Music Friday: Rascal Flatts Reveals What Happens When You Play a Country Song ‘Backwards’

April 30, 2021

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you fun songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the lyrics or title. Today, Rascal Flatts reveals what happens when you play a country song backwards.

The fun 2006 ditty, appropriately titled “Backwards,” explains how playing a country song in reverse essentially gets you a free pass to hit the restart button on your adult life.

Sung from the point of view of an “old boy” who has been through hard times, “Backwards” delivers an up-tempo, foot-stomping laundry list of all the things he’d get back if he could magically rewrite his personal history. One of those things is a diamond ring.

Rascal Flatts’ lead vocalist Gary LaVox sings, “You get your hair back / You get your first and second wives back / Your front porch swing / Your pretty little thing / Your bling, bling, bling and a diamond ring.”

“Backwards” is the fourth track from Rascal Flatts’ five-time platinum album Me and My Gang, which sold five million copies and scored the #1 spot on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 albums chart. The song also appeared three years later on the soundtrack of Hannah Montana: The Movie, which also hit #1 on the Billboard album chart.

The song is prominently featured in a pivotal scene when Miley Cyrus’ character, Miley Stewart, arrives home to find her extended family jamming to the song in her living room. She mimics a few lines from the song and then says, “I want my life back, Dad.”

Bandmembers LeVox, Jay DeMarcus and Joe Don Rooney established Rascal Flatts in Columbus, OH, in 1999. The band is credited having charted 40 singles, 16 of which have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs, Country Airplay and Canada Country charts.

Please check out the audio clip of Rascal Flatts performing “Backwards.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along.

“Backwards”
Written by Marcel Francois Chagnon and Tony Carl Mullins. Performed by Rascal Flatts.

I was sittin’ on a bar stool
In a barbecue joint in Tennessee
When this old boy walked in
And he sat right down next to me

I could tell he’d been through some hard times
There were tear stains on his old shirt
And he said, “You wanna know what you get
When you play a country song backwards?”

You get your house back
You get your dog back
You get your best friend Jack back
You get your truck back

You get your hair back
You get your first and second wives back
Your front porch swing
Your pretty little thing

Your bling, bling, bling and a diamond ring
You get your farm, and the barn
And the boat, and the Harley
First night in jail with Charlie

It sounds a little crazy
A little scattered and absurd
But that’s what you get
When you play a country song backwards

Well, I never heard it said quite like that
It hit me in the face ’cause that’s where I’m at
I almost fell flat out on the floor
He said, “Wait a minute, that’s not all
There’s even more.”

You get your mind back
You get your nerves back
Your first heart attack back
You get your pride back

You get your life back
You get your first real love back
You get your big screen TV, a DVD
And a washing machine

You get the pond, and the lawn
And the bail, and the mower
You go back where you don’t know her
It sounds a little crazy

A little scattered and absurd
But that’s what you get
When you play a country song backwards
Oh play that song!

We sat there and shot the bull
About how it would be
If we could turn it all around
And change this C-R-A-P

You get your house back
You get your dog back
You get your best friend Jack back
You get your truck back

You get your hair back
You get your first and second wives back
Your front porch swing
Your pretty little thing

Your bling, bling, bling and a diamond ring
You get your farm, and the barn
And the boat, and the Harley
First night in jail with Charlie
You get your mind back

You get your nerves back
Your first heart attack back
You get your pride back
You get your life back

You get your first real love back
You get your big screen TV, a DVD
And a washing machine
You get the pond, and the lawn

And the bail, and the mower
You go back where you don’t know her
It sounds a little crazy
A little scattered and absurd

But that’s what you get
When you play a country song backwards

Credit: Image by Redfires23, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Music Friday: Rascal Flatts Reveals What Happens When You Play a Country Song ‘Backwards’

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