Toby Keith photo courtesy of Show Dog Nashville.

Controversy sells. The media discovered that a long time ago, and Toby Keith found that out as well when he recorded “Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)” in 2002.

Controversy — a big, long list of it — sold again when Toby introduced “American Ride” this summer, lampooning oil prices, plastic surgery, climate change and terrorism, among other topics. Performing rights agency BMI threw a party at its Nashville offices Wednesday to celebrate the song’s climb to No. 1. Songwriters Dave Pahanish and Joe West, several publishing companies and Toby’s Show Dog Nashville were all given awards from BMI, and Country Radio Broadcasters, the Country Music Association and Country Weekly magazine likewise added to the memorabilia cache.

Toby wasn’t on hand, but he was greatly appreciated — particularly by the song’s two authors.

“The only person that we could even think about bein’ capable of pullin’ off that song would be Toby Keith,” Joe said, acknowledging the bevy of topical lightning rods in “Ride.” “No one else would have… the ability to rise above all of that.”

Not that they had Toby in mind for it. Dave and Joe, long-time friends from their youth in Pittsburgh, wrote it primarily for fun. They had a whole litany of touchy subjects — “personal stuff that would irritate us,” Dave says — and they methodically linked them together over several songwriting sessions.

“We had seen that video on YouTube of that girl gettin’ beat up by her friends, and that movie Mean Girls was out at the time,” Joe notes. “It was just a lot of topical stuff, and I never felt like it was sayin’ whether it was right or wrong as much as it was like the absurdity. It’s like wild and only in America.”

“A comedian,” he continues, “was saying ‘Why are kids in the Sudan not lactose-intolerant?’ We have, because of our culture, a whole new sort of issues and problems that other cultures don’t, and this is sort of celebrating a lot of the absurdity. Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you shake your head at it.”

The two writers “just assembled ‘em, put some rhymes in there, made a few new words, and that was it,” Dave says.

They met with Show Dog in hopes of landing Dave a recording deal. That didn’t happen, but they did suggest Toby might want to consider “An American Life,” as it was then titled. Over the course of the next year, Toby listened to it periodically, testing it to see if it would hold his interest over time. It did, and when Toby recorded it this summer, he began performing it in concerts within days. The audience response was so big that he rush-released it to get it to stations.

He made a couple of minor changes, substituting the word “thug” for “Muslim” in one verse and replacing “ass” with “can” elsewhere. And he changed the title to “American Ride.”

“They can call it ‘Cotton Candy Surprise,’” Joe laughs. “Just record it and put it on the radio!”

He did. And BMI threw ‘em a party once the chart results were in. It’s not the first No. 1 for Toby or the writers. Toby has amassed a reported 27 No. 1 singles. Dave and Joe were the center of another BMI No. 1 party 14 months ago as the authors of Jimmy Wayne’s “Do You Believe Me Now.”

ShareThis