Country Song by Ashley Riley

Album: Can't Let You Go (2017)

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Songfacts®:

The natural assumption is that this song is the "country song" of the title, but alas the full story is trickier than that. The song referenced in the title is actually a song that Ashley Riley was listening to while she was feeling bummed out and brokenhearted.

So what is the country song in "Country Song"? In a Songfacts interview, Riley said it was "Die Fun" from Kacey Musgraves' Pageant Material album. So, "Country Song" is about Riley listening to "Die Fun" while nursing some emotional wounds.

"Her songwriting is very clever," Riley says.
This song appears on Can't Let You Go, the second EP Riley released (the first was Through the Thin). It was the last of her recordings with the backing band she'd started with, most of whom moved away from the region after they released Can't Let You Go. As such, this song and the EP to which it belongs mark an end to one chapter of Riley's music career and the beginning of another.

She debuted that next chapter successfully with her 2020 single "Close To Me," which won the Midwest Music Expo listener's panel and which has a more mainstream-country sound than most of her previous work. Riley made her music career in and around her hometown of Decatur, Illinois, which is country music territory.

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