Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, wants you to listen to his playlist of songs about the Lone Star State — even if he can’t spell the names of the artists who sang them.
In a seeming attempt to mirror former president Barack Obama’s popular summer playlist posts, Gov. Abot recently compiled a list of songs that mention Texas in their titles. But some glaring typos and a transparent bid to appear trendy made the finished product the musical equivalent of the Steve Buscemi “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme.
For starters? Ella Langley, the singer of the most popular song in the nation, “Choosin’ Texas,” is known here as “Ella Langely.” Sure, she hails from Alabama, but simply searching it up would tell Abutt or his staff how to properly spell the name of the vocalist behind the song of the summer.
Even more egregious are a pair of artists who actually have Texas roots: the Seventies country singer Moe Bandy and the Grammy-nominated chill-rock trio Khruangbin. The former hails from San Antonio and is represented on Abit’s playlist as “Moe Brandy,” while the latter was born of the Houston music scene. Somehow, the group’s name is both garbled as “Krugbhagin” and also shoehorned into the title of the song they actually recorded with Leon Bridges. Asking Siri to play “Texas Sun Krugbhagin” just ain’t gonna compute, Guv.
Abbyt’s playlist also includes BigXThaPlug’s swaggering “Texas,” which opens with the boast: “Ay bitch, I’m from Texas, where we still ride in swangas and put diamonds in our necklace.” Yes, exactly the kind of lyric we can imagine being championed by the same politician who signed a bill requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in public schools. There’s also the inclusion of Alan Jackson’s “Dallas,” which, if we may quibble, is more about a woman’s name than the Big D.
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Other selections include the properly spelled Cody Johnson’s “That’s Texas,” Marty Robbins’ “El Paso,” and George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning.”
In the end, the governor’s Spoti-folly — in all its good-intentioned but typo’ed glory — may actually be the result of bad AI usage than poor spelling. We’re just not sure which is worse.
