Talk about a honky tonk heartbreaker…
Parker McCollum dropped a brand new single called “Handle On You,” and if you like a sad country drinkin’ songs as much as I do, then you’ll love this one.
Of the new single, McCollum keeps it simple:
“I know I have written quite a few songs about heart break and drinking. So here’s another one.”
A co-write by Parker and Monty Criswell, we find Parker drinking to get over a heartbreak and trying to get a handle on his emotions through the bottom of a bottle, knowing that he shouldn’t be drinking so much but, “I tell myself that I should quit but I don’t listen to drunks.”
One of my favorite lines comes in the first verse, where he references crying alone with a drink as an old Merle Haggard song spins on the record player in the background:
“I went and bough the biggest bottle they got cause you’re gone
Dropped a needle on a vinyl and cried to an old Haggard song
Sittin’ at the table, baby, breaking the seal,
Gonna see how much of this pain I can kill…”
Out of all the new stuff Parker’s released over the last year or two, including his third studio album Gold Chain Cowboy in 2021, I think this might be my favorite song from the bunch.
You just can’t beat a simple, well-written, sad country song like this:
And Parker recently teamed up with Ronnie Dunn for another great song called “Road to Abilene”: