Welcome to Sleeper Hit Support Group, a column diving into the song currently occupying the bottom spot of the Billboard Hot 100.
In a pop landscape that asks more questions that it answers, I'm setting out to answer three questions about each of these songs: how it got here, if the song is good, and where it's going. In this 100th spot we'll find unlikely ascents, falls from grace, and resurgences of hits from bygone eras.
Today, we're taking a look at "Darlin'" by Chase Matthew
How did it get here?
The 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States has been a clear benchmark for a lot of change in American politics and culture since it happened a quarter century ago. It sparked an epidemic of rampant Islamophobia that still lingers today, it's the reason we have to get to the airport two hours before every flight due to lengthy TSA lines, and it manufactured consent for the years-long war in Iraq. One effect that is terribly under-discussed, though, is that 9/11 ruined country music.
One of the most-told cautionary tales of the music industry is that of The Chicks (FKA The Dixie Chicks). "Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas," Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines said at a March 2003 performance in London. This statement, by most metrics, ruined The Chicks' career. In a time where the country was just as patriotic as it was paranoid, this statement coming from country singers of all people felt like an unflinching betrayal.
There's one particularly famous clip of protesters destroying their Chicks CDs by running over them with a tractor. Their tour bus driver quit. They lost their Lipton tea brand partnership. It was a controversy they were simply, mostly, unable to overcome.
Country music wasn't always this pearl-clutchy, though. Before 9/11, country music was a genre of intricate storytellers, forlorn lovers, and champions of collectivism. But the wave of unabashed patriotism that swept the country in the attacks' immediate aftermath opened a lucrative opportunity for the genre to mirror the nation's embrace of jingoism. While the patriotism displayed in the genre has certainly become less overt than it was two decades ago, the suits in Nashville have yet to abandon the money that rolls in from pandering to conservative simpletons – a space for them to tune out the "woke sissies" that populate the rest of popular music.
All of this paved the way for lackluster dudes like Chase Matthew to sneak into the Billboard charts. I had never heard of Mr. Matthew until I woke up last Tuesday morning to find out my subject for this week's column, which I'd usually chalk up to my general disinterest in modern country, but actually there's very little information on this guy out there as far as charting artists go.
What is known, though, are his two true loves: trucks and the Lord. His song "Still Got My Truck", for instance, is about a breakup where he chose his truck over the girl when given an ultimatum to choose between them. Between posts about his music, Matthew likes to buy and fix up/mod trucks he finds on Facebook marketplace as a hobby.
28 year old Chase McQuitty (Matthew is his middle name) was born and raised just outside Nashville. He dropped out of high school and worked as a mechanic after being rejected from a prominent Nashville music school. He repeatedly credits Jesus for encouraging him to continue chasing his dreams. "To me at the end of the day, it’s not about the music, it’s about the word and that word is Jesus. We’re not all perfect and I might cuss like a sailor and I might drink and I might smoke, but that’s between me and the Lord, not me and whoever’s trying to judge me or any of us," he told Country Now ahead of his debut record Born For This.
That record was released through Holler Boy, a label run by country-rap artist Upchurch, and made enough noise that resulted in Matthew inking a deal with Warner Records Nashville in October 2022.
Following the Morgan Wallen method of bloated playlist-fodder records, Matthew's debut with Warner, Come Get Your Memory, is 25 tracks and 80 minutes long. The one spaghetti noodle that stuck was "Love You Again", a song about having sex after a long week. The teased snippet sparked the #BlackDressTrend on TikTok in which the song was used in videos of women transitioning from casual clothes into black dresses. It stuck onto the chart for one week, slotting in at #91 in September 2024, nearly two years after its initial release.
In the midst of that, Matthew wrote songs for his 2024 EP We All Grow Up while on tour. He and his co-writers spent a three day break at a casino in Montana, and according to Matthew himself, wrote "Darlin'" to try to make back the money they lost from gambling.
There's no watershed moment that caused "Darlin'"s mild chart success, but there are two contributing factors that can be pointed towards.
The first is that he's been touring with some of the biggest acts in mainstream country, taking up support slots for Keith Urban and Jason Aldean. The second is his label-backed presence on country radio, which sent "Darlin'" to #1 on the country radio airplay chart last November. As a result, it's been bobbling around the bottom half of the Hot 100 for the last four months, peaking at #52 a couple months after a humble #98 debut. I suppose this is a lesson that radio still makes a difference in the margins.
The secret third factor: he went on everyone's favorite podcast, Talk Tuah.
With all that said...
Is the song any good?
For a second week in a row, we've found ourselves with a song that sucks, but this time from a relative underdog in contrast to last week's industry titans. The glaring issue with "Darlin'", above the lazy and uninteresting songwriting, is the trap drums. I'm not sure exactly who to blame for this trend. You could say it was Lil Nas X with "Old Town Road", but he's never claimed to be a country artist, nor is that song really all that country outside of its lyrical imagery.
If I had to pick a prime culprit, it's Morgan Wallen. Wallen has an iron grip on Nashville that nobody else has had in quite some time. He's without a doubt the most dominant country singer of this decade, and with that comes immense influence on mainstream country upstarts like Matthew. There are enough trap-infused Morgan Wallen songs to fill up an entire album, but the habit seems to have started around the time Wallen had to start collaborating with rappers to prove he wasn't racist after being caught saying the N word. It's a genre blend that usually sounds oblique and messy, and, in the world of modern-day country (that is historically unfriendly to people who are not white), it often feels appropriative and cheap in its appropriation. I hope it is a sonic trend that does not last much longer.
To add insult to injury, "Darlin'" is 80% chorus. Every verse is at most four bars, and they don't add any further context or nuance to the premise brought forth by the chorus. The chorus itself doesn't even really do its predisposed job of being an earworm – it's not all that solid melodically or rhythmically. It sounds like it was scrounged together by a handful of drunk dudes in a casino hotel because that's exactly what it is.
Matthew spends the chorus accusing his girlfriend of cheating on him with a male friend who she talks to on the phone all the time. The only reason he can come up with for why he deserves her love and affection over the other guy is because he drives a nicer truck ("That boy in a Ridgeline and I drive a Chevy"). The jokes write themselves.
Where is it going?
Artists like Chase Matthew are complete coin flips. There's nothing particularly unique about him, nor is he all that charming. He seems to put a lot of energy into social media, but so does everyone else. He has tour dates spanning the next few months, but so does everyone else. He's done promoting this song, which will likely be off the chart when it updates tomorrow. I could be wrong, I don't really have much knowledge of what's going on over in Nashville. But from the looks of it, Matthew is a dime a dozen unless he plays his cards right.
What do you think?
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