Seemingly every artist has one song they wish they hadn’t written or recorded. Sometimes, the songs don’t age well and fall out of favor. On the other hand, an artist may get tired of playing a heavily requested song night after night while on tour. Then, there’s Sturgill Simpson who wrote a song almost as a joke and it became one of his most popular tracks.
Simpson released his debut album High Top Mountain in the summer of 2013. The record is packed with timeless original tracks like “Life Ain’t Fair and the World Is Mean” and “Railroad of Sin” and a stellar cover of Ralph Stanley’s “Poor Rambler.” However, the most popular song on the album was—and still is—“You Can Have the Crown.”
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Currently, the song has more than 59 million streams on Spotify. The only song in his catalog with more listens is “Turtles All the Way Down” from Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. So, it’s safe to say that fans love “You Can Have the Crown.” Stu, on the other hand, regrets writing it.
Sturgill Simpson on Why He Dislikes “You Can Have the Crown”
Sturgill Simpson discussed the genesis of “You Can Have the Crown” and why he dislikes it so much in a throwback performance video.
When he wrote the song, he said, everyone was arguing about what was and wasn’t considered “country.” It was a debate he refused to join but had no choice but to watch it unfold. “There was this onslaught coming out of Music Row of what they call ‘laundry list songs.’ That’s where all these Music Row writers sit down in cubicles together and they try to write a hit song. There’s no underlying emotional value to it whatsoever,” he explained. “They had these laundry list songs basically consisting of two or three verses basically telling you how country they are which is about the most pointless thing I could ever think of,” he added.
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“I decided, just to take the piss, I’m going to write a laundry list song. So, I tried to squeeze in every token cliché I could think of that was still realistically applicable to my life. I was proud of myself,” he said, laughing. “We ended up going into the studio that day, unfortunately. … I didn’t really have any other songs I was sitting on that I was particularly excited about. So, I played it for Dave [Cobb] and he was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s great.’ And we cut it,” he added.
“Later that night, sitting in the control room, I heard the playback and I thought, I’ll never forget, I was like ‘Well, there it is. There’s the song I’m going to wish I never wrote,’” Simpson recalled. “Sure as sh-t, that’s the one everybody wants to hear,” he added as the crowd erupted in laughter.
Featured Image by Adam McCullough
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