Country Song Quotes & Sayings

Almighty Freedom! give my venturous song
The force, the charm that to thy voice belong;
Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way,
To nerve my country with the patriot lay,
To teach all men where all their interest lies,
How rulers may be just and nations wise:
Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee,
Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee. — Joel Barlow

Cause I'm carryin' your love with me
From West Virginia down to Tennessee
I'll be movin' with the good lord speed, carryin' your love with me
It's my strength for holdin' on
Every minute that I have to be gone
I'll have everything I'll ever need
Carryin' your love with me — George Strait

I think my music is definitely country but it's got a little bit of that rock flair about it. I always try to find the things that everyday people deal with in their everyday lives and situations in the songs that I sing. — Jason Aldean

I'll never forget when me and Jason Matthews wrote the line, 'Don't be a tape player hater,' in 'Country Man,' I don't think I ever laughed harder. We didn't know where we were gonna put that in a song, but we knew we had to make it into a song. I just remember laughing and being so proud of such a goofy little line. — Luke Bryan

I come to oil country with a book about radicals who wish for the end of pipelines. But that's not what it's about. It's the friction point of prosperity and concern, ability and disability, the loss of bodily presence and the gain of ghost messages. It's misplaced outrage and well-placed courage. It's banjo song and smoke in your eye. Stories hinge there, swinging this way and that. — Kate Inglis

That's what is so great about being able to record a 13-song album. You can do a very eclectic group of songs. You do have some almost pop songs in there, but you do have your traditional country, story songs. You have your ballads, your happy songs, your sad songs, your love songs, and your feisty songs. — Reba McEntire

It used to be that you'd have a song recorded by a major country artist and if it was a hit, you could buy a car. Now you can buy a dealership. — Tom T. Hall

Claudia Rankine's Citizen comes at you like doom. It's the best note in the wrong song that is America. Its various realities-'mistaken' identity, social racism, the whole fabric of urban and suburban life-are almost too much to bear, but you bear them, because it's the truth. Citizen is Rankine's Spoon River Anthology, an epic as large and frightening and beautiful as the country and various emotional states that produced it. — Hilton Als

I really tried to push every genre that I could into this record. I wanted every song to have this feel, where as soon as the listener tunes in, they say "That's CoJo, that's Cody right there." That being said, it is a little different. There's Americana, there's Bluegrass, there's some rock, there's some really George Jones-style stuff on it, slow-style Ray Price country elements, there's some modern country, a little of this and a little of that. We tried to push a lot for show versatility, because I grew up with a lot of versatility in my music. — Cody Johnson

Ever since time began: What song is not about love? Whether it's about love from man to woman or parent to child, or grandmother to granddaughter ... It just goes on and on. Or whether it's the love of one's country. — PJ Harvey

But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now. — Billy Bragg

You're my bread when I'm hungry
You're my shelter from troubled winds
You're my anchor in life's ocean
Most of all
You're my best friend — Don Williams

At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that. — Stephen King

Dear friends, he began, there is no timetable for happiness; it moves, I think, according to rules of its own. When I was a boy I thought I'd be happy tomorrow, as a young man I thought it would be next week; last month I thought it would be never. Today, I know it is now. Each of us, I suppose has at least one person who thinks that our manifest faults are worth ignoring; I have found mine, and am content. When we are far from home we think of home; I, who am happy today, think of those in Scotland for whom such happiness might seem elusive; may such powers as listen to what is said by people like me, in olive groves like this, grant to those who want a friendship a friend, attend to the needs of those who have little, hold the hand of those who are lonely, allow Scotland, our place, our country, to sing in the language of her choosing that song she has always wanted to sing, which is of brotherhood, which is of love. — Alexander McCall Smith

Yeah and she's my kinda crazy
The little games she plays
Lord they'll never get old
She's too cute to get on my last nerve
The way she throws her little fits
Pokin' out her lip and bitin' mine when we kiss
There ain't a fight that she can't win
That's my baby
And she's my kinda crazy — Brantley Gilbert

Sure, I can sing a country song, but so can a lot of people. — Conway Twitty

Within the songwriting community, there are these unwritten rules for the way that a song should be written in country music, and I think that those rules are constantly being broken over the years, and the molds change and the process is evolving. — Sam Hunt

The last song I recorded with [Hank Williams, Sr.] was "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive." I remember thinking, "Hoss, you're not just jivin'," because he was so weak that all he could do was sing a few lines and then just fall in the chair. — Chet Atkins

One of the things that I think is such a constant in country music is that the song is so much a story. I believe it is supposed to be based around a story. — Suzy Bogguss

I know there's nothing that I wouldn't do
Go to the ends of the earth for you
To make you feel my love — Garth Brooks

Did you know that every time a country song is played, a cute little puppy keels over dead? — Nicole Williams

The song 'Take This Job and Shove It' spent 18 weeks on the country charts in 1977. 1970s country music fans had a clearer understanding of the ennui of wage-slavery than modern elites. — Alex Pareene

People get strange about whether you've written your own songs, which seems really stupid considering that, especially in Country Music, it's about oral tradition and passing things on and the songs weren't meant to be played by one person and then forgotten. — Neko Case

A country song is a song about life. — Alan Jackson

To be 23 and riding the crest of a song sweeping the world country by country is to live an altered and wholly rarefied existence. — Dan Hill

Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West
the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it. — John Wayne

The words to country songs are very earthy like the blues. They're not as dressed up and the people are very honest and say, 'Look, I miss you darlin', so I went out and got drunk in this bar.' That's the way you say it. Where in Tin Pan Alley they would say, 'Oh I missed you darling, so I went to this restaurant and I sat down and had a dinner for one.' That's cleaned up now, you see? But country and blues tells it like it is. — Ray Charles

You'll be my glass of wine
I'll be your shot of whiskey — Blake Shelton

So darlin' if your wonderin' why I brought you here tonight
I wanna be your husband I want you to be my wife
I ain't got much to give you but what I got means everything
Its my last name — Dierks Bentley

I'm not saying I needed my life to be a symphony - I just never thought it'd turn out to be a country song. — Brad Meltzer

I'm pretty open to all music. Its pretty funny because I've spent time in Germany and now I'm in Dallas where Country is a big thing. I used to hate it but now I can actually go through a song. — Steve Purdy

Amos Oz is one of the finest novelists of this entire period. MY MICHAEL is a beautiful work of great depth and in some indescribable way lingers in the mind as a lyric song to his country's people as much as a moving love story. — Arthur Miller

'Dirt Road Diaries,' in my mind, is a perfect country guy song. It speaks to the hard-working guy, and I'm excited for the fans to hear that one. — Luke Bryan

I seen fellas like you before. You ain't askin' nothin'; you're jus' singin' a kinda song. 'What we comin' to?' You don' wanta know. Country's movin' aroun', goin' places. They's folks dyin' all aroun'. Maybe you'll die pretty soon, but you won't know nothin'. I seen too many fellas like you. You don't want to know nothin'. Just sing yourself to sleep with a song - 'What we comin' to? — John Steinbeck

My heart's never smiled so hard Baby. Lovin' you is fun. — Easton Corbin

As the writer of the lyric of the song 'God's Country', I am outraged by the suggestion that somehow I am connected with, believe in, or am sympathetic with Communist or totalitarian philosophy. — Yip Harburg

Deana Carter sings about it. Lady Antebellum sings about it. Eric Church. Gosh, not just country artists. Katy Perry. Everybody has a song about it because everybody's been through it. You find that person at eighteen and you lose yourself. And the tragedy is, it's the person who's completely opposed to everything you've ever wanted. You bond with that person, and that person breaks your heart. I'm that tragedy for you, and you're mine. — Jennifer Echols

I want a love like Johnny and June
Rings of fire burnin' with you
I wanna walk the line, walk the line
Til' the end of time
I wanna love, love ya that much
Cash it on it give it all up
And baby when your gone I wanna go too
Like Johnny and June — Heidi Newfield

I lost it in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I started to panic when I noticed the graveyard of empty toilet paper rolls. The brown cylinders had ostensibly been placed vertically to form a half oval on top of the flat shiny surface of the stainless steel toilet paper holder. It was like some sort of miniature-recycled Stonehenge in the women's bathroom, a monument to the bowel movements of days past. Actually, it was sometime around 2:30 p.m. when my day exited the realm of country song bad and entered the neighboring territory of Aunt Ethel's annual Christmas letter bad. Last year Aunt Ethel wrote with steady, stalwart sincerity of Uncle Joe's gout and her one - no, make that two - car accidents, the new sinkhole in their backyard, their impending eviction from the trailer park, and Cousin Serena's divorce. To be fair, Cousin Serena got divorced every year, so that didn't really count toward the calamitous computation of yearly catastrophes. I — Penny Reid

I'm a little drunk on you, and high on summertime. — Luke Bryan

Aglets. Plastic thingies."
"Why do you know what those things are called?"
"Phineas and Ferb."
"You watch cartoons?"
Zane laughed hoarsely. "Kind of judgy for someone who can sing the country song from Animaniacs."
"Damn you, Tyler! Can't keep a fucking secret! — Abigail Roux

Don't that make you wanna fall in love
Don't that look like a picture of us
A match made in heaven if there ever was
Don't that make you wanna fall
That just makes me wanna give you my heart
Ever forever needs a place to start
Gotta be a sign from up above
Don't that make you wanna fall in love — Kenny Chesney

The Golden Court, the country town's elegant inn, was crowded and noisy. The guests, locals and visitors, were mostly engaged in activities typical for their nation or profession. Serious merchants argued with dwarves over the price of goods and credit interest. Less serious merchants pinched the backsides of the girls carrying beer, cabbage and beans. Local nitwits pretended to be well-informed. Harlots were trying to please those who had money while discouraging those who had none. Carters and fishermen drank as if there were no tomorrow. Some seamen were singing a song which celebrated the ocean waves, the courage of captains and the graces of mermaids, the latter graphically and in considerable detail. — Andrzej Sapkowski

The reason you write [songs] is because there's something you want to say that is important to you - enough to go through all the torture of writing. — Emmylou Harris

You're the only one and only
My heart's beating for
I love you, need I say more — George Strait

Yeah, do it for your people
Do it for your pride
How are you ever gonna know if you never even try?
Do it for your country
Do it for your name — The Script

I lost my brother in a car wreck when I was 14 years old. When I decided I wanted to be a country singer, my dad always told me, 'Son, you should write a song about your brother.' — Blake Shelton

What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run. — Steve Earle

Renee used to say real life was a bad country song, except bad country songs were believable and real life isn't. — Rob Sheffield

No one can make me cry
Make me laugh
Make me smile
Or drive me mad like she does — Kenny Chesney

North Korea invites parody. We laugh at the excesses of the propaganda and the gullibility of the people. But consider that their indoctrination began in infancy, during the fourteen-hour days spent in factory day-care centers; that for the subsequent fifty years, every song, film, newspaper article, and billboard was designed to deify Kim Il-sung; that the country was hermetically sealed to keep out anything that might cast doubt on Kim Il-sung's divinity. Who could possibly resist? — Barbara Demick

I was 18, at art school, and saw this cute boy playing banjo. I was obsessed. I taught myself how to play. I listened to a lot of country and just messed around. The second song I wrote on the banjo was 'Good to Be a Man.' That what's got me signed. — Elle King

I love Florida Georgia Line. I love 'Round Here.' So if a fan wants to listen to that, and if a fan that wasn't listening to country music before is listening to 'Cruise' on Pandora, and after that a song by George Jones comes on, they may have never heard George Jones before. I think it's a good thing for the genre. — Scotty McCreery

In all the world you'll never find a love as true as mine. — George Strait

I think 'Country Girl' is one song that can veer into country or hip-hop or rap. You can listen to it and enjoy the humor and the fun in it. — Luke Bryan

I remember people would talk about Country Music like it was this sexist, lame thing. Well, no, because Dolly Parton is writing songs and playing her guitar and producing. She's doing it all and she's got hits on the radio. — Neko Case

I'd love to cover an 'Incubus' song. I don't think anybody in a cowboy hat on a country stage has ever done that, and I'd love to be the first. — Dustin Lynch

The country singers understand. It's always that one song that gets you. You can hide, but the song comes to find you. Country singers are always
twanging about that number on the jukebox they can't stand to hear you play, the one with the memories. — Rob Sheffield

We don't have to miss each other, come over
We don't have to fix each other, come over
We don't have to say forever, come over
You don't have to stay forever, come over — Kenny Chesney

Then with Lucy [Hale], her little thing that I kind of learned from her is her country music because she's obsessed with country and at the beginning, I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I was listening to some songs that she plays in the hair and makeup room and she's also so funny, too. She does these character impersonations and they're just so funny. Made up characters of course, but she can switch into someone else so fast. I'm always laughing at Lucy and she's like a little Polly Pocket, you know? The tiny one. — Shay Mitchell

Technology is mechanical and contrary to the emotions that inform a person's life. The country music field has especially been hit hard by this. All my songs have been written by people who went out of fashion years ago. Just like da Vinci and Renoir and van Gogh. Nobody paints like that anymore. But it can't be wrong to try. — Bob Dylan

Coming from a little suburban town, I wasn't a hip city kid. I was quite the opposite, really. Songs like 'Saturday's Kids' rang a bell for kids all over the country. That song was about the kids I grew up with. — Paul Weller

I got to meet a lot of cool people [on the Voice], and my favorite part about the experience was getting to sit around and do little jam sessions in the hotel. We were pretty much in lockdown at the hotel in downtown Los Angeles, and there wasn't much to do. It was interesting to be in a room with someone that was a rapper next to me, a country artist, then you have someone playing a song on the keyboard, and it was just really cool as just a random ensemble. — Curtis Grimes

When I look into your eyes I still get weak
And when Im this close to you I just cant speak
And its hard to keep my hands to myself
When I know I could never love anybody else — Gary Allan

Watch this, I'll show you love like you dreamed of
I've got so much to give, watch this
Don't be afraid you'll be amazed at all the ways that I can
Show you what you've missed
Just close your eyes, and watch this — Clay Walker

Gimme some of that you and me,
Some of that way back when,
A little bit of wild and free
I wanna feel that again — Jason Aldean

Sometimes being a MOM is like a good
ol' country song! You lose your sleep, you lose your hair, you lose your patience, you lose your energy, you lose your memory AND you lose your SANITY! But you DO IT all for LOVE! — Tanya Masse

We are a race of tradition-lovers in a new land, of king-reverers in a Republic, of hero-worshipers in a society of mundane get-and-spend. It is a Country and a Time where any bank clerk or common laborer can become a famous outlaw, where an outlaw can in a very short time be sainted in song and story into a Robin Hood, where a Frontier Model Excalibur can be drawn from the block at any gunshop for twenty dollars. — Oakley Hall

Come a little closer, love the way you look tonight
My eyes are the only thing I don't wanna take off of you — Blake Shelton

I was captured by the songs as much as the singer. They grabbed my heart. The reality of Country Music moved me. Even when I was a kid, I liked the sad songs ... songs that talked about true life. I recognized this music as a simple plea. It beckoned me. — Harlan Howard

She gets on you under your skin like a tattoo she'll always be there! — Jason Aldean

This is real, this is your life in a song ... this is country music. — Brad Paisley

That's the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song — Harlan Coben

When the warrior returns, from the battle afar,To the home and the country he nobly defended,O! warm be the welcome to gladden his ear,And loud be the joy that his perils are ended:In the full tide of song let his fame roll along,To the feast-flowing board let us gratefully throng,Where, mixed with the olive, the laurel shall wave,And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave. — Francis Scott Key

If you were a country," I said, "what would your national anthem be?"
I meant a pre-existing song
"What a Wonderful World" or "Que Sera, Sera" or something to make it a joke, like "Hey Ya!" ("I would like, more than anything else, for my nation to be shaken like a Polaroid picture.") — David Levithan

He [Alan Lomax] started right off trying to find people who could introduce folk songs to city people. He found a young actor named Burl Ives and said, "Burl, you know a lot of great country songs learned from your grandmother, don't you know people would love to hear them?" He put on radio programs. He persuaded CBS to dedicate "The School of the Air" for one year to American folk music. He'd get some old sailor to sing an old sea shanty with a cracked voice. Then he'd get me to sing it with my banjo. — Pete Seeger

Country music is the combination of African and European folk songs coming together and doing a little waltz right here in the American south. They came together at some cotillion, and somebody snuck a black person into the room, and he danced with a white lady, and music was born. — Ketch Secor

There's lots of sides. The CD doesn't really create a mood. It creates more of a journey. It starts out with a simple bluegrass tune, sort of melancholy and sad, like "Lovin' and Lyin'," then it's sexy and there's some funny songs in there where I'm talking, like "Designated Drunk." There's a humor side, a sexy side, but there's also a pretty sad side, the country side. It's the backwards side of me! — Laura Bell Bundy

If you're callin' about my heart, it's still yours. — Blake Shelton

By the time I actually recorded Bitter Tears I carried a heavy load of sadness and outrage; I felt every word of those songs ... I expected there to be trouble with that album, and there was ... when it was released, many radio stations wouldn't play it ... The very idea of unconventional or even original ideas ending up on "country" radio in the late 1990s is absurd. — Johnny Cash

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song? — Francis Scott Key

I've got a woman. A crazy woman." "Sounds like the start of a country song to me," I said. — Cherie Priest

Even though I know it's wrong, you turned my life into a country song and I keep playin' it, on repeat. — Caisey Quinn

Cosmopolitanism gives us one country, and it is good; nationalism gives us a hundred countries, and every one of them is the best. Cosmopolitanism offers a positive, patriotism a chorus of superlatives. Patriotism begins the praise of the world at the nearest thing, instead of beginning it at the most distant, and thus it insures what is, perhaps, the most essential of all earthly considerations, that nothing upon earth shall go without its due appreciation. Wherever there is a strangely-shaped mountain upon some lonely island, wherever there is a nameless kind of fruit growing in some obscure forest, patriotism insures that this shall not go into darkness without being remembered in a song. — G.K. Chesterton

Laurie Lewis' songs combine passion and sheer craft in a way you don't hear very often. Whatever country music is supposed to be, she's at the center of it. — Utah Phillips

Don't worry about what you don't have if you do have faith! — Rick Warren

Obviously, it was a big life change for me and quite a shock to suddenly have these songs I'd written in my bedroom as a far-too-intense teenager all over the airwaves and see my face on buses, especially in a small country like New Zealand, but at the same time it was such a thrill and an honour knowing that my music was reaching people. — Brooke Fraser

I grew up listening to all kinds of music, everything from country to rock, pop, R&B and even rap, so for me, music is music and a great song is a great song. — Jason Aldean

A song is like a smile. If you meet people from another country, even if you don't speak the same language, you know what a smile means. A song works the same way. Music produces feelings that need no translation. — Clay Aiken

Not only do we mock the Eurovision Song Contest itself, but we lampoon other European countries for taking it so seriously, and they all retaliate by voting for each other every year and ignoring our (sometimes) palpably superior songs. Accordingly, Britain has become the Millwall FC of Eurovision: we are hated, we know we are hated, and we pretend we are happy to be hated. It's actually quite a sad state of affairs. — Marcus Berkmann

The first time I heard 'Jolene,' I was 12 years old, and it was performed by Jack White. I remember watching that video and forgetting it was from a woman's point of view, and forgetting it was a country song, and forgetting it was originally by Dolly Parton. — Samuel Larsen

Ian and Sylvia, who, when you got right down to it, were essentially country and western singers. I just recorded his Four Strong Winds. It's a wonderful song. — Dave Van Ronk

Because I see
A rainstorm in June
Just before the sun
The black of night
Just before the stars
And, girl, I see your ghost
Just before our dawn — Laura Miller

My father urged Alan [Lomax] not to repeat the mistakes of the European folklorists who, a century ago, had collected these peasant songs and then arranged them for part choir and accompanied them on piano, and then told the young people of their country, "Don't change a note, this is our sacred heritage." Father said, whether it's a fiddle tune or a gospel song, learn it right off the record from the people who grew up with it. Don't just learn it from a piece of paper. — Pete Seeger

You aren't a nice cowboy. Are you going to break my heart so bad that I have to write a country song about it? — Carolyn Brown

I've really been writing a lot of country songs. I used to get criticized for doing a 'Bump & Grind,' then turning around and doing a gospel song. But the truth is I'm glad I have a gift that allows me to switch lanes. — R. Kelly

If it's a good song and it fits me, that's what I'm going to do, I'm not out there trying to change the world. I'm just out there trying to sing country music the best way I can. — George Strait

Life's a dance you learn as you go. — John Michael Montgomery

A good country song takes a page out of somebody's life and puts it to music. — Conway Twitty

Everything gets hotter when the sun goes down. — Kenny Chesney