Gretchen Wilson scored a six-week No. 1 hit with her debut single, “Redneck Woman,” but the country singer wasn’t exactly living the high life at the time.
Wilson hit it big seemingly overnight when Epic Records released “Redneck Woman” as the lead single from her debut album, Here for the Party, in 2004.
How Did “Redneck Woman” Change Gretchen Wilson’s Life?
The song reached No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart on May 29, 2004, and it also garnered Wilson a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
She won the CMA Horizon Award in 2004, followed by Female Vocalist of the Year in 2005. But while her star was rising, Wilson recalls that she was financially worse off than ever.
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“In fact, I was more broke, I think, than I’d ever been in my life,” Wilson wrote in her 2007 autobiography, Redneck Woman: Stories From My Life.
Her burgeoning career had forced her to drop the two jobs she had been earning her living from — bartending and singing demos — but the money that was owing from her success had not yet paid out, forcing the rising star to support herself and her daughter on the relatively modest advances she had received against royalties during that period.
In an interview with Taste of Country, Wilson revealed the unexpected inspiration behind “Redneck Woman,” which she wrote with John Rich.
“The day that we wrote ‘Redneck Woman’ was a day that John and I were sitting around watching country music videos, and Faith Hill‘s ‘Breathe’ was on,” Wilson tells Taste of Country.
“She’s gorgeous. She looks like a supermodel. She’s rolling around in satin sheets. And that was the inspiration behind ‘Redneck Woman.’ I looked at John and said, ‘This is probably never gonna happen for me because I’ll never look like that, and I’ll never be that. That is just not the kind of woman I am.”
He looked at me [and asked], ‘Well, what kind of woman are you then?’ And I said, ‘I’m a redneck woman.’ Then he said, ‘What’s the matter with that?’
“We, at that moment, decided to be as authentic as we could about that kind of a woman, and I felt like it was a responsibility almost at that point to speak to those girls who felt like me.”
The Best Gretchen Wilson Songs Beyond ‘Redneck Woman’
Gallery Credit: Billy Dukes
PICTURES: See Inside Gretchen Wilson’s Luxurious Tennessee Home
Gretchen Wilson is selling her luxurious Tennessee home, and pictures show a residence that’s very upscale for country’s self-proclaimed “Redneck Woman.”
Gallery Credit: Sterling Whitaker
