The internet is chalk full of mostly unwatchable garbage content but every now and again you stumble upon an account that seems to validate that you're not going completely insane. Or maybe it just matches the type of weird that you are, but in either case, sometimes things just click. One of those accounts that I stumbled on a little while back is that of Matt Lyons, a Boston based internet comedian that hits the nail on the head when it comes to parodying the hipster mountain culture shared by hikers, climbers, snowboarders, and pretty much every outdoorsy-activity enthusiast on the planet. Admittedly, I'm only partially in that scene of Carhart for fashion with everything flannel and much prefer fishing a pond barefoot to mountain biking, but I participate enough to know the type of person who gets super into disc golf or thinks Mumford and Sons is the greatest band of all-time to realize that this guy is locked into the scene. Here's a sample of what Matt puts out... "My wife Sheetrock" absolutely sends me every time... https://www.instagram.com/p/DAdvNi5OqfI/ Let's do one more to really set the stage. Here's Matt's take on every outdoorsy person's Spotify Wrapped, and a few of my favorite quotes... "It says there's a 35% chance I'm Noah Kahan's cousin?" "You listened to a total of 3 artists this year: Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, and The Lumineers. How many did you have?" "It's asking if I intended to listen to "Something In The Orange" 16,000 times" https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDNRu5aSs4K/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== Dude, the man just doesn't miss. Every video is chalk full of little insider knowledge that makes me think he's exaggerating the actual type of person he is, is a chronic online researcher, or knows a lot of these types, which are fine people and I enjoy their company, but let's not pretend they're not a very unique architype of individual... Well, Matt's latest video is a certified banger and it has to deal with our guy Billy Strings. The Rise Of Billy Strings Of all the artists carving out a very specific niche for themselves these days, Billy Strings has to be the most successful. A 32-year old, long haired hippie kid from Michigan playing bluegrass and covering songs released decades before he was born is somehow selling out huge tours, made such a name for himself that he's praised consistently on huge podcasts, and is sought out by some of the country's biggest stars (Post Malone, Chris Stapleton, Luke Combs) for collaborations. If it wasn't actively happening before our eyes I truly don't think I'd believe it. Billy released his debut self-titled EP in 2016, which featured his defining song, a little ditty about some meth in a plastic bag. While I'm sure many people discovered this song in a more traditional manner, I came to know Billy Strings because of a massively viral YouTube video that showed a young Billy sitting "in a quiet room at a loud party" with a now iconic character standing in the background watching him play a new song he'd just written. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFEZOjtrwls "Dust In A Baggie" became much more than a fun bluegrass song because of that viral video. Maybe that's the reason that Billy Strings is so popular with such a variety of person, or maybe he's popular with so many people because the art he creates is so good that it transcends the typically imposed genre boundaries we all tend to follow. Either way, we got to hear the backstory of this viral video from September of 2019 thanks to Billy's appearance on Theo Von's podcast This Past Weekend: "That’s a famous video now because of that guy in the background, Barefoot Ben. We were all on mushrooms that night, we were sitting in my friend Gina’s basement and were all picking songs. And there’s a big party upstairs, everybody was drunk but we were all tripping so we wanted to go downstairs and be quiet and get away from all the drunks. So we were sitting down there in that basement pickin’ tunes.  And yeah, Barefoot Ben there, he was like the only hippie in like Ionia, you know what I mean? I mean I guess there was a couple like skater kids but he was like barefoot at every party wearing tie-dye. People called him Barefoot Ben or Hippie… He was like the only hippie around.  But he was at every party, he was at every party, and it was like “How did you get here? Like who do you know here?” Just every party he was there and this video, we’re tripping and I’m just playing these songs, and he’s smoking an unlit cigarette and he keeps hitting it like it’s lit and I don’t think he knows it.  If you look at the comments on that, it’s hilarious. They’re talking about Ben like “This dude looks like he’s standing there giving out side quests.”   Big shoutout to Barefoot Ben. Keep him in mind when watching this incredible parody from Matt Lyons. Viral Parody Of A Billy Strings Fan Matt's most recent video is hands down some of his best work. He parodies your typical Billy Strings fan while tossing in some lore surrounding the "Dust In A Baggie" video we just talked about. I'll call out a few of my favorite lines under the video but you just have to watch it first: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDmvtOQprc2/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== "For awhile I thought the TV show American Pickers was just a docuseries about his finger dexterity. Name's Barefoot Ben by the way, nice to meet you." "My fiance Kazoo walked in on me watching the "Dust In A Baggie" video and putting aquaphor on my new BMFS tattoo" "I went to his show at Red Rocks and just based on the sheer number of old school trucker hats with the name of a Colorado town on them, I knew we in for a treat." "Find me another artist that can bring together the psychedelic crowd and the chewing on a piece of wheat crowd" The chewing on a piece of wheat crowd broke me down... I hope I didn't over hype this video and make it seem not that funny compared to whatever your expectations were but my goodness I have been laughing non-stop since watching it the first time. If you need me I'll be wearing a beanie inside and listening to BMFS entire catalogue today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBkRCd2UCLI

The story behind the viral hit. This week, Ella Langley appeared on the God's Country podcast, and she talked a lot about her viral hit with Riley Green, "You Look Like You Love Me." Ella co-wrote most of it with Aaron Ratiere, while Riley came up with the words for his second verse later on, after Ella had already cut it as a solo song. She recalled Aaron asking her about her love life during a write, and she told him: "'Honestly, I'm at the point where if they look like they love me, I gotta get out of there. It's just too much for me right now.' And we giggled at that, and then as songwriters, when you hear something like 'you look like you love me,' we're like, 'Well there's a title, You Look Like You Love Me.' And we just wrote the title down... we wrote the song in 2022, so six months later, we had an afternoon write, he loves to talk about how I brought in this bowl of spaghetti. I made my lunch, brought it in... and we say this is like the luckiest bowl of spaghetti. I think we might get a tattoo with a tiny piece of spaghetti on it." They sat down and penned it very quickly, and Ella explained that she was inspired by what she called the "talking country" she grew up on, specifically one of her first favorite songs in David Coe's "You Never Even Called Me by My Name." She didn't think "YLLYLM" would ever even make it onto a record, because they were "just talking," not really singing, and in terms of the content of the lyrics, it certainly was very different than the typical country cliches with the woman walking up to the man in a role reversal from most country music. In my opinion, that's what made it really work... Someone on Ella's team, who signed her to her first publishing deal, loved the song, and encouraged Ella to actually cut it, though she was very hesitant: "Maya heard it and loved it, tried to get me to put it in the dropbox for the EP I put out, 'Excuse The Mess,' and I was like, 'No way, man. No one's gonna like that song.' I thought it was more of a joke... I love a funny song. When we were cutting for the record, she slipped it in there, she didn't tell me, it was the last song on there. And I got calls from my agent, from people high up in my record label that hadn't called me, all these people from this sh*tty work tape. There's all these great demos... at this point, I've got great demos now. The worst sounding one on there. We cut it on the first round we cut songs, it wasn't gonna be a duet." Right after that, Riley asked her to go on tour with him (which would've been the tour they wrapped up in the Spring). Ella asked him to write a verse about what his reaction would be if a woman walked up to him at a be like it describes in the song, and it came out exactly how you hear it on the studio cut. She said she didn't hear from Riley for a while, and he finally called her one day while she was getting her nails done to tell her he'd sent her his verse, and she of course loved it. They cut it in the studio, and Ella explained that she really wanted to do it with him so they could sing it together on tour every night... but they never did. They sang other songs, like "In Color," but on the last night, he finally brought her up fro that duet, which was they first time they had ever done it live in public and Ella had no warning. That video quickly went viral, and of course, the song was included on Ella's debut studio album Hungover, and has become one of the biggest hits of the year. Now a #1 at country radio, they also won the CMA Award for Musical Event of the Year for "You Look Like You Love Me" just last month. In the long run, what makes it different is what makes it so unique and fun, and I'm glad that it wound up becoming part of Ella's album and her first big hit, even if she was hesitant at first. You can watch her talk about it on the podcast here: https://youtu.be/i9lbk-tO7ek?t=3817 "You Look Like You Love Me" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm2TSMerGPQ&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whiskeyriff.com%2F&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE

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