"It Doesn't Get Any Countrier Than This"

McGraw Southern Blend

I feel like there are three types of men who wear cologne: Men who wouldn’t otherwise be aware of
its existence had someone else not purchased it for them, men who did bother to put a little time and
effort into discovering which scents are worth having, and finally, those men who are willing to buy a
brand purely on endorsement.

And there are plenty endorsements out there, celebrity or otherwise, hawking men’s cologne. David
Beckham, Michael Jordan, and Antonio Banderas, known for being the sweatiest, smelliest high
performance athletes and actors have cashed in their names and bottled their fame, charisma, and
sexual prowess so that you, luck guy, might partake in their sweet success.

This stuff, McGraw Southern Blend, has two major endorsements going for it: Tim McGraw, and the
whole entire South. That’s a lot to distil down to an aggravatingly small one fluid ounce bottle. One the
one hand, you have Mr. All-That-Is-Man Tim McGraw. That guy’s moustache alone can bench press 150
lbs, play the guitar, and fix an engine, all at the same time. And on the other hand you have the South;
not the incestuous lynch mob south, but the refined, sophisticated, values oriented high-society South.
I’m talking watching fireflies and heat lightning through the oak trees from the front porch South.

So has it worked?

No, unfortunately not. For starters, the bottle is a joke. The cap looks like a chintzy gold painted plastic
Christmas tree ornament done wrong. The top of the bottle is supposed to be saddled in “leather”, but
the plastic is so cheap it could actually be mistaken for treated cardboard.

The cologne itself wants to be manly with tobacco and whisky base and middle notes respectively.
However, this is as much commentary around current perceptions of manliness as it is ineffective
essential oils. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t smell bad, but it doesn’t smell good, either. And what little
scent there is doesn’t last half as long as most other colognes I’ve tried. What we have here is little more
than a fuzzy memory of southern heritage, a half hearted attempt at emotional evocation, which is
probably a long way from where McGraw had intended on landing.

Ain’t That The Way It Always Ends?