How One Unlikely Song Launched Gretchen Wilson’s Entire Career

Gretchen Wilson burst onto the country music scene in 2004 with “Redneck Woman“. It’s a song that changed everything for Wilson, making her one of country music’s biggest success stories.

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Wilson wrote “Redneck Woman” with her good friend, John Rich. The song, which became a five-week No. 1 hit for her, is on her debut Here For The Party album.

At the time, Wilson was part of a group called the MuzikMafia, full of singer-songwriters working collectively to get their music heard. It consisted of Wilson, Rich, Kenny Alphin (who would go on to form Big & Rich with John Rich), and others.

Ironically, “Redneck Woman” was born from Wilson’s concerns about her own identity, in light of how artists like Faith Hill were dominating the charts at the time.

“I’m left in the living room, watching this television set,” Wilson recalls to The Boot of the day she and Rich wrote the song. “And on this television set was one of the music channels, and Faith Hill’s ‘Breathe‘ was on. Every woman and man remembers that video, because she’s a beautiful, gorgeous woman, rolling around, looking like a supermodel, in satin or silk sheets; she looks like a million dollars.”

Wilson admits she was insecure about who she was compared to Hill. She shared her thoughts with Rich.

” I said, ‘This is crazy,’” Wilson recalls. “‘I’m never going to make it. I don’t think I’m going to make it in this industry.’”

How John Rich Helped Gretchen Wilson Write “Redneck Woman”

Rich, by then a good friend of Wilson, convinced her she still had value as an artist, even if her career would look different than Hill’s. Rich asked who she was, and she answered, “Well, I guess I’m just a redneck woman. That’s what I grew up around. That’s all the women I know are redneck women. I don’t think I can do that.”

Rich responded by saying, “Well, you don’t have to do that. Let’s write ‘I’m a Redneck Woman’.”

“Redneck Woman” says, “‘Cause I’m a redneck woman, I ain’t no high class broad / I’m just a product of my raising / I say, ‘Hey y’all’ and ‘Yee-haw’ / And I keep my Christmas lights on, on my front porch all year long / And I know all the words to every Charlie Daniels song / So here’s to all my sisters out there keeping it country / Let me get a big ‘hell yeah’ from the redneck girls like me / Hell yeah.”

Not only did “Redneck Woman” become one of the biggest hits of 2004, but it helped propel a career that is still going strong, 21 years later. It also gave Wilson her own identity, one she still stands by today.

“There’s always going to be that layer of me that is that girl that they expect to see. … After all these years, I haven’t really changed too much,” Wilson tells Billboard.

Photo by Chris Polk/FilmMagic