State lines make good neighbors. At least that’s what the bros of bro-country’s biggest band, Florida Georgia Line, have learned since they broke up two years ago. On two episodes of the Bussin’ with the Boys podcast, each bro gave broadly conflicting reasons about why they can’t bro and won’t bro like they used to. The bros, Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley, can’t even agree upon which bro broached a breakup first.
Hubbard’s version is that his bro broadsided him. “For me, it was really unexpected,” he said (via People). “But BK came to me and said, ‘Man, I’m really feeling like I want to do a solo thing. And I’m like, ‘Really?’ We were just getting out of our first deal. We were kind of in a sweet spot that we had worked for 10 years to get to.”
He pleaded with his bro to put another 10 years into their groundbreaking fusion of country, pop, rock, and hip-hop, but ultimately he resigned that ’twas better to have bro’d and lost than never to have bro’d at all. “He was adamant, like, ‘Nah, now’s my time. I really need to do this for myself,’” Hubbard said. “And I’m like, ‘Well, hey, whatever you need to do, bro.’ Like, ‘What do you want from me?’ He’s like, ‘I just want support.’ So I’m like, OK you got it.’”
Even though Hubbard offered to do a reunion tour at one point, the duo’s rapprochement (sorry, rabrochement) was short lived. “BK had this thing where he wanted to still do Florida Georgia Line, but he wanted to do the solo thing, too,” Hubbard said, “and I had to tell him … I can’t do both.” So he issued his bro an ultimatum, asking him to choose whether to bro or not to bro, slings and arrows of outrageous fortune be damned.
Kelley contradicted his former bro’s version of events on his episode. The split wasn’t “really a beef,” he said, since he’d been talking about going solo “for a long time.” “I had an idea that once the deal was up, Tyler would get a solo deal under the same label, I would get a record deal and we would renegotiate a new record deal,” he said. Plus, he had a vision of he and Hubbard touring together, performing their solo music and reuniting every night for Florida Georgia Line songs in a three-hour spectacle of brotherly love.
“It wasn’t just that I had to have a solo career — I would word it as ‘I want a solo outlet, as a creative, as a songwriter,’” Kelley said. “I wanted to reshape that part of the story. It gets sticky about what things go where? I think it’s easy to figure out. It’s not an emotional thing for me when we’re talking about business and creativity.”
The bromance ended officially, though, when Kelley saw Hubbard with a new bro, Tim McGraw, singing a duet, “Undivided,” at President Biden’s inauguration. Kelley was “surprised [and] shocked.” “I didn’t think that was a good look, if I’d have done it or if he had done it,” he said, the perfidy clearly still smarting. (Hubbard and his wife allegedly unfollowed Kelley on social media after the election, too).
Still, the bros mustered the strength for a final Florida Georgia Line bro-down in 2022. Hubbard released his sophomore solo outing, Strong, last month, and Kelley’s, Tennessee Truth, came out Friday. It notably contains a song called “Kiss My Boots,” which is not the tender expression of love it appears, since some have interpreted it as a dig at Hubbard.
The real Tennessee truth arrived earlier this month, though, when the bros officially closed their Nashville bar, FGL House. It’s over, brover.