But Blake believes that those who criticized the song “clearly hadn’t heard the song or read the lyrics,” because from his perspective, if they did they’d understand the emotions behind it, rather than take issue with the romanticization of living near or below the poverty line.
“I just feel like these days, there are people out there who don’t want to know the truth. They just want to hear what they want to hear, and they want to pick a fight. No matter what your intention is, no matter what the truth is, they want it to be something that they can be upset about so that they can get on social media and try to grab a headline,” he continues. “With ‘Minimum Wage,’ at first I thought, ‘Wow, I guess I just I’ve missed something here.’ And the more I read into this, I realized this was really not real.”