When I was a kid I absolutely hated this song. It was such a buffoonish attempt to write a party song that even as an eight year old it felt cartoonish and mercilessly contrived. In fact I really couldn’t stand Hank Jr. at all, because his music felt like such a betrayal of the family legacy, given that I was a massive Hank Sr. fan from a very early age. To me this song represented everything I disliked about Jr. - it was silly country-flavored pop sung by a party clown. This is the blueprint from which the unspeakable horrors of bro country were constructed in later years.
Then it became the Monday Night Football theme song, and you could not escape it, even if you didn’t watch televised gridiron football. The song became so ubiquitous and iconic in the US that it might as well have become our national anthem, which I hate to admit, would have been a step up. And while I still hate the song for the reasons listed above, I have matured in ways that have expanded my loathing of it.
Eventually I was able to muster a bit of appreciation for Hank Jr. and my contempt for his musical output lessened to the point where I actually became a pretty big fan of some of his work. Having reached middle age and its corresponding existential crises, I especially came to appreciate ‘All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down’. Having come to appreciate the origin of Hank Jr’s “rowdy friends” trope, I now learned to hate ‘…Are Coming Over Tonight’ for being the worst sequel ever made. Having written one of the perfect songs to illustrate the despair and indignity of aging, Jr. made a mockery of it by following it up with a corny party boy song that felt almost like a retraction of the original. I will say it again - WORST SEQUEL EVER MADE!
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