Jake Shane’s recent interview with Kacey Musgraves has once again renewed the debate over influencers serving as entertainment journalists.
During a conversation with the country star on the latest episode of his Therapuss podcast, the 26-year-old internet personality asked if she had a favorite song or lyric from her own catalog.
Joking that the question was “toxic,” Musgraves, 37, thought hard before carefully naming her 2018 song “Slow Burn.”
Shane responded in agreement, reciting his favorite line from the song: “In Tennessee, the sun’s goin’ down / But in Beijing, they’re headin’ out to work.”
Pressing her on what exactly she meant by the lyric, the host admitted that he and his coworker “debated every single day” about its message.
“Really?” Musgraves said in disbelief. “It’s not like a deep-coded thing. This one isn’t.”
“I know, so what does that mean to you?” Shane repeated, to which the Grammy-winning artist responded: “It literally just means what it means.”
“It just means they’re going to work and I’m over here — like the sun’s going down in Tennessee — and over there across the world it’s a different day and they’re like going to work and starting their next day.”
She explained that the lyric came to her while she was sitting on her porch in Tennessee, “picturing these people around the world doing their thing over there. It’s like the world just keeps turning.”
Numerous people have skewered Shane for the interview question.
“We need to end influencer interviews in lieu of actual journalism because what do you mean Kacey Musgraves had to explain how time zones work to Jake Shane?” one person wrote on X, with a second replying: “I was really hoping you were being overdramatic but that clip had me cringing.”
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“You’ll never guess in a million years what Kacey Musgraves lyric Jake Shane makes her explain the meaning of,” a third commented.
“Jake Shane: What do you mean the sun goes down? Science: It’s called a sunset, Jake,” a fourth quipped.
Another suggested: “Every guest he has on seems to have to walk through explaining very simple concepts,” while another added: “I keep coming back to this because what do you mean you debate it everyday. What could those debates possibly be about?”
Looking “beyond Jake Shane’s nonsense,” one agreed with Musgraves that “‘Slow Burn’ and ‘Hookup Scene’ are probably among the best tracks in her catalog.”
The Independent has contacted Shane’s representative for comment.
Shane, who rose to fame in 2023 for his humorous TikTok videos, faced backlash earlier this year for asking multiple celebrities on the Vanity Fair Oscars red carpet whether they found the sick child in the Oscar-nominated movie If I Had Legs I’d Kick You “so annoying.”