"Homewrecker" is the title of a song written and recorded by American country music

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 singer Gretchen Wilson

Gretchen Wilson

Gretchen Frances Wilson is an American country music artist. She made her debut in 2004 with the Grammy Award-winning single "Redneck Woman," a number-one hit on the Billboard country charts. The song served as the lead-off single of her debut album, Here for the Party...

. It was the fourth and final single

Single (music)

In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

 from her 2004 debut album Here for the Party

Here for the Party

-Album:-Singles:-Certifications:-References:...

, and was released to radio in January 2005. The song was her fourth consecutive Top Ten hit, reaching #2 on the country singles charts.

Content

In "Homewrecker," the female narrator addresses another female who wants to commit adultery with the narrator's lover. The narrator refers to this other woman as a "homewrecker," and threatens to "go to kickin' [her] pretty little butt." Wilson wrote the song with George Teren and Rivers Rutherford

Rivers Rutherford

Rivers Rutherford is an American country music songwriter. Active since the mid-1990s as a songwriter, he has penned several Number One country hits, including "Ain't Nothing 'bout You" by Brooks & Dunn, which was the Number One country song of 2001 according to Billboard...

.

Critical reception

Johnny Loftus of Allmusic said that Wilson "happily belts out the harder edges" of the song, contrasting it with Wilson's vocal performance on the ballad "When I Think About Cheatin'." In Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

, Jon Caramanica also contrasted "Homewrecker" with other songs on the album, saying that its role of "moral arbiter" was "just as impassioned" as the other "country persona[s]" on the album. Stylus Magazine

Stylus Magazine

Stylus Magazine was an online music and film magazine launched in 2002. It featured long-form music journalism, four daily music reviews, movie reviews, a number of different podcasts, an MP3 blog, and a text blog....

critic Josh Love compared the song's sound to that of the Dixie Chicks

Dixie Chicks

The Dixie Chicks are an American country band which has also successfully crossed over into other genres. The band is composed of founding members Martie Erwin Maguire and Emily Erwin Robison, and lead singer Natalie Maines...

 and said that it was "less about cloistered worship than a real-world application of the life-affirming principles first put forth by" the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain

Shania Twain

Shania Twain, OC is a Canadian country pop singer-songwriter. Her album The Woman in Me , brought her fame and her 1997 album Come On Over, became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician in any genre, and the best-selling country album of all time. It has sold over 40 million...

. Kevin John Coyne, reviewing the song for Country Universe, gave it a negative rating. He stated that the song sounds like more of "a rip-off of than a homage to Loretta Lynn

Loretta Lynn

Loretta Lynn is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 13 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Lynn. Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he...

."

Chart performance

"Homewrecker" debuted on the Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales...

 charts dated for the week ending January 29, 2005. The song reached a peak of #2 and held that position for three weeks, spending a total of twenty weeks on the charts. It was Wilson's fourth consecutive Top Ten hit on that chart, making her the first female artist to send her first four singles into the country Top Ten since Deana Carter

Deana Carter

Deana Carter is a country music artist who broke through in 1996 with the release of debut album Did I Shave My Legs for This?, which was certified 5× Multi-Platinum in the United States for sales of over five million...

did so between 1996 and 1997.
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Chart (2005)	Peak position