If you play it you might have a chance…
I’ve been listening to John Anderson pretty much nonstop since the announcement last night that the country music legend passed away in his sleep yesterday. And of course one of the songs in heavy rotation – for me and many others – is “Straight Tequila Night.”
The song was originally released back in 1992 as the lead single from Anderson’s album Seminole Wind, and it proved to be a resurgence for his career following a string of top 40 hits in the early ’80s. Along with becoming his first #1 hit since 1983, the song has gone on to become an instantly-recognizable classic and a defining country song of the ’90s.
The song was written by Debbie Hupp and Kent Robbins, and by now everybody knows what happens when you ask her on a night when she’s drinking straight tequila:
“Don’t ask her on a straight tequila night
She’ll start thinkin’ about him, and she’s ready to fight
Blames her broken heart on every man in sight
On a straight tequila night”
There’s one line, though, that’s always created discussion among fans of the song:
“If you really want to know, she comes here a lot
She just loves to hear the music and dance
K13 is her favorite song
If you play it you might have a chance”
Now, I assume anybody reading this probably already knows, but “K13” is a reference to the song selection code on the old-school (pre-TouchTunes) jukeboxes, where each song corresponded to a letter and a number.
But what song was K13?
That question has been a topic of discussion for country music fans for a while now, and the real answer is: It wasn’t a particular song. The number wasn’t meant to refer to any one song, and was intentionally left ambiguous so that listeners could fill in the song with whatever they wanted it to be.
And over the years fans have come up with a lot of theories about what it is – or at least, what it should be.
Some people still remember that particular song on their own local jukeboxes, and associate those with the line in the song:
“K-13 on a lot of jukeboxes in the 90s was Working On My Next Broken Heart by Brooks and Dunn”
“One of the most popular songs of 1990 was Alabama’s “Jukebox in my Mind” which seems fitting.”
“There is absolutely zero chance the answer is anything other than “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
Another popular theory is that the line refers to the 1981 song “Heart On the Mend” by Sylvia, based on the line in the song to “Just remember her heart’s on the mend, if you ever come back to see her again.”
And there have been plenty of other guesses thrown out along the way, from songs that were popular around the time that “Straight Tequila Night” was written like “I’m Over You” by Keith Whitley to classics like “Crazy” by Patsy Cline or “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” by David Allan Coe.
Ultimately though, the answer is that K13 is whatever song you want it to be, and the ambiguity is what has driven so much discussion surrounding the song for so many years.
Isn’t that what’s great about so many country songs? It can mean whatever you want it to mean.
