Kid Rock Says He's 'Over' Boycotting Bud Light

Kid Rock does the unthinkable and drops the boycott, says Bud Light got the message.

By Andrew Roberts

Kid Rock has called for an end to his strife over Bud Light, shutting down his months-long "boycott" a few months after his Nashville Bar was found to still be serving the brew. According to The Tennessean, his reasoning is that the company got the message, at least in his eyes.

"Do I wanna hold their head underwater and drown them because they made a mistake?" Rock said during an interview with Tucker Carlson. "No, I think they got the message. Hopefully, other companies get it, too. But at the end of the day I don't think the punishment that they've been getting at this point fits the crime."

Rock kicked off his "boycott" after Bud Light revealed a partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman, during March Madness. The extent of that sponsorship was a video posted on April 1, in which Mulvaney made clear she didn't know what sport she was talking about but urged her millions of followers to celebrate it and ended a contest by Bud Light for a chance to win $15,000.

They also made her a custom can with her face on it, not put her face on all cans, but the damage was done apparently. Kid Rock was likely the most notable opponent when the controversy started, all due to his methods.

In a video posted on what used to be Twitter, Rock doesn't hold a case of Bud Light underwater to symbolically drown it. Instead, he just takes aim and fires into three cases of the brew with a submachine gun. "F-k Bud Light and f-k Anheuser-Busch," Rock says after he's finished shooting, with the video grabbing 11 million views in May 2023. He also apparently banned it in his Nashville bar, with musician John Rich following suit and musician Travis Tritt claiming he has banned the beer from his tour. Even Ted Nugent got involved, with the "Jailbait" singer calling the decision by Bud Light, "the Epitome of Cultural Deprivation."

Anheuser-Busch isn't without sin. Their response to the backlash could've been a lot less wishy-washy and it seemed to result in Mulvaney receiving hate in her daily life, all for what essentially seems like just existing. "For months now, I've been scared to leave my house ...I have been ridiculed in public. I've been followed, and I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn't wish on anyone," she said in a response from June.

Since the initial boycott started, both Rock and Rich were revealed to still be selling the beer at their bars in Nashville. Rock was also spied drinking a Bud Light himself at a Nashville concert in August. And now he's moving on.

So in the end, nothing seemed to be gained, plenty of respect was lost, and other Anheuser-Busch brands reaped the supposed benefit of the "boycott." Bud Light's stock dropped a bit, but nothing they didn't experience the year before, according to Vox. In the end, maybe the only lesson is that people are still ignorant as to why buying a product to destroy it with fire or guns isn't really a boycott.

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