On This Day in 2011, Toby Keith Released the Patriotic Single That Would Be His Final No. 1

On this day (June 13) in 2011, Toby Keith released “Made in America” as the lead single from Clancy’s Tavern. It was his final single to reach the top of the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart. Additionally, it broke into the top 40 on the publication’s all-genre Hot 100 survey, a feat he would only achieve once more in his career.

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According to Songfacts, Keith almost didn’t include “Made in America” on Clancy’s Tavern. At the time, he had already had success with patriotic tunes like “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American),” “American Soldier,” and “American Ride.” The latter topped the country chart in 2009. He initially wanted to wait until his next album to release “Made in America,” but gave in when he saw everyone’s reaction to the track.

[RELATED: On This Day in 1993, Toby Keith Scored His First Ever No. 1 Hit With “Should’ve Been A Cowboy”]

“I was in the booth singing the scratch vocal, and everyone was going, ‘God, what a smash! That is awesome, pal!’ Everyone was high-fiving and carrying on,” he recalled. “I wasn’t about to pop everyone’s bubble and say, ‘I ain’t putting it on the album.’ So, I said, ‘Alright, y’all win. Put it on there,’” he added.

Toby Keith on “Made in America”

“It’s not really a political statement,” Toby Keith said of the song “It’s just about a couple that raised this boy who’s in the song and it just talks about all of the ways they support their country and how patriotic they are with the way they live every day,” he explained.

Keith co-wrote the song with his longtime collaborator Bobby Pinson and Scott Reeves. He revealed that a conversation about making merchandise in the United States and a song idea that Pinson had inspired the song. “A couple of years ago, I was with a retail guy discussing how to manufacture clothes in the U.S. of A., opening some factories up that had been closed down. One of them was in my home state of Oklahoma,” he recalled. “Still trying to balance the delicate line of finding a retail price point where you can break even and sell American-made clothes,” he added.

“At the time, Bobby Pinson was out on the road with me and said he had an idea for a song about simpler times, when you could still work on your vehicle with a Craftsman wrench, WD-40, and some bailing wire,” he said. “And we wrote ‘Made in America.’ It says in the song ‘My old man’s that old man, and by God, my old man was that old man.”

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