When it comes to staying true to yourself, Eric Church and Kip Moore are practicing what they preach.
Two guys who are criminally underplayed on country radio, yet they’re still doing things their own way. They’re making the music they want to make, music that their fans want to hear, doing it the right way.
It’s not surprising, then, that both have songs reminding us of the importance of staying true to ourselves and remembering where we came from.
“Homeboy,” from Eric Church’s 2011 album Chief, is a plea for an old friend, who took to the streets after he thought he was “too bad for a little square town,” to “come on home, boy.”
Meanwhile, on “Blonde,” from his 2017 album Slowheart, Kip Moore mocks the fake fame-seekers who leave home, change their appearance, and forget where they came from along the way.
The characters are different, but the message is the same: Stay true to yourself
In today’s Insta-celebrity culture, too many people are more worried about who they are online than who they are in real life. It can be hard to stay true to yourself when you grow up in a small town. After all, small-town life doesn’t get the Instagram likes that the big city does.
But just because you move away or go on to bigger and better things doesn’t mean that you have to forget the people you grew up with along the way. The people you used to catch snakes with in the barn, or the people who were there the first time you got drunk, laughing at you as you choked on your first smoke. Those are the people who helped you become who you are. Those are the people who are going to be care about you when your Instagram followers don’t. Take care of those people, and remember who took care of you.
Stay true to yourself. A story we’ve all been told a million times, but luckily, Eric Church and Kip Moore do a much better job of putting that story into words than most ever could.
