Story Behind the Song: Smithfield, ‘Hey Whiskey’
Smithfield, the duo made up of Jennifer Fiedler and Trey Smith, scored big with the release of their single "Hey Whiskey," from their eponymous debut EP. The song, written by Fiedler and Smith, landed in the Top 5 on SiriusXM's Hot 30 countdown and garnered nearly 2 million streams on Spotify -- an impressive feat for a new act just starting their career.
The idea for "Hey Whiskey," written by Smithfield along with Casey Derhak and Adam Wood, originally seemed like a story that had already been repeated enough in country music -- until they came up with a new twist. Below, Fiedler recalls to The Boot the inspiration behind the tune.
I had a title called "You Only Miss Me After Whiskey." [I] wrote it down and brought it to the boys, and they all looked at me like I was crazy. They’re like, "Jennifer, there’s been a million songs written about whiskey in country music. Do we really need another one?" And the answer was yes.
Trey started playing the melody on the guitar, and the more we talked about it, we talked about, "Let’s challenge ourselves here. Let’s try to make it different, maybe from a different perspective -- something we haven’t heard before." And our co-writer said, "Well, what if she was talking to the bottle?" And we were like, "Oh, snap."
From there, you get the perspective of "Hey Whiskey" -- the whole entire time, she’s pi--ed off at the bottle because she loves this man and she can’t get over him because of the whiskey. And so, it’s been told a million times, but I feel like we really nailed the perspective in a way you haven’t heard it before. If you didn’t know the title, if you just listened to the first verse, the way we painted the picture was, you immediately think, "Oh my gosh, that guy is cheating on her," but he’s not.
So, I love it; I’m proud of it. I think it’s one of the best songs we’ve ever written, to date.
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