We've known it for a long time, but it seems to have reached its pinnacle. Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, Brantley Gilbert....and, of course, Sam Hunt.
There's going to be plenty out there who accept this as country music. They're going to throw out all of the old arguments: "if you don't like it, don't listen," "country is changing," "blah blah blah," "I'm too damn stupid to know what country music is, so, I'll accept whatever these marketers are telling me."
And of course they'll ask why we get to determine what's country and what's not? What makes us such an authority? To them I respond: defend this song as country music. If you're going to include anything and everything in your definition of country just because of how something is marketed to you, defend that position. What is your criteria? Because you certainly can't figure it out from the amalgam of bullshit that's poured out of the airwaves under the label of country.
This song is just bad. From the spoken-word at the beginning of the verses, to the instrumentation, to whatever part of this song you want to judge, it's awful. It may actually be worse than Jason Aldean's "Burnin' It Down." It clearly wants to be something other than country music. Why can't it just be promoted as something other than country?