you’ve ever heard. It’s a song about “falling in love in the sweet heart of summer,” which tosses out some familiar tropes-lyrics about swilling Southern Comfort and ogling girls in bikinis-before circling back around, in the chorus, to, well, itself: “Baby, you a song / You make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise.” It’s a summer song about summer songs, in other words, which is cute, but not exactly impressive by the witty standards of Nashville’s Music Row. Like much of today’s country, “Cruise” has hooks that lean toward pop and hefty guitars that tilt toward rock. The most extraordinary thing about it is its aggressive ordinariness. The weird part is, “Cruise” doesn’t sound like much at all. The song recently logged its 22nd week at the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs rundown, shattering a record that had stood since 1955. “ Cruise,” the debut single by the country duo Florida Georgia Line, is baffling-a song that causes a critic to shelve his two-bit theorizing, drop to his knees, and tremble before the mysterious movements of the pop gods. Photo: Christopher Polk and Rick Diamond/Getty
