On the first glance, “Bitcoins & Tesla Shares” by The Cumberland River Project is a song that absolutely sounds like it should be a joke… and yet, somehow, isn’t. You read the title and expect parody, maybe a yeehaw remix of a Reddit thread. What you get instead is something far more unexpected: a genuinely sincere reflection on how the pursuit of flashy, overhyped success often misses the point entirely.
“Bitcoins & Tesla Shares” swerves into sincerity. The blockchain jargon is just set dressing. What’s underneath is classic country: love, loss, growth, and the radical act of being present. No irony, no trend-chasing. Just a steel-string guitar reminding you that fulfillment isn’t found in your portfolio: it’s in the people you actually show up for and quietly dismantles it with a steel-string guitar and the gentle reminder that you cannot, in fact, HODL your way into happiness.
Musically, it’s exactly what you think of when someone says “modern country,” and I mean that in the best way. It’s warm. It’s polished. There are acoustic strums, steel guitars, and a tempo that suggests someone looking out the window for a very long time. The vocal performance lands perfectly in the emotional Goldilocks zone: sincere without being saccharine, grounded without feeling bored. But the production does something rare: it gets out of the way. There’s no over-arranged overcompensation here, no banjos doing dubstep. It just lets the song be.
In a world that desperately wants every song to be a TikTok trend or a meme in waiting, “Bitcoins & Tesla Shares” chooses to be… human. And honestly? That might be the most subversive thing about it.
And that’s the weird magic here. This track should be ridiculous, but it dodges the meme trap by simply meaning it. The lyrics come from a place of emotional honesty, the kind that suggests the songwriter has maybe lost money in crypto and in love, and only one of those was worth singing about. It’s not trying to save the world. The Cumberland River Project just wants you to maybe call a loved one and log off. And honestly? That might be the most radical thing a country song can do right now.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
