HELL yeah…. this is the trio I absolutely needed in my life.
This week, Miranda Lambert surprised the crowd at Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota with quite a performance, as she brought out Gretchen Wilson and Lainey Wilson to perform Gretchen’s hit song “Redneck Woman.” They also sang Miranda Lambert’s “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home),” and Lainey and Miranda also teamed up for their duet, “Good Horses.”
Of course, Gretchen released her debut single “Redneck Woman,” which was included on her debut album Here for the Party, in 2004. She co-wrote the song with half of Big & Rich duo John Rich, and it remains her only number-one single on the US Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. It was minor crossover hit, too and reached #22 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
It earned her a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards in 2005, and of course, remains her signature song to this day. I was a kid when this song came out, but I have vivid memories of hearing it on the radio, both country and Top 40, all the time… I think I had those words memorized before I was even 10 years old, if that gives you any indication of how I grew up.
She has actually talked before about how it was her fans who helped make “Redneck Woman” the radio it that the song ultimately became, because they constantly called and requested to hear it, and eventually, programmers had to give in. A she explained in an interview, they did not like that the word “redneck” was used in the title, because they felt that it presented a stereotype to the world that they had worked hard to disassociate with country music.
Gretchen explained that it became up to her to define “redneck” as something other than what might’ve been portrayed in movies and TV in terms of those types of people being racist, closed minded, dumb, or any other word we might associate there. She felt that word had value, because it was about people who worked hard and lived a simple life, and it took a lot of “you know what” to fight through that and change their minds:
“No, the fans loved it. Yes, the fans loved it, and if it hadn’t been for the fans calling local radio stations and demanding it, I’m not sure that it would have gone the way it did. Program directors didn’t really love it that much. I mean, we got phone calls back at at the label that I was hearing about, you know, some some of them saying things like, ‘We’ve been working for 20 years to get this ‘redneck’ word out of our listeners‘ mouth.’
And it was really kind of up to me to define ‘redneck.’ It’s like, you guys have just decided all across this country that it’s a bad word and that it means racist, but that’s not what it means. It’s not at all what it means. I mean, being a redneck has value, it’s about where you come from and it’s really about being out in the field farming all day. Coming back in the house and having a redneck from being out on a tractor all day long, that’s what it’s about.
It has nothing to do with racism, and I became kind of the face of having to explain that to the world. Even the radio stations didn’t want that word, and so to present myself as the redneck woman and it took a lot of of you know what.”
It all worked out for her, though, and because of that song really kickstarting her career in a huge way, Gretchen had a legendary career and many other this after that.
And to see these three (as well as Miranda’s longtime, very talented back up singer Gwen Sebastian), on stage together is bad***… there’s really no other way to describe it. I have to admit, I am quite jealous of anyone who got to see this in person.
Check it out:
“Redneck Woman”
