Country artist George Birge saw a popular TikTok skewering the way men in his genre write music and decided to issue himself a songwriting challenge. The result? "Beer Beer, Truck Truck."

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Now, mainstream country music lyrics have taken their fair share of knocks for sounding all, you know, kind of the same. Like...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ERYNN CHAMBERS: (Singing) Beer, beer, truck, truck, girls in tight jeans, beer, truck, beer, truck, America, America, ooh.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Now, that's from a TikTok video made by Erynn Chambers in October of last year. By day, she teaches music to elementary schoolers in Charlotte, N.C. But Chambers has also amassed over 700,000 followers on TikTok. She's known for social justice content, but that's not all she posts about.

CHAMBERS: So it was talking about how, like, a lot of men's country is, you know, the beers and the trucks and that kind of thing. And then women's country is, like, revenge songs on their cheating husbands. And I tend to prefer the women's songs, to be quite honest. I don't know what that says about me.

CHANG: I prefer them, too. Enter George Birge. Last winter, he was thinking about giving up on trying to be a country singer.

GEORGE BIRGE: I had an artist career that was almost there but hadn't quite taken off yet, and I had started getting traction writing songs for other artists and had kind of considered giving up live music myself and just focusing on songwriting.

CHANG: And his colleague told him he could use TikTok to get his songs out there. So he downloaded the app, and he went to the country music hashtag - you know, as one does - and found the video from Chambers.

BIRGE: My first reaction was, like, yeah, she makes a really good point. But my second reaction was kind of like, OK. It'd be fun to take this as a challenge and see if I can write a legitimate song using her hook off the top.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BEER BEER, TRUCK TRUCK")

BIRGE: (Singing) It ain't all beer, beer, truck, truck, girls in them tight jeans, small town riding around. Girl, I hope you miss me.

CORNISH: George Birge never meant to complete his little exercise, but then his TikTok blew up. So he finished the song. Then his phone blew up with offers from record labels. And you know the rest.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BEER BEER, TRUCK TRUCK")

BIRGE: (Singing) I know you think I'm crazy out here just living slow. No, I can't blame you, baby - just thought you should know it ain't all beer, beer, truck, truck.

CHANG: The final song takes that hook - beer, beer, truck, truck - and spins it into a tale of a girl who moved to the city and the guy she left behind in the country. And, yes, Erynn Chambers does get a songwriting credit.

CHAMBERS: I mean, it's really an honor and a privilege and a shock to see something that I came up with on the fly, like, really connect with people and really, really go out there like that.

BIRGE: I stumbled across Erynn's video, and it changed my life. And I feel like we've got a hit song on our hands now. So life comes at you funny.

CORNISH: "Beer Beer, Truck Truck" was one of the top 10 most added songs to country radio this week, to which we can lift a can and lower a tailgate.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BEER BEER, TRUCK TRUCK")

BIRGE: (Singing) If you ever get to thinking, thinking about coming on back, girl, you know where I'm at. It ain't all beer, beer, truck, truck, girls in them tight jeans. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Tags: George Birge  Beer Beer Truck Truck  TikTok  Genre: Country