A nice little ditty. Makes me smile every time it comes on in the car.

Country popster Kane Brown hit it big in 2020 with “Be Like That,” a universal tale of being shat on, dusting it off, and forging ahead. But who needs that shit?

Hooking up with Swae Lee and Khalid, “Be Like That,” the third single off Brown’s Mixtape, Vol. 1 EP, reminds me of the vibe I felt in the mid 1990s, sitting around with my buds in college with laid back, chill tunes about life humming along in the background. It’s the same feeling I get here, with Brown’s complaints about the relationship he’s in coming to a head in the chorus where he concludes that, sometimes, life simply “be like that.”

The opening lyrics to that simple guitar strumming puts you immediately into a “that’s right, mofo, tell ’em!” mood: “I might be better on my own / I hate you blowing up my phone,” hitting that relationship emotion where it counts before nailing the song’s best lyric: “I wish I never met yo’ ass / Sometimes it be like that,” which is amazingly still edited for radio on my local FM pop station (the same station that shocked me in 1997 when they played Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch”), cutting out the word “ass.”

But I can’t be too hard on those poor blokes still fighting the good fight in terrestrial radio, especially in an era where everything and it’s opposite offends somebody in the world, and god forbid they piss off an advertiser – one of the few they have still supporting them.

But asses aside, Brown admits his song is simply about relationships and all the different emotions that come about when you open yourself up to one. The track is at home on both country and pop music fans’ playlists, with Brown’s twangy, youthful energy sliding through strongly with the inevitable change-ups by rapper Swae Lee and songwriter Khalid. Like much music today, it’s a melting pot of genres and styles, pulling in overlapping groups of listeners.

Released in July of 2020, I’m surprised it it only reached No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and No. 8 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40), considering how ubiquitous it is on the radio. “Be Like That” is simple, worthy music-making, especially in a world where many of us are asking ourselves more than ever: Are we better on our own? We just might be.