Songoftheday 3/7/24 - Willie man come on the 6 o'clock news, said somebody's been shot somebody's been abused...

 

 

"Beer For My Horses" - Toby Keith and Willie Nelson

from the album Unleashed (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 12

 

Today's song comes from the recently deceased country music star Toby Keith, whose full-on dip into post-9/11 faux-macho jingoism from his 2002 album Unleashed had spawned two #1 country radio hits that crossed over to the top quarter of Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with "Courtesy Of The Red, White and Blue" and "Who's Your Daddy".  For the third single from the project, Keith toned it down for the more sedate love ballad "Rock You Baby", but after pumping his fans up with musical steroids, this was a shock to their system. The song stalled under the top ten on Billboard's Country Songs airplay chart at #13, while not even making the top half of the Hot 100 at #66. 

So Toby went back to being oversized Toby, with the right-wing wet dream "Beer For My Horses". Written by Keith and Scotty Emerick, and co-produced by the singer with James Stroud, the song is an attempt on a comical take on vigilante justice. What's even more disconcerting is Toby brings in contry music legend Willie Nelson, who we last saw in this series from back in 1984 on his duet with Julio Iglesias on "To All The Girls I've Loved Before". And this supposed icon of "left-leaning" country music artists, who is probably just as known for smoking weed as his music, and ON HIS WEBSITE advertises t-shirts with his mugshot picture, is given the verse about literally lynching people. It goes back to Keith pontificating about "corruption" and "crime on the streets", which are dogwhistle words for certain profile of people respectively. And with the South's known history of who was lynched in the "good old days", it's really just a fun, watered down version of what would be Jason Aldean's craptacular "Try That In A Small Town". I really have to admit I didn't even glance at this seriously at the time it was out, but in reflection I simply cannot escape from it. It seriously is a "we'll finish what the law enforcement can't" which is pervasive in society now that excuses crime if it's "done by the people they like". It's pathetic, it's performative, and it definitely got the positive reaction it wanted at the time, reversing the momentum of the superior previous single to get the pair back to the top of the chart. The music video certainly makes a choice by using rap-music instrumental production at the start in the aftermath of the "crime", and uses the "cop in drag" joke that is old and unfunny.

"Beer For My Horses" spent six weeks at #1 on Billboard magazine's Country Songs airplay chart, while reaching the top-40 on the Hot 100 in June of 2003. At the Grammy Awards in 2004, the song was nominated in two categories, losing Best Country Song to "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett (another new/old cash-in) and Best Country Vocal Collaboration to James Taylor and Alison Krauss' "How's The World Treating You" (ditto). 

Later that year, Keith guested on co-writer Scotty Emerick's debut single "I Can't Take You Anywhere", which peaked at #24 on the Country Songs chart and #91 on the Hot 100.

Since then, Nelson has released too many albums to count on your fingers and toes, and racked up a slew of Grammy nominations, winning six awards since 2004. His most recent studio release, Bluegrass from 2023, has Nelson remaking older songs of his in that style. 

(2/10)

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Here's Toby and Willie performing the song on the CMA Awards...

Up tomorrow: This country crossover band is on the veranda.