Country music songs are often filled with deep and meaningful messages. Some of the genre's biggest hits over the last few decades have been either romantic love songs or powerful anthems. Still, there are several county music songs that might sound sweet, but have surprisingly dark lyrics. We picked four of our favorites.
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1. "Fancy" by Reba McEntire
There isn't a song that Reba McEntire is known for more than "Fancy." The song, released by McEntire in 1991, was not a No. 1 hit for McEntire, perhaps because the song was six minutes long. Or perhaps the song, which seems like it could be a story of redemption - and perhaps it was - is in fact a song about an impoverished woman who gives sends her daughter away, with the implied reason being she needs to find men to take care of her.
Dark as the story might be, it still has a positive message, at least according to the country music superstar.
"Even though she was a prostitute, her and her mother realized this is how you're going to be able to survive in this world," McEntire tells American Songwriter. "You get your toe-hold and then go on and be bigger and better, and also take care of yourself and help others."
2. "Whiskey Lullaby" by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss
Country music loves songs about drinking, especially whiskey. Countless stories could be told with the phrase "whiskey lullaby." But the one Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss sing about remains one of the darkest and saddest country music songs of all time.
Written by Bill Anderson and Jon Randall, "Whiskey Lullaby" tells the heartwrenching tale of a man who drank himself to death over the betrayl of a woman. The woman, inconsolable over the loss, then drinks herself to death as a way to numb the pain.
Perhaps even more sad, the song was inspired by a true story - sort of. Randall was at the time going through a divorce from fellow singer Lorrie Morgan. Anderson and Randall were going to write a song called "Midnight Cigarette," when Randall told him about a conversation he had with a man whose home he was crashing at at the time.
"He'd been over on a friend's couch and crashed," Anderson recalls to The Tennessean. "He said, 'As I was coming to, I was apologizing to my friend. I said, 'I know I've been an inconvenience to you. I've been an intruder, really, in your life and your home. I thank you.' The friend said to him, 'That's all right Jon. I've put the bottle to my head and pulled the trigger a few times myself."
3. "Blown Away" by Carrie Underwood
You have to listen pretty closely to the lyrics in Carrie Underwood's "Blown Away" to get what the song is really saying. The phrase "blown away" can take on a lot of meanings, including a rousing, positive endorsement.
But in this case, "Blown Away" is a tragic country song about a girl who is living with her father, during what turns into a deadly storm. "There's not enough rain in Oklahoma / To wash the sins out of that house," Underwood sings as the song continues, revealing that the girl later left her father to die while she sought shelter.
"The song describes him as a mean old mister," Underwood says (via Songfacts). "And you can kind of make that as bad, I guess, as you want it to be. Rhe daughter wishes that -- she can feel a storm coming, and she just wishes it would wash her past away, and in doing so, take her father along."
4. "Papa Loved Mama" by Garth Brooks
Who doesn't love a song about a man who loves his wife, and the mother of his children? Unfortunately, while the "Papa Loved Mama" title might suggest a sweet love song, in reality, the song is about a man whose wife cheated on him with someone else while he was away.
The song takes an especially dark turn, when Brooks sings, "Papa loved Mama, Mama loved men / Mama's in the graveyard, Papa's in the pen."
Brooks wrote the tragic song with Kim Williams.
"Now I don't know if the trucker just fell asleep and hit the place or what," the Country Music Hall of Fame member says (via Songfacts). "I don't think it was planned like a murder or anything. But it gave us the ingredients for a song."
