“Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll!” was once the rebellious rallying cry for certain no-rules, no-shame big-city rockers. These days, though, that kind of party has migrated … south. Hard livin’ “bro country” practitioners such as Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line are appropriating some of that hedonistic action for themselves. And they’re not afraid to brag about their excessive exploits.
That’s the story with the latter band’s tellingly titled “Sun Daze.” It’s a portrait of what we might call Florida Georgia Line’s ideal day, one that involves, well, sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll … plus a bit of rap, country and reggae tossed in for the sake of musical diversity, I guess.
Here’s how they describe the kind of day they’ve got in mind: “I’m gonna wear my flip-flops/I’m gonna play some flip cup/And rock a bit of hip-hop and Haggard and Jagger/If I’m lucky, yeah, I might get laid/The way that it’s going, that keg gonna be floating.”
The oft-repeated chorus adds several more egregiously epicurean elements to the band’s idealized conception of lazy-day debauchery (“All I wanna do today is wear my favorite shades and get stoned”). And then there’s a Bacardi-swilling, bikini-clad playmate to pump up the volume with. Lead singer Tyler Hubbard and bandmate Brian Kelly chant, “Work a little less, play a little more/That’s what this day is for.” That, and maybe just a bit more liquor: “And all I wanna do is lace my J’s and lace some Jack in my Coke/Work on my laid back, ain’t nothin’ wrong/With getting’ my sun daze on.”
Nothin’ wrong. Right.
The video serves up a fairly literal representation of the song’s subject matter. After the guys escape an Office Space-esque vignette via dream sequence, we find them—and a whole bunch of other revelers—drinking and cavorting at a pool party. There are clusters of bikini-clad young women for the camera (and the band) to ogle, of course. And we glimpse someone exhale a bunch of smoke and see a hand gesture indicating that pot’s most certainly on the musical menu.
It’s also on the band’s touring menu. When a Billboard interviewer noticed a marijuana-smelling pipe on the band’s bus recently and asked if they smoked marijuana, Tyler Hubbard responded unabashedly, “Yeah. Oh, yes. We’re professional partiers.”
That’s pretty evident on “Sun Dazed.”
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
