BEHIND THE SONG: “American Honey”

Lady Antebellum’s third number one “American Honey” is a song about nostalgia and childhood innocence and ironically, it was all inspired by a bottle of liqueur. Songwriter Hillary Lindsey, who co-wrote the tune with Cary Barlowe and Shane Stevens, shares, “Well, Cary bought a bottle of whiskey in Gatlinburg, Tennessee…and this whiskey happened to be American Honey.” Shane chimes in, “And he started playing guitar, the riff that’s in the beginning of the song and throughout the song, and one of us said – after singing and making up words – that that would be a good song title.” Hillary adds, “We had no idea what it would be about,” but they all agreed that it was “a killer title.”

Once the tune was written, the trio was excited to find out that they made the cut to be included among the songs on Lady A’s sophomore album Need You Now. Lindsey explains, “You know, that’s a hard record to get on because they’re great songwriters within their own right and so it was pretty amazing that they decided to cut an outside song.”

But, for the group’s Hillary Scott, who sings the lead on the single, it was something she immediately connected with. Hillary reveals, “I really related to [it] on a lot of levels, just thinking about my childhood and just thinking about life and how you really do get caught up in the day-to-day and the stress and not feeling like you have a ton of time for things that you want to have time for and this song and this lyric explained that perfectly.” She continues, “It’s something I think that everybody feels and it’s so relatable and I loved the metaphor and how it was just so artistically perfect. I am so honored that we were able to record it.”

On Monday, May 17th, the trio and all three of the songwriters gathered their friends, family and Music Row colleagues to toast the success of “American Honey” at Nashville’s Bound’ry restaurant. It was an important event especially for Shane since it was his very first number hit as a writer. His cousin even created a special honey jar cake infused with American Honey for the occasion.

Meanwhile, Lady Antebellum looks ahead to the follow-up single from their Need You Now album – “Our Kind of Love” – as well as their upcoming fall headlining tour.

Image courtesy of Capitol Nashville

Nikita Palmer for Citadel Digital © 2010

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