Florida Georgia Line was bigger than you remember. The duo blurred the lines between country, hip-hop, and pop music, and in doing so, they scored some of the biggest singles of the 2010s. No, seriously.
Their debut single, “Cruise,” was the first country song in history to be certified diamond by the RIAA. With success like this, it seemed as though Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard would go on to make smash hits for years.
Unfortunately, issues arose. Florida Georgia Line is currently on hiatus, with no reunion in sight. Both Kelley (who hails from Florida) and Hubbard (who was born in, you guessed it, Georgia) have embarked on careers as solo artists, and have been pretty successful at it. The specific reason the duo split, and the decline of Florida Georgia Line’s reputation within country music, are not topics that often get brought up these days, but they remain unclear.
Let’s delve into both and determine what happened.
Florida Georgia Line Pioneered “Bro-Country”
As evidenced by the success of their debut single, Florida Georgia Line hit the ground running. Their 2012 album, Here’s to the Good Times, went double platinum, and established a strain of country music that was incredibly radio-friendly. So much so, in fact, that the duo sparked the creation of a subgenre known as “bro-country.” The subgenre is described as a combination of traditional country lyrics with elements of hip-hop, electronica, and other forms of pop music.
Florida Georgia Line dominated the 2010s with this formula. The albums Anything Goes (2014) and Dig Your Roots (2016) went platinum and spawned hit singles on the country charts. There was a downturn with the release of their fourth album, though, Can’t Say I Ain’t Country (2019), which only went gold. The title refers to the critical derision the duo faced during their peak, as some country fans felt they were “sellouts” who failed to honor the genre’s roots.
Florida Georgia Line’s fifth and final album to date, Life Rolls On (2021), saw them work with a different producer in an attempt to evolve their sound. It received moderately positive reviews from critics, but failed to earn a gold certification and remains the duo’s lowest-selling release. The notion that Florida Georgia Line had run its course was all but confirmed when the duo chose to release a greatest hits compilation in 2022.
The duo decided to pursue solo careers
Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard confirmed that they were going their separate ways in February 2022. The duo issued a statement clarifying that Florida Georgia Line is not “broken up,” but that they wanted to pursue different creative directions. “We’re being artists. We love creating,” they wrote. “We started writing without each other and trying different writers, and now we’re both doing that with our music.”
Kelley and Hubbard maintain that they’re still friends, but they admitted they grew apart during the 2020 pandemic. Hubbard told the Tennessean that the basis of their disagreement was politics, though he remained vague on the specific topics:
We’ve sat with each other and (wanted) to kill each other at times. But by the end of it, we were hugging it out. We’re brothers and that’s what brothers do.
Kelley has released two albums since going solo, Sunshine State of Mind (2021) and Tennessee Truth (2024), and Hubbard has done the same with Tyler Hubbard (2021) and Strong (2024). The self-titled Hubbard album even earned a gold certification. Both artists are staying busy, so the odds of getting a Florida Georgia Line album anytime soon are slim to none.
