Red
by Hardy (featuring Morgan Wallen)

Album: The Mockingbird & the Crow (2023)
Charted: 64
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Hardy teams up with his close friend and frequent touring and songwriting partner Morgan Wallen. Hardy co-wrote eight songs on Dangerous, the album that sent Wallen's career into hyperdrive.
  • The song showcases the different ways the color red is seen in small-town life. Hardy starts the heartwarming country number by referencing a sunrise and sunset on a farm. Wallen joins in later in the verse, singing about the red dust that flies in the air and their red rusted trucks.

    The two lead into the chorus, emphasizing that their focus is not on politics, but on the small details of rural life. They include:

    A crushed, rusting Budweiser can in the ditch
    Old courthouses made from red bricks
    The book of John bound in red leather
    And finally, the American flag which is red, white and blue

    The duo extends the patriotic message at the conclusion of the song as they honor the US military and American flag:

    Every shipped off soul that was born to fight for a wind-torn flag
    That's blue and white and red
  • Wallen didn't contribute to the writing of the song. Hardy penned it with Ben Hayslip ("Honey Bee," "Small Town Throwdown") and Rhett Akins ("Boys Round Here," "Young & Crazy") of the songwriting team known as The Peach Pickers, along with Jacob Rice.

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