Songfacts®:

• "Leather" is a reflective song about the grit and soul of a cowboy, mirroring the timeless toughness of the leather they ride and wear. Cody Johnson's heartstrings got lassoed when he first heard it.
  
  "Everything about a cowboy has to do with leather," he told Billboard. "So lines about it taking 'Years of work and dirt and hurt to make him,' or 'He'll start out stiff and rough, but give him time and he'll soften up/ And that just makes him twice as tough'... It is so well-written."
• Johnson's WMN labelmate Ian Munsick wrote "Leather" with Rivers Rutherford and Jeremy Spillman. Munsick played Johnson the song while the two were touring together. "We were just sitting on the bus," Johnson recalled to Apple Music. "And he plays me the song and I'm like, 'Dude, I will cut that in a heartbeat.'"
• Not only did Johnson record the song, but he made it the title track and centerpiece of his eighth album. When he floated the idea of naming the album after the song, Munsick didn't realize Johnson was plotting a record. Johnson told him, "I'm not. I don't think. Maybe I am. But if you'll give me the song, I'll cut a record around it."
• Munsick's original demo included some yodeling. Johnson wanted to take it out but his producer, Trent Wilmon, told him, "You have to do that. That's cowboy."
• The Leather album cover zooms in on one of Johnson's tattooed hands, work-worn and bloodied, gripping a strip of leather.
  
  "I was working at the ranch that day, so I told my photographer Chris Douglas to come over," Johnson told Billboard. "That's blood and hair in that picture from castrating bulls and giving them shots that day. We didn't stage any of that. We got started at 5:00 a.m. and worked all day and he ended up getting some incredible photos while we were working."
  
  The image screams work ethic, grit, and a rock-solid sense of self – the same vibes echoing through every groove on the record. "People appreciate authenticity, whether it's me being a cowboy and singing something that reminds people of '90s country stuff they grew up on, or someone like the Zach Bryans and guys that are more like what probably is considered Americana, or Jelly Roll, who is completely the opposite of me, musically," said Johnson. "But authenticity is the common thread."