Little Big Town's ‘Girl Crush’ Being Dropped from Radio Stations over Complaints About the Song's "Lesbian Theme"

Grammy-winning country music quartet Little Big Town (LBT) has come under fire for its song Girl Crush, which some country music radio stations have pulled off their programming over complaints from listeners that the song's lyrics are "too lesbian."

In fact, the song is really just about a woman's jealousy of her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. But it describes that jealousy from a very different perspective: "I want to taste her lips / Yeah, 'cause they taste like you ... I want her magic touch / Yeah, 'cause maybe then you'd want me just as much / I got a girl crush."

Alana Lynn, a morning co-host on 104.3 FM in Boise, Idaho, told Washington Post that even though the complaints were premised on a complete misunderstanding of the lyrics, she was forced to stop playing in her show after parents insist they didn't want their kids exposed to it. A music director for a country music radio station in Texas writing under the pen-name TexMex at For the Country Record said that even after explaining the song to listeners who called to complain, every one of them responded with basically the same thing (paraphrased): "You are just promoting the gay agenda on your station and I am changing the channel and never listening to you ever again!!"

In order to clear the confusion about their song, Jason Owen, the band manager, had LBT band do a commercial spot and booked them on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The group's guitarist Jimi Westbrook in a talk with USA Today said: "To hear that people were misinterpreting it was a little funny. I was like, 'You didn't even listen past what you thought was offensive!' There are people who just like to complain and the moment they get to the part they can complain about it, they don't go any further. I hate it, but there's nothing you can do about it. People are the way they are and God bless 'em."

LBT singer Karen Fairchild, who explains the lyrics of their song in their commercial, said: "That's just shocking to me, the close-mindedness of that, when that's just not what the song was about. But what if it were? It's just a greater issue of listening to a song for what it is."