Brian Kelley's New Song Has Fans Wondering What Really Went Down Between Florida Georgia Line

Country lost another legend. Florida Georgia Line found immense success, but the band (or more accurately a duo) broke up in 2022. Well, technically they went on a hiatus, but we all know what typically happens when a band lets their fans down easy like that.

The duo originally came together in 2010 when they started making their way in the country music industry. They saw pretty instant success and quickly rose in the ranks. At some point, it all went wrong.

The simple answer to the duo's breakup is that they each wanted to pursue their own solo careers. They were pretty insistent at the time that there would be a future for the project. "I think 'taking a break' is the proper term, as opposed to breaking up," Tyler told PEOPLE.

Brian Kelley added, "We're not going our separate ways. We're taking a break from recording our music. We're being artists. We love creating. And so a couple years back, we started writing without each other and trying different writers, and now we're both doing that with our music."

Their spurt of writing separately truly grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tyler Hubbard admitted to the Associated Press. "That’s a really big transition in one’s career, 10 years or 12 years, and to say we’re going to pivot right now,” he said. “I didn’t expect it to come then. And it took me a minute, you know, it really did."

Tyler also said that Brian was the one who took the lead on the decision, being the first to admit that a break would do them some good. Like many musicians, the pandemic underscored how important writing, creating, and performing was to them.

Following the hiatus, Brian seemed to have much more lined up for himself since he was the one who first had the realization that splitting was the right thing for him. He started his own record label, Nashville South Records. Brian made a business move in April 2021, but that announcement about the hiatus didn't come until February 2022. Brian's first solo project dropped that same year.

The label is backed by and connected to Warner Music Nashville. It now is the home to his own solo music. That timing definitely seemed suspicious and calculated to some fans. While the pair insist that there is no bad blood, not everyone is quite so convinced.

Tyler and Brian don't have a squeaky-clean history between them, surprisingly. In 2020, fans picked up on a bit of a social media rift going down. Tyler and his wife, Hayley, unfollowed Brian which caused Brian's wife to get involved. She wrote on her story: “Real friends don’t always agree with [you] but they do respect your right to have an opinion.”

Fans could only speculate that there was some sort of political argument. "A lot of people need to look up the definition of a democracy and bipartisanship and learn that," Brittney said in a cryptic Instagram video. The bandmates did refollow each other.

They ended up following each other again and everything seemed fine — for a while. At the time, they tried to make it seem like they were under a unified front, but a song release changed everything.

When Brian released “Kiss My Boots" in March 2024, speculation grew that there was actually something wrong between the two as the entire song was about someone trying to tarnish his name. “Want the world to know that you did me wrong / I don’t know how you act sweet, after how you did me / Here’s a middle finger to you through a song" were the lyrics.