Country

Album: Wrangled (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song centers around the stereotypes and clichés of bro-country. Angeleena Presley penned this tune in around 2014 at the very height of the bro-country movement. She recalled to Billboard magazine:

    "I had done a demo session, and it was four or five songs. One song was called 'Business End,' which was about a guy who was protecting his land from this corporate entity that was trying to come in, and he was telling them 'You'll wind up on the business end of my granddaddy's shotgun.' It was very male. I had a meeting with my publisher, and asked if he was pitching the songs. He looked at me and said 'We love what you do. It's so great. You're your own person, and we wouldn't want you to change anything…..but……the timing right now is just so wrong. There's a lot of guy songs.' Basically, he told me that not only did he not know anybody's reaction because he hadn't pitched them to anyone. It was so bad that you couldn't take a song that by a female into a room and pitch it. People were only wanting to hear those songs about trucks, girls in Daisy Dukes songs. It really broke my heart.

    And, I'm friends with Luke [Bryan] and Blake [Shelton]. They are great human beings, but I love Miranda [Lambert] too. I love Sunny Sweeney, and Kacey Musgraves. So, I went home…. and I wrote that song that very day. I'm not against anything. I think that everyone deserves a shot. But, people have different tastes. I think there are people out there who love Classic Country. I think there are people who love pop country. But, it just seemed that pop country was the only thing for a long time. I thought with that one, I would cleverly write this list song, but my list would be a little different from the other ones."
  • Presley told Rolling Stone Country that she wrote the track about the repetitive subject matters in the bro-country songs. Her now former publisher was not amused when she played the tune to him.

    "I just took all of those trends that were happening – the arena roar and, 'Let's make a list of things that country people are supposed to do in life!' and say the word 'country' 75 times," the singer recounted, "and I wrote this song and was like, 'Well here, will you pitch this? Will you give this a shot?' He didn't think it was very funny."
  • Alabama native rapper Yelawolf contributed a verse. "We left a space on the track, and I asked him to come in with the hopes that he would want to do it," Presley said. "He came in, listened, and said 'Ok, I'll write you a rhyme.' As it turned out, I didn't have to speak out. He did it for me."

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