11 Stunning Facts About ‘Friends In Low Places’

Even if you’ve heard Garth Brooks‘ signature song “Friends in Low Places” a million times (and most of us have), you’ll still learning something new here.

This list isn’t about released date, sales figures or pop culture influence.

Everybody knows the song — released 35 years ago Wednesday, Aug. 6 — it’s probably the biggest and most popular country song of all time. Most people know it won the Single of the Year at the ACM and CMA Awards in 1991.

This list dives deeper.

• DeWayne Blackwell and Earl Bud Lee wrote “Friends in Low Places.”
• The song was the first single from Brooks’ second album, No Fences.
• It’d reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart on Oct. 6, 1990.

Related: 12 Unbreakable Country Music Records, Including Garth Brooks

Keep reading for the truth about who passed on the song, who recorded the song first and who leaked the song.

Yep, a radio station got an advance copy of the music before Brooks was set to begin promotion, but we’re pretty sure this leaker didn’t get in too much trouble.

This list of “Friends in Low Places” facts also includes a baby, a beer and a $1,200 bar tab that ended up costing one man millions of dollars. Each slide is certified and confirmed from an original source, in most cases the singer himself.

“Friends in Low Places” would catapult Brooks’ career. In fact, he’d win the CMA Entertainer of the Year award in each of the next two years and his records would be sold over 150 million times.

That actually brings up the craziest (and maybe nerdiest) fact about this song.

Let’s begin right there and then start telling the full, unfiltered story of “Friends in Low Places.”