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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.”

Introduction

During a live concert in Nashville, I had the chance to hear Joey + Rory perform “This Song’s for You.” The heartfelt simplicity of the melody struck a chord with me, inspiring a deeper dive into the story behind this moving piece.

About The Composition

  • Title: This Song’s for You
  • Composer: Rory Lee Feek and Zac Brown
  • Premiere Date: July 20, 2010
  • Album: Album Number Two
  • Genre: Country

Background

“This Song’s for You” was written by Rory Lee Feek and Zac Brown during their time touring together. The song was crafted as a tribute to fans, a genuine thank-you to those who supported them throughout their musical journey. The overwhelmingly positive response from audiences during live performances motivated Joey + Rory to include this track in their second album, Album Number Two.

Musical Style

The song embodies traditional country music, featuring a rich blend of steel guitar, mandolin, and fiddle that creates a rustic and intimate soundscape. Its structure alternates verses sung by Joey and Rory, with a standout bridge performed by Zac Brown, adding diversity and balance to the composition.

Lyrics

The lyrics celebrate hardworking individuals, patriotism, and the appreciation of timeless values. The song emphasizes that the real stars are the fans themselves, and their support is what fuels the artists’ creative spirits.

Performance History

After its release, “This Song’s for You” resonated deeply with fans and became a staple in Joey + Rory’s concert performances. The collaboration with Zac Brown Band on the bridge brought an extra layer of uniqueness to the song’s live renditions.

Cultural Impact

While the song didn’t climb to the top of the charts, it left a lasting impression on country music fans. Its sincere message and traditional sound reinforced Joey + Rory’s position as beloved artists in the country music scene.

Legacy

“This Song’s for You” continues to hold a special place in the hearts of country music enthusiasts, serving as a reminder of the importance of recognizing and appreciating those who support us on our journeys.

Conclusion

To me, “This Song’s for You” is more than a track—it’s a heartfelt reminder of the bond between artists and their audience. I encourage you to listen to this song, particularly the version on Joey + Rory’s Album Number Two, and experience the sincerity and authenticity that make their music unforgettable

Video

Lyrics

If you got up this morning then you went to work today,
This song’s for you
And if you put eight honest hours in,
For eight hours worth of pay, this song’s for you
If it’s taking all you got these days just to make ends meet,
You’d like to give a piece of your mind
To those fat cats on Wall Street, this song’s for you
If you go to church on Sunday
And you try to do what’s right, this song’s for you
If you’ve been known to drink a beer,
And raise hell on a Friday night, this song’s for you
If you wish we didn’t have to go,
And send our boys to war,
But you still think this country of ours is sure worth dying for
This song’s for you, you know who you are
We’re up on this stage, but you’re the star
You’re why we, do what we do
We want you to know, this song’s for you
Now if you love country music,
As real as it comes, this song’s for you
And if you came here tonight,
Hoping you might hear you some, this song’s for you
If you paid your hard earned money to that bouncer at the door,
To hear the kind of songs that you don’t get to hear much anymore
This song’s for you, you know who you are
We’re up on this stage, but you’re the star
You’re why we, do what we do
We want you to know, this song’s for you
You might’ve lost a friend, a job,
Or someone broke your heart
But just like you might need it to,
The healings in the tune
This song’s for you, you know who you are
We’re up on this stage, but you’re the star
You’re why we, do what we do
We want you to know, this song’s for you
You deserve so much more it’s true,
We want you to know, this song’s for you

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BRAD PAISLEY WAS EIGHT WHEN HIS GRANDFATHER GAVE HIM HIS FIRST GUITAR. BY 13, HE WAS A REGULAR ON JAMBOREE USA. A WEEK AFTER COLLEGE GRADUATION, NASHVILLE WAS ALREADY PAYING HIM TO WRITE SONGS. Brad Paisley grew up in Glen Dale, West Virginia, watching his maternal grandfather Warren Jarvis play the country guitar music he loved. On Christmas Day in 1980, when Brad was eight, Jarvis gave him a Sears Danelectro Silvertone guitar. With lessons and encouragement, Paisley progressed quickly. By ten he was performing, and at 13 he wrote his first song and began appearing regularly on WWVA’s **Jamboree USA** in Wheeling. That was more than a childhood novelty. Paisley would spend roughly eight years performing through the Jamboree world, getting comfortable in front of real country audiences while still in school. As a teenager, he also opened shows for established artists including Roy Clark, Jack Greene and Little Jimmy Dickens, along with other major country names who passed through the region. After high school and two years at West Liberty State College, Paisley received a fully funded ASCAP scholarship to Belmont University in Nashville, where he studied music business. Belmont put him inside the machinery he had been watching from a distance. During an internship, people around Paisley discovered that he was writing songs himself. Once they heard the material, they began helping him make the right introductions. Paisley later said that by graduation, it felt as though much of the path had already been laid out. The timing proved it. Just **one week after graduating from Belmont**, Paisley signed a songwriting deal with EMI Music Publishing. Before he had a record contract of his own, other singers began cutting his songs. David Kersh recorded “Another You,” which became a Top 5 country hit and gave the newly graduated Paisley his first significant royalties as a professional songwriter. Cuts by David Ball and Tracy Byrd followed before Arista Nashville eventually signed Paisley as a recording artist. His debut album, *Who Needs Pictures*, arrived in 1999 and produced the No. 1 hits “He Didn’t Have to Be” and “We Danced.” But Nashville’s first serious vote of confidence had come several years earlier. Before the record deal, the videos or the No. 1 singles, somebody in Music Row had already decided that Brad Paisley’s songs were worth buying. And only a week earlier, he had still been a college student.

SAMMY KERSHAW HAD BEEN PLAYING MUSIC SINCE HE WAS 12. BY 1988, DRUGS, ALCOHOL AND YEARS OF CLUB WORK HAD WORN HIM DOWN SO BADLY THAT HE QUIT MUSIC AND TOOK A FULL-TIME JOB REMODELING WALMART STORES. THREE YEARS LATER, HIS FIRST MAJOR-LABEL SINGLE REACHED THE COUNTRY TOP 3. Raised in Kaplan, Louisiana, he began performing as a child and was opening shows for established country acts while still a teenager. But nearly two decades of bars, road work and unstable income took their toll. Kershaw later described years marked by failed marriages, drugs and alcohol, while supporting himself through jobs ranging from carpentry and welding to radio work. By 1988, he was finished. Trying to save his marriage and get his life under control, Kershaw quit drinking, quit drugs — and quit the music business with them. He took a full-time job supervising store remodeling for Walmart. In another interview, he remembered simply being tired of the business and deciding that chasing the dream was no longer practical. For a while, country music became the thing he used to do. Then songwriter Barry Jackson persuaded him to make another demo. That tape helped bring Kershaw to Mercury Records, which heard in his voice the traditional Louisiana-country sound that immediately drew comparisons to George Jones. Mercury signed him, and in 1991 released **“Cadillac Style.”** The single climbed to No. 3 on Billboard’s country chart. His debut album, *Don’t Go Near the Water*, followed and eventually went platinum. Two years later, Kershaw scored his first No. 1 with **“She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful.”** By then, the man who had once decided music could no longer support a real life had become one of the recognizable traditional voices of the 1990s country boom. The strangest part was how little time separated those two lives. In the late 1980s, Sammy Kershaw was remodeling stores because he believed the sensible part of his music career was over. By the middle of the next decade, he had gone from that Walmart job to platinum records — without changing the George Jones-inspired country voice that Nashville had ignored for years.

HARLAN HOWARD HEARD SARA EVANS SING ONE OLD COUNTRY SONG AND HELPED GET HER SIGNED TO RCA. THEN SHE MADE THE COUNTRY RECORD SHE WANTED — AND COUNTRY RADIO BARELY PLAYED IT. Sara Evans was still trying to find her place in Nashville when she was hired to sing a demo of “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail,” the Buck Owens hit Harlan Howard had co-written decades earlier. Howard was there. Evans remembered walking out of the vocal booth and finding the legendary songwriter stunned by how country she sounded. He became one of her strongest supporters and helped put her in front of RCA Nashville president Joe Galante. Evans later recalled that Galante signed her the day she auditioned. At 24, she decided not to soften the thing that had gotten everyone’s attention. She chose Pete Anderson, best known for producing Dwight Yoakam, and went to California to make *Three Chords and the Truth*. The album leaned hard into traditional country: steel guitar, fiddle, old-school arrangements, even songs associated with Buck Owens, Patsy Cline and Bill Anderson. Evans later described the idea as essentially making herself a female counterpart to Yoakam. The critics heard it. *The Washington Post* praised her vocal power and versatility. Radio & Records called Evans “the real deal.” Harlan Howard remained firmly in her corner. Country radio was another story. “True Lies” reached only No. 59. The title track did better, but stopped at No. 44. “Shame About That” peaked at No. 48. Not one of the album’s three singles reached the country Top 40. The album itself peaked at No. 56 on Billboard’s country albums chart. Evans was frustrated. Years later, she remembered visiting roughly 190 radio stations and repeatedly hearing variations of the same problem: programmers liked her, but they were nervous about playing something that sounded so traditionally country. RCA could have stopped there. It didn’t. For her second album, *No Place That Far*, the production moved toward a more contemporary sound without removing Evans’ country identity. Billboard noted the contrast at the time: one of Nashville’s most critically acclaimed newcomers had received almost no meaningful radio acceptance, but the second album appeared ready to change that. It did. The title track, a duet with Vince Gill, became Sara Evans’ **first No. 1 country single** in 1999. A year later, *Born to Fly* pushed her career much further, eventually becoming one of the defining albums of her career. Sara Evans had entered Nashville because Harlan Howard heard something unusually country in her voice. Her first album proved he was right. Her second proved that being right and getting played on the radio were two different things.

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BRAD PAISLEY WAS EIGHT WHEN HIS GRANDFATHER GAVE HIM HIS FIRST GUITAR. BY 13, HE WAS A REGULAR ON JAMBOREE USA. A WEEK AFTER COLLEGE GRADUATION, NASHVILLE WAS ALREADY PAYING HIM TO WRITE SONGS. Brad Paisley grew up in Glen Dale, West Virginia, watching his maternal grandfather Warren Jarvis play the country guitar music he loved. On Christmas Day in 1980, when Brad was eight, Jarvis gave him a Sears Danelectro Silvertone guitar. With lessons and encouragement, Paisley progressed quickly. By ten he was performing, and at 13 he wrote his first song and began appearing regularly on WWVA’s **Jamboree USA** in Wheeling. That was more than a childhood novelty. Paisley would spend roughly eight years performing through the Jamboree world, getting comfortable in front of real country audiences while still in school. As a teenager, he also opened shows for established artists including Roy Clark, Jack Greene and Little Jimmy Dickens, along with other major country names who passed through the region. After high school and two years at West Liberty State College, Paisley received a fully funded ASCAP scholarship to Belmont University in Nashville, where he studied music business. Belmont put him inside the machinery he had been watching from a distance. During an internship, people around Paisley discovered that he was writing songs himself. Once they heard the material, they began helping him make the right introductions. Paisley later said that by graduation, it felt as though much of the path had already been laid out. The timing proved it. Just **one week after graduating from Belmont**, Paisley signed a songwriting deal with EMI Music Publishing. Before he had a record contract of his own, other singers began cutting his songs. David Kersh recorded “Another You,” which became a Top 5 country hit and gave the newly graduated Paisley his first significant royalties as a professional songwriter. Cuts by David Ball and Tracy Byrd followed before Arista Nashville eventually signed Paisley as a recording artist. His debut album, *Who Needs Pictures*, arrived in 1999 and produced the No. 1 hits “He Didn’t Have to Be” and “We Danced.” But Nashville’s first serious vote of confidence had come several years earlier. Before the record deal, the videos or the No. 1 singles, somebody in Music Row had already decided that Brad Paisley’s songs were worth buying. And only a week earlier, he had still been a college student.

SAMMY KERSHAW HAD BEEN PLAYING MUSIC SINCE HE WAS 12. BY 1988, DRUGS, ALCOHOL AND YEARS OF CLUB WORK HAD WORN HIM DOWN SO BADLY THAT HE QUIT MUSIC AND TOOK A FULL-TIME JOB REMODELING WALMART STORES. THREE YEARS LATER, HIS FIRST MAJOR-LABEL SINGLE REACHED THE COUNTRY TOP 3. Raised in Kaplan, Louisiana, he began performing as a child and was opening shows for established country acts while still a teenager. But nearly two decades of bars, road work and unstable income took their toll. Kershaw later described years marked by failed marriages, drugs and alcohol, while supporting himself through jobs ranging from carpentry and welding to radio work. By 1988, he was finished. Trying to save his marriage and get his life under control, Kershaw quit drinking, quit drugs — and quit the music business with them. He took a full-time job supervising store remodeling for Walmart. In another interview, he remembered simply being tired of the business and deciding that chasing the dream was no longer practical. For a while, country music became the thing he used to do. Then songwriter Barry Jackson persuaded him to make another demo. That tape helped bring Kershaw to Mercury Records, which heard in his voice the traditional Louisiana-country sound that immediately drew comparisons to George Jones. Mercury signed him, and in 1991 released **“Cadillac Style.”** The single climbed to No. 3 on Billboard’s country chart. His debut album, *Don’t Go Near the Water*, followed and eventually went platinum. Two years later, Kershaw scored his first No. 1 with **“She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful.”** By then, the man who had once decided music could no longer support a real life had become one of the recognizable traditional voices of the 1990s country boom. The strangest part was how little time separated those two lives. In the late 1980s, Sammy Kershaw was remodeling stores because he believed the sensible part of his music career was over. By the middle of the next decade, he had gone from that Walmart job to platinum records — without changing the George Jones-inspired country voice that Nashville had ignored for years.

HARLAN HOWARD HEARD SARA EVANS SING ONE OLD COUNTRY SONG AND HELPED GET HER SIGNED TO RCA. THEN SHE MADE THE COUNTRY RECORD SHE WANTED — AND COUNTRY RADIO BARELY PLAYED IT. Sara Evans was still trying to find her place in Nashville when she was hired to sing a demo of “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail,” the Buck Owens hit Harlan Howard had co-written decades earlier. Howard was there. Evans remembered walking out of the vocal booth and finding the legendary songwriter stunned by how country she sounded. He became one of her strongest supporters and helped put her in front of RCA Nashville president Joe Galante. Evans later recalled that Galante signed her the day she auditioned. At 24, she decided not to soften the thing that had gotten everyone’s attention. She chose Pete Anderson, best known for producing Dwight Yoakam, and went to California to make *Three Chords and the Truth*. The album leaned hard into traditional country: steel guitar, fiddle, old-school arrangements, even songs associated with Buck Owens, Patsy Cline and Bill Anderson. Evans later described the idea as essentially making herself a female counterpart to Yoakam. The critics heard it. *The Washington Post* praised her vocal power and versatility. Radio & Records called Evans “the real deal.” Harlan Howard remained firmly in her corner. Country radio was another story. “True Lies” reached only No. 59. The title track did better, but stopped at No. 44. “Shame About That” peaked at No. 48. Not one of the album’s three singles reached the country Top 40. The album itself peaked at No. 56 on Billboard’s country albums chart. Evans was frustrated. Years later, she remembered visiting roughly 190 radio stations and repeatedly hearing variations of the same problem: programmers liked her, but they were nervous about playing something that sounded so traditionally country. RCA could have stopped there. It didn’t. For her second album, *No Place That Far*, the production moved toward a more contemporary sound without removing Evans’ country identity. Billboard noted the contrast at the time: one of Nashville’s most critically acclaimed newcomers had received almost no meaningful radio acceptance, but the second album appeared ready to change that. It did. The title track, a duet with Vince Gill, became Sara Evans’ **first No. 1 country single** in 1999. A year later, *Born to Fly* pushed her career much further, eventually becoming one of the defining albums of her career. Sara Evans had entered Nashville because Harlan Howard heard something unusually country in her voice. Her first album proved he was right. Her second proved that being right and getting played on the radio were two different things.

BARBARA MANDRELL SURVIVED A HEAD-ON CRASH THAT KILLED THE OTHER DRIVER. HER BONES HEALED — BUT THE HEAD INJURY, LOST TOURING MONTHS AND PUBLIC BACKLASH TOOK MUCH LONGER. On September 11, 1984, Barbara Mandrell was 35 and still near the height of her career. She had already won the CMA Entertainer of the Year award twice, hosted a hit network television show with her sisters and built a reputation as one of country music’s most polished live performers. Even that week, one of her singles was sitting near the top of the country chart. That evening, Mandrell was driving near her Hendersonville, Tennessee, home with her two oldest children, Matthew and Jaime. A car driven by 19-year-old Mark White crossed the center line and struck Mandrell’s Jaguar head-on. White was killed. Matthew and Jaime escaped with comparatively minor injuries. Barbara did not. Her right femur was broken. Her ankle was fractured. She suffered knee injuries, cuts and a significant concussion. Doctors later inserted a metal rod into her thigh to stabilize the femur. The head injury brought severe headaches and neurological effects that Mandrell would describe as particularly difficult for both her and her family. For someone whose stage shows depended on movement, dancing and playing multiple instruments, recovery meant more than waiting for bones to heal. Concerts disappeared from the calendar. Doctors initially warned that she could be offstage for six to eight months. Mandrell later admitted that there were moments when she wondered whether she would ever sing professionally again. But the career did not end on that highway. She returned to the recording studio in 1985. More hit records followed, including “There’s No Love in Tennessee,” “Fast Lanes and Country Roads” and “Angel in Your Arms.” By 1986 she was performing live again, eventually resuming touring, television work and acting. The crash also followed her in a less expected way. A legal action connected to insurance claims produced harsh publicity because it formally named the dead driver’s family. Mandrell’s attorney and White’s father both explained publicly that the action was a procedural step aimed at insurance coverage, not an attempt to take money from the family, but the misunderstanding damaged her image with some fans. So the accident left two kinds of rehabilitation. One was physical: learning what her injured leg and head would allow her to do again. The other was public. Years later, Mandrell could point to the records, concerts and television work that came afterward. The Jaguar was gone, the touring calendar had been interrupted, and one family had lost a son — but September 11, 1984 did not become the final date on Barbara Mandrell’s stage career.