Jimmy Buffet is kind of genius. He parlayed the same kind of music for decades, made a fortune slinging it on tour, had a bit of a cult following, set up a batch of restaurants, made the brand perfect and seamless and middle American. When he figured out he was getting a bit stale, he went knocking to Nashville. Or Nashville figured out that they needed to preserve an aging A-List while trying to convince us a B List could come up from the minor leagues. So he talked to Kenny, and Kenny figured out how to work out making money on a set of side businesses (the specific nature of the Tequila came from Sammy Hagar, and if you were a mathematician, Country's Taste could be straight in the middle of a Venn Diagram between Kenny. Sammy and Jimmy). Zac Brown Band realized that if they were doing a beach album, they would have to play the same game, and they went off and talked to the Sybil of the Keys. They kept playing back and forth--kept recording together, kept working it out. They couldn't quite do the tropical thing, because Keith has been running on creative fumes since Toby did Stay in Mexico in 2009. So, they looked at what was playing--saw how much Brantley Gilbert's Country Must be Country Wide cribbed from I Love This Bar, noticed that they both had a restaurant that needed to be propped up, thought about some excellent cross marketing, stuff that could be played on Wednesday nights at Jimmy Buffet's Cheeseburger's In Paradise or Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill, and make some money on the up-sold margaritas, and put something out that was just gorgeous in it's cynical reserve. Jay Z should bow down.The best thing about all of this--is how ingrained Buffet is in Nashville--he was a song writer in the 60s, and he has been in and out of the market for a long time, and really set the whole thing off with Alan Jackson in 2004. Toby's 2009 song is a five year old attempt at reclaiming something from 2004. The 2013 song is an attempt to reclaim something from 2009 which tried to reclaim something from 2004. But Because Buffet (and really Toby) are so damn good at playing the markets, noting were the demographics are, and making product for a fairly tight niche audience--and are realizing that country, because of it's regional and social cachet, is one of the last few niche markets left, and because that niche market depends both on touring and on localized spaces where those communities can get together between touring--and also knowing that in the suburbs those spaces are usually chain restaurants--and chain restaurants depend on theme and brand...and lastly, that they are brands. It is a perfect circle of working out the product for the money. The song's production, its "fun", its elegance in how it knows its market--it is more a Warholian artifact of working class realism ("What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking" except a blended margarita during singing Karaoke at either of those places has this glamor and anti-glamor--it is Toby or Jimmy, but Toby and Jimmy are just like us, and maybe one day we can have this lux leisure time, and to do that, what we need is another round.  That kind of work can only be done if you spend as much and as much effort in figuring out which way the business is going, and if you have enough wisdom to know where it has been. The hamburgers might not be Edenic in Cheeseburgers in Paradise, but that shit is fun. You might not Love This Bar and Grill, but you damn well know that if you go in on Mondays and you are in the miltary, you get 20 per cent off. That is more than enough. (The song is for the marketing, the text itself doesn't matter much)