Margaritas at the Holiday Inn, anybody?
Joe Nichols joined the Whiskey Riff Raff Podcast here recently, and talked everything from the success of his debut album Man With A Memory, to his hilarious countryfied rendition of “Baby Got Back,” to his friendship with Blake Shelton, to sports betting, his new album, Good Day For Living, and so much more.
With that being said, he brought up a very intriguing point about one of his greatest hits, “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.”
Written by Gary Hannan and John Wiggins, it was released as the lead single from Nichols’ 2005 album, III.
However, given the world we’re living in now, more than 15 years later, it would probably be pretty difficult to cut a song like that today, let along put it out to country radio, and then have a #1 hit with it.
But with that being said, he recalled some initial blowback even then, back in 2005:
“Even then, the label had a few people there, a few female employees, that had a problem with it, putting out ‘Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.’
They found it pretty offensive, and they thought that the female country music audience could be pretty offended.
That was a long time ago, like I said probably 2005-ish, and of course, you know, I think they just wanted to caution me, like hey you might get some push back on this.
We feel like this, but we’ll put it out if you really want to. And I was very adamant that this single off this record, I think it’s a big ol’ hit, and they eventually did.
Like I said the caution was noted by everybody at the label that this might be offensive, let’s keep our eyes out.”
Cue it up:
“Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off”
He also talked about how he admires those who speak what’s on their mind, even though there are so many who want to keep things smooth sailing:
“You know, I really admire guys that, mentioned Eric Church, I really admire guys like that, where he seems to be able to say a lot of things that are really really close, you know, to being not offensive, but kinda just push the edge a little bit with maybe pissing somebody off.
And I don’t know that we all kinda play by that rule, I think a lot of people, in an effort to kind of be a go along get along, make this as easy as possible for radio to play this song, don’t give it a chance for ‘Well if you hadn’t have said dammit so much in this song, or if you hadn’t have said this… we’d probably play it.’”
Joe Nichols new album Good Day For Living is available everywhere… go get it.
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Cheers, y’all.