Allie Colleen promo photo

Allie Colleen Discusses Her Sweet, Unconventional Love Song ‘Honest Man’

Oklahoma-born, Nashville-based country singer Allie Colleen has been releasing music since 2019. Her debut album, Stones dropped in 2021. However, she started honing her musical craft while still in elementary school. The result of those years of practice shines throughout her catalog. Colleen’s songs contain the kind of honesty, authenticity, and originality that listeners today crave.

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Maybe one of the best examples of that is Allie’s latest release “Honest Man.” The song hit streaming services around Valentine’s Day. However, it’s not your run-of-the-mill love song. In the lyrics, the singer confronts the man she loves and asks him to put a ring on her finger.

Recently, I sat down with Allie Colleen to discuss her career and her plans for the future. During our conversation, she discussed how much “Honest Man” means to her.

Allie Colleen’s Vision for “Honest Man”

Allie Colleen: “Honest Man” is something that I’ve cared about for a really long time. Since I was a kid, I’ve always been not even weird or different or any of those things. Because who isn’t? But, I love pursuing people. I’m actually not good at being pursued, I love pursuing people.

“Honest Man” is just about, as a female, how I would love to ask a man to marry me. It was something that I cared about, but I couldn’t figure out how to write the song. Then, I landed on “What if I make it his idea? What if you just tell him how much he tells you he loves you, and so, because of that you want to spend forever with him?” So, that was how I landed on the hook.

I took the hook to three writers I really care about and trusted with the vision. So, Kate Hasting is my girl, I thought she would be great on it. Also, I wanted men in the write with us. Not even so much to write – which, they did and they nailed it – but more so to be like “Would you receive this? Is this something you’d receive that would still make you feel big and strong and all the things but also makes you feel all the things and also makes you feel really loved? And, would you say yes?”

Friction in the Writers’ Room

Allie Colleen: We had Lance Carpenter and Big Vinny. All of us contributed stuff and it was really cool. There was one interesting kind of friction that we had, though. It was from the boys.

 They kept trying to paint her as some kind of wild child or some kind of outlying woman or some kind of not a masculine woman but one that’s always done things differently or gone against the grain. I’m like “That’s not how we’re trying to paint her. We’re trying to paint her as your everyday woman who wants to tell a man how much she loves him.”

At the end of the day, they were like “This is perfect. This woman doesn’t seem like she would make me feel intimidated or like less of a man for not asking her.” That was exactly what I was going for.

Allie Colleen Reflects on the Reaction to “Honest Man”

Allie Colleen: A lot of the comments have been beautiful and kind and sweet, but not at all what I thought they were going to be. I thought this song would inspire women to go and do this or to realize “I don’t have to wait on my partner or ask him to ask me. I can just go ask him to marry me.”

Instead, it was all these comments from these beautiful women who were about to have 20 or 30-year anniversaries who asked their husbands back then. They were all like “This was not cool back then. Like, no one really celebrated our engagement.” They were like “Thank you for making this feel cool and special and sexy and sweet and intimate.”

I’m just really proud of how we wrote it and how it came out and how appreciated it has been.