Brad Paisley has attributed the online backlash around his Ukraine tribute to “Russian bots.”
The 54-year-old singer looked back on releasing his solidarity song Same Here — which included a recording of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky — in 2023, and noted how the tone of the reaction began to shift.
He shared on Rolling Stone magazine’s Nashville Now podcast: “When it dropped, the feedback was 98 percent positive, based on what my web guy was tracking.”
“[Ukraine] had their own online teams keeping an eye on things over there. They’re tracking, and so are we. Then the Russian bots got involved and we watched it swing to… roughly 90 percent negative.”
“It was all incredibly believable avatars. But you could see where it came from… It was people pretending to be Americans, or bots pretending to be Americans, attacking in a way that felt convincingly real.”
Brad wrote the song with partner Lee Thomas Milles and Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and he wanted Zelensky to be part of the project.
He recalled: “We didn’t write it specifically about [the invasion], but in my mind I pictured this conversation — this friend across the ocean, talking about how different we are — and I felt it would be incredibly powerful if that conversation were captured in audio, with the leader of that country speaking.”
“And [Zelensky] was like, ‘Yeah, we’ll do that.’ ”
Despite the backlash he encountered online, Paisley — whose new album Tacklebox dropped over the summer — has continued to voice his support for Ukraine, and he isn’t deterred by the criticism.
He said: “I’ve never felt, deep in my bones, as clear a sense of rooting for something as I did when they were attacked.”
“I got involved with a charity over there and they asked me to become a United24 ambassador… to spread the word. I didn’t realise that would be controversial at all…”
“It didn’t bother me at all. You don’t create a song like that and be like, ‘But I want everyone to like it!’
“No, I did that because it’s how I feel. You don’t have to like that. Tacklebox is out — go listen to that.”
