Straight Outta Cold Beer

Album: If I'm Honest (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Straight Outta Cold Beer" is a song about partying after a hard day's work. It's written about people in rural blue collar towns all across America. Shelton said he was too old to do much of this sort of hard-drinking bonfire partying by the time he wrote this song, but he still liked thinking about young people "tearing it up" the way he used to do it. He wanted to write a sort of anthem for them.

    You know we're straight out of that dirty south
    Dirty roads, nobody got no money
    Got them shined up pickup trucks
    Whistlin' at them honies
    From the country, yes sir
    You know we're straight out of that long week work
    At night, everybody wanna party
    All night long, bonfire on the back 40
    In the middle of nowhere, ain't nobody leavin' here
    Til we're straight out of cold beer, straight out of cold beer
  • Singing so unambiguously and sentimentally about country life won Shelton praise from critics and appreciation from fans. It's a fun song, but it also delves into how country folks party so hard at least partly because they work hard jobs that often pay little money.

    Just a bunch of poor boys, daddy's girls
    Children of the corn field
    Trying to turn a shift job into a dollar bill
    We wear them muddy boots
    Stay true to how we're raised
    Ain't nothing about us fake


    In discussing the song, Shelton told Rolling Stone, "Basically it's just about having a throwdown out in the woods - that's what we used to do in high school. I can't honestly sit here and say that I do it much anymore, I'm getting too old, but it's fun for me to sing about those times and the crazy stuff that I used to do, and the crazy stuff that I know somewhere, as we speak right now, kids are doing somewhere in somebody's field. I know you're tearing it up out there."
  • The song was the third promotional single for If I'm Honest, Shelton's tenth studio album.
  • The song was written by Marv Green, Ben Hayslip, and Justin Wilson. Hayslip also co-wrote "Honey Bee" and "All About Tonight." Scott Hendricks produced it.
  • The song differs from the rest of If I'm Honest, which mostly deals with Shelton's recent divorce from Miranda Lambert.

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