![]() Jamey Johnson and his crew were already inside, and according to this interview, wrote this song based on a night in a dance club. From what I know of the country music world, it’s very difficult to get a song picked up by a star or producer if you’re not already part of the system. Rock music seems to have its own rules about authenticity, even though many popular rock bands collaborate with songwriters or buy songs outright. There are exceptions to the rules in both genres, of course, but “exceptions” is an accurate term here. ![]() The country music market has long been built on the success of appealing stars like Adkins singing tunes written by other people, much like the pop music industry. What’s more, this shotgun technique seems to have worked, propelling the song to #2 on Billboard’s Hot Country chart and #30 and #33 on the Hot 100 and Hot Pop charts respectively. This smacks of the director desperately throwing everything in pop culture against the wall hoping something will stick. Then, with a light disco-funk groove leftover from 1975, “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” plods on as the dancing girls from before don glittering hot pants and roller skates. ![]() Adkins talks over the song about being only in it for “the badonkadonk,” despite not actually having seen one in the video yet. The dance moves are straight out of rap videos circa 1998, emphasizing the video’s seemingly unspoken motto of “rap the whole family can enjoy.” And then, of course, there’s the fact that despite using an obviously black slang term in the title of the song, there’s not a single black person in the entire video.Īt three minutes in, the tone changes and the video shifts into what I can only assume is parody. Somewhat ironic, considering the overwhelming majority of the women featured in the video don’t possess anything close to what a black audience would label as a badonkadonk. All throughout, it shamelessly apes the signature fish-eye lens shots of hip-hop video director Hype Williams to extend Adkins’ hands, which are constantly in search of “the badonkadonk,” into grotesque tentacles. The whole production looks like some sort of nightmarish mash-up entitled Hip-Hop Goes Country!. The video reinforces this idea in what may be the worst way possible. In that sense, it’s hard for me to see “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” as anything other than straight-up cultural appropriation. It would seem like pandering to write a song called “Zydeco Hos,” wouldn’t it? (I just gave someone a great idea for a song – my apologies if it’s popular.) These three writers took an already established term from black street slang and put a country coat of paint on it to make it sell, and indeed it did. The song itself is just barely a honky tonk song, dipping into disco and straight pop rhythms most of the time, and badonkadonk is slang that is completely removed from the setting in question. This begs the question, then, why Adkins (or more accurately, writers Jamey Johnson, Dallas Davidson and Randy Houser) felt the need to use badonkadonk, other than the obvious grade-school rhyme with honky tonk. It’s a pretty well-worn slang term at this point, and even rural areas would likely have been familiar with it and its decidedly non-country origin in 2005, when the song was released. There’s a chance that some of Adkins’ audience didn’t know the meaning of the word prior to the release of this song, but I’d be curious as to the numbers on that. I urge you to explore the wide variety of definitions available on Urban Dictionary for the word. In case you are dead, or for some other reason weren’t aware, badonkadonk is urban slang for a large and shapely buttocks. “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” seems an innocent enough confection: ostensibly a country song with an urban veneer (but really a Southern-fried disco number) about a woman with a fetching rear end – the “badonkadonk” in question. ![]() Such is the case with Trace Adkins’ “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.” But sometimes, I run across songs where the lyrics or videos are so misguided that ceases to be my stance. I try and make it clear I think most of the songs on the blog are good songs: I greatly prefer these songs with their imperfections over their destruction. My blog is very much a taste issue, and what’s more, it’s ultimately just to make people laugh and have a sense of humor about music. I frequently disagree with some people’s assertions about what constitutes “bad lyrics,” which is fine. I’m always hunting for “Worst Lyrics of All Time!” lists, and seeing what people have to say. On GSBL, I comment on songs from the last 50 years that are lyrically sloppy or weak, or videos that are notably ridiculous. I’ve been listening to a lot of good/bad music recently for my blog, Good Songs Bad Lyrics. ![]()
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