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‘American Saturday Night’ by Brad Paisley: Story Behind the Song

Brad Paisley’s hit song “American Saturday Night” is a feel-good song all about a night on the town and living life to the fullest.

“It’s a French kiss, Italian ice / Spanish moss in the moonlight / Just another American Saturday night.”

Brad Paisley From Humour to Wit

The song appeared as the third single on the album with the same title in 2009. Similar to his other albums, it was produced by Frank Rogers.

The song was No. 2 on the U.S Country charts and was certified as Gold.

What went into making one of Paisley’s staple country tunes? Well, the tune definitely had less of a humorous appeal than his other songs at the time had.

In his song ‘Ticks” he jokes about checking his girl for ticks.

“You never know where one might be / There’s a lot of places that are hard to reach / I gotcha.”

In his song “I’m Gonna Miss Her” Paisley has to choose between a girl and fishing. The title gives a pretty good idea of what he ends up choosing. “I’m gonna miss her / Oh, looky there, I’ve got a bite.”

Finally in his song, “Me Neither,” Paisley sings about a guy who is trying to get the attention of a woman. So, after every question he asks leads to rejection, he replies “me neither.”

“This may sound dumb, but here we go / Do you believe in love at first sight? / Me neither / I’m glad that we agree.”

While Brad Paisley is pretty well known for his fun humor that shows up in his songs, he made it clear that he wanted “American Saturday Night” to be different. He still wanted an upbeat, fun song, but without the lines that would make fans chuckle.

Behind-the-Scenes of ‘American Saturday Night’

So songwriters Ashley Gorley and Kelley Lovelace discussed the plan for steering Paisley in the right direction.

“Kelley and I knew, with this album, Brad was leaning away from the comedic songs and looking to record things that were less funny. He wanted good, uptempo songs that weren’t necessarily funny. That was one of the targets,” Gorley said, according to The Boot.

The pair spent time brainstorming and had an idea for something related to a Saturday night, but got stuck. Then, Paisley called in a fit of excitement to say that he had the chorus of the song. It was all about America being a collection of cultures and what that looks like on a night out.

“We talked about what a good idea it was: all the things that are borrowed from other countries and traditions that make America great; how we can have a melting pot of that on a typical American Saturday night. The scene was set, and we spent the next few hours and a couple of days coming up with that scenario. It was tricky to try to cover every country without it being a stretch,” Gorley said.

Besides the chorus talking about France, Italy, and Spain, several other countries are mentioned. From German cars to Brazilian boots to British Beatles to Canadian bacon, the song has the perfect mixture of countries mentioned without it becoming cheesy. It is a seamless and clever idea.

While the song isn’t humorous, it instead replaced that with a whole lot of cleverness.

Critical Acclaim

According to Billboard, it’s Paisley’s best song. The reasoning is that the song is both sly in its humor and still shreds.

Also, Billboard claims that it is an interesting move to let xenophobes know that the majority of America’s consumption comes from other places. His subtle way of showing off what really makes America great had critics glowing.

This version of showing off America is quite different than in songs like “Accidental Racist” which features LL Cool J. This song discusses Paisley wearing a shirt with a Confederate Flag to show “Southern Pride.”

“It’s hard to get really enraged at Brad Paisley and LL Cool J’s country-hop attempt at racial solidarity because their clueless take on race-based message music seemingly meant well … the most politely toxic thing to drop onto the Internet this year,” Brandon Soderberg from Spin said.