RaeLynn received more than hearts and flowers this Valentine’s Day—her debut song “Boyfriend” went viral. What makes it more of a surprise is that the surge in popularity came 13 years after she released “Boyfriend.”
Social media latched onto the sassy mid-tempo where the singer proclaims to another girl: “I want your boyfriend/I thought you should know.”
The success “Boyfriend” found on social media translated to digital streaming services. RaeLynn saw her Spotify followers jump by 250,000 in one week.
“It’s cool,” said RaeLynn, 30. She released “Boyfriend” when she was 17. “The biggest thing you feel as an artist doing this for 13 years, like myself, is you get a little bugged by the business. You get a little bummed out when you feel like you pull your heart and soul in these lyrics and these music, and then you don’t think that they’ve hit their full potential. Then when you see something like this happen, it just gave me faith, and that good music always comes back and stays.”
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RaeLynn said the Viral Success of “Boyfriend” Gave Her Faith
RaeLynn found out about the unexpected attention when an executive from her former record label asked if he had seen all of the viral videos on “Boyfriend.” The singer quipped that, being 30 years old, she hadn’t.
Allison Jones, EVP of A&R at BMLG, told RaeLynn that “Boyfriend” was the gift that kept on giving. The song was Big Machine Label Group’s No. 1 song for the week. The Texas-born Voice alum got online and saw that “Boyfriend” had been used in 30,000 videos.
“It was people telling their boyfriend stories, good, bad and ugly, and their experience with this song,” Raelynn said. “Then fans are like, ‘How did you not know this song?’ It’s just crazy. I’ve never just had something to take off like this on social media and then revert to streams so fast.”
Through watching the videos, RaeLynn was amused to learn that there is widespread confusion over the song’s lyrics. In one line, she was singing about Lubbock. While many fans recognized Lubbock as a city in Texas, others thought RaeLynn was saying “love bug.”
“I’d only been singing for a couple of years,” RaeLynn said. “I wasn’t established yet, and some of the sounds in my voice made me tweak out a little bit. I would sing it differently now than I did then. It was perfect because I was 17 when I sang that song.”
RaeLynn’s Lyrical Misunderstanding
Country music fans first met RaeLynn when she was a finalist on The Voice in 2012. A 17-year-old girl wearing a floral sundress and a flower in her hair, she sang a reimagined version of Pistol Annie’s “Hell on Heels” in the blind audition. Throughout the season, she covered songs by Jason Aldean, Tom Petty, and more. After “The Voice,” she signed a record deal with Big Machine Label Group, where she released “God Made Girls” and “Boyfriend.”
Then she switched to mentor Blake Shelton’s then label Warner Music Nashville, and her debut album Wildhorse topped Billboard’s country albums chart.
Since then, the singer has moved. She is preparing to release new music with a new creative business partner in a few months.
“Everything does happen in God’s timing,” she said. “Sometimes it can be easy to get bummed out about things not working in our time frame, but that’s why you’ve got to just always put out quality music. You never know when it’s going to have its moment. I see that and I feel that right now. I could be wrong, but I do think my music was maybe a little bit before it’s time. If I were to release all that music now, it would be very different than it was.”
In the coming months, fans can catch RaeLynn on tour with Jason Aldean.
Photo by Acacia Evans / Courtesy of Wortman Works
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