"Play Something Country" is the title of a song 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...

 duo Brooks & Dunn

Brooks & Dunn

Brooks & Dunn was an American country music duo consisting of Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn, who were both vocalists and songwriters. They were paired by record producer Tim DuBois in 1990. Before the duo's foundation, both members of the duo were solo recording artists...

, co-written by Ronnie Dunn

Ronnie Dunn

Ronnie Gene Dunn is an American country music singer-songwriter, known for being one half of the duo Brooks & Dunn. In 2011, Dunn began working as a solo artist following the breakup of Brooks & Dunn...

 and Terry McBride

Terry McBride (musician)

Terry McBride is an American country music artist. Between 1989 and 1994, and again from 2000 to 2002, McBride was the lead vocalist and bass guitarist in the band McBride & the Ride, a country music group which recorded six studio albums and charted more than ten singles on the Billboard Hot...

. It was released in June 2005 as the first single from the duo's 2005 album Hillbilly Deluxe

Hillbilly Deluxe (Brooks & Dunn album)

Hillbilly Deluxe is the ninth studio album by country music duo Brooks & Dunn, released in 2005 on Arista Nashville. Certified platinum in the United States by the RIAA, the album produced four singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts between 2005 and 2007: the Number One hit "Play...

. In September of that year, the song reached the top of 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, becoming the twentieth and final Number One hit of the duo's career.

Background and writing

The idea came to Dunn after a show in Minnesota. According to McBride, who played bass guitar

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

 in Brooks & Dunn's road band, Dunn "comes busting onto the bus and says, 'how about this idea?' and he howls that ah oooh, aw, play something country!" Inspired by 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...

, with whom they had been touring, McBride and Dunn decided to base the song's central character on Wilson's image, creating a "ballsy chick that bursts into the barroom, puts her hand on her hip […] and goes, 'play something country!'" After McBride told Wilson that she was the inspiration for "Play Something Country," Wilson replied that she loved the song.

Content

"Play Something Country" is an up-tempo song backed by electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

 and a horn section

Horn section

In music, a horn section can refer to several groups of musicians. It can refer to the musicians in a symphony orchestra who play the horn . In a British-style brass band it refers to the tenor horn players. In popular music, it can also refer to a small group of wind instrumentalists who augment a...

. Its lyrics are the narrator's description of a female character who wants to hear country music.

Reception

Kevin John Coyne, reviewing the song for Country Universe, gave it a negative rating. He summarized up his review by saying "when the hook is Ronnie Dunn howling like a dog, you know you’re in trouble."

Chart positions

"Play Something Country" debuted at #37 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart for the week of June 4, 2005. It's the 20th and final Number One hit of Brooks And Dunn's career.

Chart (2005)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs	1
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	37
U.S. Billboard Pop 100	53