All Tractors Ain't Green

Album: Mercury Lane (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Not every tractor is green, not every field grows corn, and not all country singers are white. That's the message in this song, a track from Jimmie Allen's debut album, Mercury Lane.

    Allen says the song is about "going against the grain of the country boy models." As a Black country singer, he turned a lot of heads but never wavered from genre because it's the music he loves.
  • Allen wrote this song with Brandon Hood and Tim Nichols. Hood is a Nashville-based guitarist who played on the Mercury Lane album; Nichols is an established songwriter in Music City, with a long list of credits that includes "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw and "Lay Low" by Blake Shelton.
  • In 2022, Allen recorded a new version of "All Tractors Ain't Green" for Amazon Music as part of their Amazon Originals series. Allen also shot a video for this version, where he sings from atop a piano in a Watertown, Tennessee field, joined by backing singers of various complexions.

    This version was released on March 23, 2022 in advance of the Amazon documentary For Love & Country, which features Allen as it traces the Black history of country music. The documentary, which dropped on April 7, also features Mickey Guyton, another young Black singer-songwriter breaking barriers in the genre.

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