Brad Paisley has blamed “Russian bots” for attacking his Ukraine anthem online.
The 54-year-old singer has recalled releasing his solidary song Same Here – which featured a recording of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky – in 2023, and how he noticed the reaction starting to change.
He told the Rolling Stone magazine’s Nashville Now podcast: “When it came out, the response was 98 percent positive, based on what my web guy was tracking.
“[Ukraine] had their own web guys over there. They’re tracking and so are we. And then the Russian bots got ahold of it and we watched it flip to… 90 percent negative.
“It was all incredibly believable avatars. But they could see the origins… It was people pretending to be Americans, or even bots pretending to be Americans, attacking in a way that seemed very believable.”
Brad penned the song with collaborator Lee Thomas Milles and Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and he wanted to get Zelensky involved.
He recalled: “We didn’t write it exactly about [the invasion], but in my mind, I remember thinking this conversation — this friend across the ocean, talking about how different are we? — would be really powerful if that conversation was captured on audio, and it was the leader of that country.
“And [Zelensky] was like, ‘Yeah, we’ll do that.’ ”
Despite the backlash he ended up facing online, Brad – whose new album Tacklebox dropped over the summer – has continued to voice his support for Ukraine, and he isn’t bothered by the backlash.
He said: “I’ve not felt, deep in my bones, as clear a feeling of like rooting for something as I have when they got 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 know that would be the least bit polarising…
“It didn’t bother me at all. You don’t do a song like that and be like, ‘But I want everyone to like it!’
“No, I did that because it’s how I feel. I don’t care. You don’t have to like that. Tacklebox is out — go listen to that.”