How Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) became the unexpected smash hit of 2024

As Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) becomes one of the country’s most celebrated tracks in 2024, what made this tribute to good-time drinking resonate so much this year?

At the dawn of 2024, not many would have predicted that the biggest names in country music this year would be Jelly Roll, Post Malone, Beyoncé, and a 29-year-old US singer-rapper of Nigerian descent named Shaboozey.

Like Old Town Road, the domination of A Bar Song (Tipsy) is tied to its crossover appeal. The strummed acoustic guitar, ghostly whistling, and lively fiddle create a Spaghetti Western vibe that results in a chorus perfectly tailored for line dancers at the neighbourhood club: beat counting, handclaps and group vocals make it irresistible. But there’s also rap decadence lining the lyrics – Shaboozey’s weary vocals make it clear that the hour is late in clubland and the point of no return has arrived. “It’s last call and they kick us out the door/It’s getting kind of late but the ladies want some more,” he sings, followed by a pause and then the big hook: “Oh my, good Lord.”

Like its title suggests, A Bar Song (Tipsy) is the sound of someone teetering on a razor edge, with salvation on one side and wreckage on the other. Where things fall depends on how many more double shots of whiskey the singer can throw back.

In that way, the song is as old as the genre itself. Drinking songs represent a subgenre of country music that dates back its earliest roots. The folk music that emerged from Appalachia in the early 20th Century often incorporated moral religious language regarding alcohol. Wreck on the Highway (1938), for example, tells the story of a horrible car accident where “whiskey and blood run together” in the aftermath. The consequences in the song are stark: “Death played her hand in destruction/But I didn’t hear nobody pray.”

Drinking became more prominent in the post-World War Two honky-tonk era, when the music added drums and electrification, picked up the tempo, and infused songs with greater psychological despair. The architect of the sound was Hank Williams, whose catalogue created the blueprint for modern country music. Williams was also a notorious alcoholic and prescription drug addict whose ultimate demise – death by heart attack at the age of 29 – appeared lifted from one of his songs. “I’m gonna keep drinkin’ until I’m petrified/And then maybe these tears will leave my eyes,” he once sang.

Williams set the bar for landmark country and folk artists, from George Jones to Ira Louvin to Townes Van Zandt, whose music channeled the depths of their lifelong struggle as fellow alcoholics. While there are many jolly country songs that celebrate alcohol’s many pleasures – I Like Beer by Tom T Hall (1975), A Six Pack to Go by Hank Thompson (1966), and Chug-a-Lug by Roger Miller (1964) are the best examples – the most poignant songs about drinking tend to be those grappling with the reasons people seek a bottle in the first place. For example, on The Bottle Let Me Down (1966) by Merle Haggard and If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me (Her Memory Will) (1981) by George Jones, alcohol is a remedy for killing memories of a failed romance.

Loneliness, isolation, grief, dead-end job prospects, they’re all classic fodder for songs built on binge drinking. But the most harrowing songs are those that frame alcoholism as a disease. On the 1953 Webb Pierce classic There Stands the Glass, the singer stares down an empty bourbon glass, “that will hide all my fears/that will drown all my tears”. The drink will be the first one he takes that day, and he is resigned to knowing resistance is futile: “Brother, I’m on my way,” he sings. The Mary Gauthier song I Drink from 1999, later covered by Bobby Bare, is the best example of this fatalism. In it, an alcoholic reveals that addiction is what defines them to the core, so fixing it is pointless. “I know what I am/But I don’t give a damn,” she sings.

Shaboozey’s protagonist is not so despondent. His barfly is a more familiar one in modern country. In fact, in recent years, country music has continued to elevate drinking songs more than ever before, but has done so in a way in which the consequences of inebriation are largely ignored. In songs like Beer Thirty by Brooks & Dunn (1999), Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off by Joe Nichols (2005), Red Solo Cup by Toby Keith (2011), Drink in My Hand by Eric Church (2011), Drunk on a Plane by Dierks Bentley (2014), Day Drinking by Little Big Town (2014), Pour Me a Drink by Post Malone (2024), and countless others, alcohol is presented, not as the thing that isolates the song’s protagonist from his or her family and friends, but as the one thing that brings them together to have fun.

The shift corresponds with the intimate relationships alcohol brands have forged with the industry. Stars like Kenny Chesney, Blake Shelton, Alan Jackson, Eric Church, Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert, Toby Keith and others signed deals to create their own brands of beer, rum, vodka, wine, mezcal – think of a type of alcohol and it’s likely that a country hitmaker has their name on a bottle. Shelton, Church, Jackson, Bryan, and Lambert, and others like Dierks Bentley, John Rich, Florida Georgia Line, and Jason Aldean, have also all opened their own signature bars in downtown Nashville. And following a trend already established in hip-hop, some endorsement terms go as far as name-dropping the brand in a song lyric or featuring the product prominently in an accompanying video. With so much at stake, it’s now less likely than ever that the latest chart-topping drinking song is going to present inebriation’s dark side.

The modern audience is along for the ride. In the days of Hank Williams, so-called “hillbilly” music was largely derided by the broader entertainment industry and performers played to stereotypes that lampooned the genuine despondency felt by the rural poor. Driving the marginalisation of Southern white people was their migration by the tens of thousands early last century to Rust Belt cities like Chicago and Detroit in search of factory work. Stuck in crowded, unfriendly urban environments with harsh winters, people used storefront taverns as places where they could have a taste of home, listen to the latest hits on jukeboxes – and drink to cope with the challenges of their new lives. As this population eventually settled down and raised families that spanned generations, the music largely remained close to its roots.

But today, country music has moved on because its audience – wealthier, more educated, and urban – has perhaps come closer to the American dream. According to 2021 data from the Country Music Association (CMA), an advocacy group in Nashville, more than a third of country music fans graduated college, more than half have full-time employment and nearly three-quarters own their own home. Half of all country fans have professional careers earning an average of $81,000 (£63,000) a year, higher than the general population, and are likely to live in cities. In other words, many of these people have bright futures, comfortable retirement accounts, and are less likely to be found staring into the bottom of a glass while alone in a dark bar before heading upon sunrise to a dead-end factory job.

Which brings us once again to Shaboozey. Born in Woodbridge, Virginia, a suburb of Washington DC, he entered the music business as a rapper and producer, but not long afterwards he released Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die, a hip-hop album that experimented with country music, with Americana tropes lifted from Westerns. Earlier this year he gained greater notoriety by singing on two songs that appeared on Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s country-infused album. A Bar Song (Tipsy) is another collaboration – its chorus incorporates elements from Tipsy, a 2004 hit single from Midwest rapper J-Kwon. The flirting with country music elements on Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going, Shaboozey’s latest album, is the furthest his music has embraced the genre – and the industry representing the genre has embraced him back.

Beyoncé and Lil Nas X have not been as fortunate. Despite its success five years ago, Old Town Road never got the widespread play on country radio that Shaboozey’s hit has, mainly because it was more of a viral sensation due to both the emergence of TikTok as a dominant media platform and the marketing power of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. The song earned its top Billboard status through streaming; in fact, Old Town Road logged an unprecedented 143 million streams in a single week in April 2019, a record no artist has matched to this day. If the song was heard on terrestrial radio, it was largely via Top 40 pop and R&B/hip-hop stations.

Those snubs reflect decades-old resistance by radio programmers to widen the genre lanes by race. While black artists like Charley Pride and Darius Rucker have managed to have successful country music careers thanks to country radio play, many have faced pushback. Unlike Lil Nas X, who benefited from an organic campaign via streaming platforms, Shaboozey’s breakout success is largely credited to old-fashioned radio promotion, but on a much grander scale.

In 2021, Shaboozey signed to EMPIRE, a Northern California independent record label, publisher, and distributor, which had opened a Nashville division two years before. Not long after his signing, the label launched a multi-year marketing push to make him a global star. Part of that strategy was hiring indie promo company Magnolia Music to first push the song on to regional country playlists around the US before approaching other formats. Because Shaboozey was largely unknown – and his music blurred genres – he was not as clearly defined as Beyoncé, a megastar at the peak of her career. That made it easier for programmers to have more open ears and to experiment with the format. The result: A Bar Song (Tipsy) became the first song in history to reach the top 10 of Billboard’s Country, Pop, Adult Pop and Rhythmic Airplay charts – which meant it was a song with such strong crossover appeal that country radio couldn’t ignore even if it tried.

And in terms of its appeal, one way to listen to A Bar Song (Tipsy) is as a celebration of a lost weekend, whereas a closer listen reveals a protagonist under pressure: his girlfriend is pestering him for an expensive Birkin bag, prices for petrol and groceries are skyrocketing, and his job is not enough to cover it all. “Why the hell do I work so hard?” he asks. A reasonable question – and with good timing. The recent US presidential election proved that economic hardship is what drove the majority of voters to choose Donald Trump as the next US president, above and beyond other issues like abortion rights, immigration, the environment and crime.

But the appeal of A Bar Song (Tipsy) is that the complaint is temporary compared to the response: don’t stop the party. These days, when country music contemplates serious socio-economic themes, it turns to outsiders: musicians more readily associated with other genres. Last year it was singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman, whose 1988 single Fast Car – a folk song about characters living in a homeless shelter – was unexpectedly reprised by Luke Combs. His version sent the song to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, and two CMA Awards followed: single of the year and song of the year. Similarly, the songbooks of blue-collar icons Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen have also been recently mined.

Shaboozey’s narrator doesn’t answer his own question about working hard. Instead, he orders another double shot of Jack Daniel’s and considers going to a party on Fifth Street: “I can’t worry ’bout my problems, I can’t take ’em when I’m gone,” he explains. Smart move – if he thought too much, the song might not be a hit.