“If I Caught My Kids Doing Some Stuff Like That, I Would Kill Them”: Luke Bryan on the ‘Fish Hunt Golf Drink’ Backlash

During a new conversation on Theo Von's This Past Weekend podcast, Luke Bryan discusses the vitriolic backlash he received online against his recent single, ‘Fish Hunt Golf Drink’.

Upon its release in May 2026, Bryan was met with a host of critics online ridiculing the song's lyrics and accusing it of being AI-generated. They especially took offence at the somewhat questionable grammar of lines like, “Wake up, coffee / Camo, climb tree / Wet line, 18 / Fish, hunt, golf, drink”. But Bryan repeatedly underlined in interviews and on social media that it wasn't meant to be that deep, and that his naysayers were taking the light-hearted song far too seriously.

When Von brings it up, Bryan begins by explaining how a text exchange with Riley Green inspired the song, before suggesting that Green was quick to distance himself from the controversy surrounding the song, “Riley didn't write it with me...Then I told the world that Riley [was involved]...Well, the damn thing got so much negativity that Riley was being funny...Like, ‘Don't associate me with that’”.

He goes on, “We featured [the song] as like an early release on the album. And man, you know, the fact that we featured it and younger kids called it a single, then man, it got off, like right when it came out. You know, you get one or two kids with a bunch of...followers that say we AI'd it, and then the whole world goes on their narrative”.

The ‘Most People Are Good’ crooner reflects on how jarring he found the intensity of the disgust, “But then, dude, it makes guys, it was making guys like...They're at a camera going, ‘I hate you!’ Like, they're looking in the camera, and they're like, ‘I hate you’. And I'm like, I'm watching it, and I'm like, ‘I can see your face!’”, before joking, “Like, if I see you one day, I'm gonna knock the s*** out of you!”

The Georgia native considers Von's point that all publicity is good publicity, stressing that, although he could see the upside to the controversy, he struggled to see it as a positive, “I think it's funny that then you have to wrap your head around the idea that you're happy that everybody is being this way, because it's getting more notoriety. But then I'm like, ‘Well, wait, I'm not sure I'm happy about a bunch of teenagers telling a 50-year-old man he's a piece of s*** songwriter’”.

The ‘Country Girl (Shake It For Me)’ hitmaker then quips, “And then I'm like, ‘Dude, you're 16. You're talking to a grown man that's made a s*** ton of money doing this’”.

Bryan also emphasises that if he ever saw his own children sharing videos or comments that were that mean-spirited and hateful, there would be serious repercussions, “I'm like, if I caught my kids doing some stuff like that, I would kill them”.

Elsewhere in the interview, Bryan explains that he's no stranger to this kind of negativity, having experienced similar flak around his 2011 hit, ‘Country Girl (Shake It For Me)’.

As this writer argued shortly after the release of ‘Fish Hunt Golf Drink’, many commentators seem to have missed the playfulness and tongue-in-cheek nature of the song.

It's not intended to be an emotionally heavy or thematically complex song in the mould of Zach Bryan or Sam Barber - it's simply meant to be a Country Radio smash that people can sing and dance along to. And especially since the emergence of introspective, folk-leaning songwriters like Zach - who, despite their shared last name, is no relation to Luke - Nashville has been riddled by this energy-sapping expectation that all country music should have some deep, profound message.

Sometimes, we just want country music to be fun, and ‘Fish Hunt Golf Drink’ is exactly that. The song features on Bryan's new album, Signs, which drops on September 18th.