Drink a Little Beer

Album: Life Changes (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song was co-written by Thomas Rhett's famed singer-songwriter father, Rhett Akins, along with one of his fellow Peach Pickers, Ben Hayslip, and one of Rhett's producers, Jesse Frasure. Once Thomas Rhett realized it was an ode to his old man's era of country music it became a duet with him. He recalled during a media listening party:

    "My dad sent me this song in an email; his email said, 'I know you will never cut this, but I wanted you to hear it.' I think when your dad tells you you will never do something, it makes you want to do it that much more.

    I cut this song, and it just turned out fantastic. I was like, 'Since you wrote it, I've always wanted you to be on my record, so I would love for this to be Thomas Rhett featuring …' He came in, and it's just really fun to record a song like that. It's like a huge ode to country music that was being played when my dad was an artist in the late '80s and early '90s. I couldn't ask for a cooler song to have done with my dad."
  • Thomas Rhett had always wanted to include his father on a record, and was pumped to finally get a duet with him on disc.

    "Every time I go to a radio station and there's a programmer that's been there for like 20 plus years, the only thing we talk about is my dad," he told Billboard magazine. "There's always these stories about my dad, and I just thought for country radio, it would be super cool for a lot of those programmers, and a lot of the people who knew my dad, to hear me do a song on my record with my dad singing on it.

    "Even though the majority of the world will have no idea who Rhett is, that was one of those moments for me that I'll be able to look back in 30 years and think, 'Me and Dad did a song together, that's awesome,"' he continued. "I'll probably play it for my grandkids and be like, 'This is your great-grandfather singing on my record.' We also wrote this song [together], so to have him sing on that just made a whole bunch of sense."

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