Music Premiere: A Brewing Banjo Backlash

The ubiquitous instrument enters the "meta" phase of its popularity

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Jessica Gildersleeve / Shore Fire Media

The Defibulators

It’s been clear for a while that the banjo has infiltrated pop music. In fact, we wrote about it right here back in April.

READ: The Banjo-ification of Pop: Why the Instrument Is Everywhere

But now the banjo has officially entered the next phase of pop-culture ubiquity: backlash.

On their new album Debt’ll Get ‘Em — available today — Brooklyn-based country outfit The Defibulators poke loving fun at the instrument’s new life as a status symbol on the track “Everybody’s Got a Banjo,” streaming for the first time below.

“A lot of people have realized what a great instrument it has always been, but beyond that, it’s become a trendy icon,” the band’s Bug Jennings tells TIME via email. “I mean, even the new Robin Thicke video’s got a naked gal bouncing around with a banjo pretending to play one. Why? Well, because it looks cool on a naked girl, I guess. Who cares what it sounds like or that’s it’s an incredibly difficult instrument to master!”

As the song states, if you don’t know how to play it, it still looks cool — but it’s cooler if you do know how. And Jennings knows what he’s talking about, since he does.