Friends in Low Places

Thirty-six years ago today, Capitol Records Nashville released No Fences by Garth Brooks. August 27, 1990. Friends in Low Places is track five. Written by Bud Lee and Dewayne Blackwell. Produced by Allen Reynolds at Jack’s Tracks Recording Studio in Nashville. The song is not complicated. A man at a black-tie event who does not belong there, raising a glass before excusing himself to find people more like him. Two verses and a chorus that most of the country knows by heart. The simplicity is the whole point.

Garth Brooks was not the first choice for the song. Bud Lee and Dewayne Blackwell had written it with someone else in mind. Brooks heard the demo and wanted it. That decision changed the shape of his second album and the shape of country music in the decade that followed. No Fences would eventually be certified 17 times Platinum in the United States. It remains one of the best-selling country albums ever recorded. The song that anchored it was one he had to go get.

Friends in Low Places reached number one on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. It became something larger than a hit. The kind of song that gets sung at closing time and at sporting events and anywhere people want to feel like they belong somewhere. Garth Brooks went on to become the best-selling solo recording artist in American history by certified album sales. The argument that country music could do that started here, on a song about finding your people at the wrong party. Thirty-six years later, that argument is still being made.