genre country

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Country songs are frequently built on wordplay, but the best twists come when a listener can miss the gag but still get the point.

That’s the case with Russell Dickerson’s latest single, “Worth Your Wild.” If listeners don’t have the title in front of them, they’re likely to hear the hook as “I’ll make it worth your while.” And it still makes sense. In the sonic fog of a live arena, fans are particularly prone to hear it as “while,” so Dickerson has started playing it with the title flashing on the video screen behind him in green-and-white block letters, one word at a time: “WORTH. YOUR. WILD.”

“We put ‘wild’ as big as we can everywhere to make sure they get the play on words,” he says.

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Dickerson is invested in that title. He introduced it on Oct. 22, 2024, during a writing retreat with two of his frequent collaborators – Parker Welling (“Blue Tacoma,” “What’s Your Country Song”) and Casey Brown (“I Am Not Okay,” “Favorite Country Song”) – at a Florida Gulf Coast home Welling shares with her husband, Warner Chappell Nashville vp of A&R Spencer Nohe.

At first, they passed over “Wild” and wrote “Famous Back Home,” which became the title of his current album, released by Triple Tigers on Aug. 22. But once they completed “Famous,” the “Worth Your Wild” idea came back up, allowing them to invest a lot of energy in what Dickerson calls “a high-octane banger.”

The “Worth Your Wild” title also gave them a road map for the rest of the song. “Sometimes when you’re writing, titles or phrases kind of have a built-in cadence,” Brown explains.  

Brown and Dickerson consumed themselves with a musical hook, establishing a guitar riff with a grimy, KISS-like tone. “It was probably even more belligerent when we were writing it,” Brown says. “I had some crazy rock-guitar sound with an octave pedal on it. It sounded like a metal band almost.”

Welling thought those two had the musical foundation under control, so she retreated to an adjacent room and started working on a story that fit the “Wild” hook. She pictured it fitting with text about a couple on a summer drive, not unlike the scenario in “Blue Tacoma.” And since she knew Dickerson and his wife, Kalie, when they were dating, she used their relationship history as a loose template.

“I just started writing down rhyming words – like ‘mile,’ ‘smile,’ those kinds of things – to get a chorus map in my mind,” she recalls.

All those rhymes lined up at the start of the chorus, with each of those three phrases melodically mirroring the grimy riff. Brown spit out a follow-up – “She said, ‘Gun it, keep the night runnin’” – that fed the song’s sense of abandon as they filled out that “Wild” section.

Welling also came up with some imagery that helped with the opening lines of the first verse, particularly a reference to “wind in her hair like the ‘80s.” “I was thinking about a girl with wind-blown hair, like the windows are down,” she says. “You think about girls in ‘80s rock videos and their hair is just so big and crazy. It’s kind of that vibe to me.”

They slid in a reference to a 2000 Crazy Town pop hit – “Butterfly,” and its additional wording, “sugar, baby” – throwing in a “T-R-O-U-B-L-E” reference as they underscored the night’s anticipatory promise. They also made a mental note that copyright permission might be required to use “Butterfly.”        

Verse two had the couple parked “off 212 Kentucky,” a nod to terrain in Dickerson’s hometown, Union City, Tenn. In all likelihood, the actual road is Tennessee State Route 214, known locally as the Ken Tenn Highway. “I don’t know if the road names are exactly right,” Dickerson allows.

They left space for a guitar solo, and they created a bridge by piecing together some previous items in the song – the “T-R-O-U-B-L-E” line and two repeats of the “Wild” hook.

After they returned to Nashville, Brown says he “geeked out” on the demo, programming drum parts that enhanced the grimy riff, and playing an additional guitar atop that riff with a curly highlight.

“I’m always a fan of the marriage of a really big wall of rock guitars and then something real clean and chime-y up top,” he says. “That makes it like there’s kind of something for everybody.”

Dickerson and co-producer Josh Kerr (Maddie & Tae, Thomas Rhett) were so impressed with the demo that they mostly recreated it, substituting human musicians for the programmed parts, though they specifically kept Brown’s acoustic guitar, tuned to sound like an arpeggiated electric guitar in the verses. They also credited Brown as a co-producer.

Recording for the master proceeded one musician at a time, beginning with drummer Evan Hutchings on a Zoom hookup necessitated by a snowstorm. The rest of the players did their parts in Kerr’s studio, particularly Nathan Keeterle, who layered a raft of electric guitars.

“There’s probably six guitars just on the intro,” Kerr says.

Keeterle played every passage on at least two different instruments, giving Kerr the option of using dirty sonics or cleaner sounds in certain sections. Kerr would often employ them in tandem. Keeterle ultimately played more than 20 guitars on the track, including a solo with an ‘80s hair-band attitude.

“He just melted our faces off,” Kerr says. “I think I [used] solo one or two, and then I think I made him play it 15 more times because we were having so much fun.”

The “Butterfly” copyright issue went down to the wire. Unknown to Dickerson and his co-writers, “Butterfly” interpolated The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Pretty Little Ditty,” and even though “Wild” used only three words from “Butterfly,” Dickerson’s reps sought approval from all four Chili Peppers and both members of Crazy Town. The “Wild” writers were considering alternative lyrics when they finally received a thumbs up in the final week of production – the six “Butterfly” creators accepted co-writer credits but sought no financial compensation for use of their three words.

Dickerson used two sessions to finish the vocals. Most of it was easy, but he sang one line – “Driving me crazy” – perhaps 150 times to get the exact tone. “It was super-choppy,” Dickerson says of his first efforts, “and not smooth at all.”

Originally, “Worth Your Wild” wasn’t in line to be a single, though Nohe repeatedly told Welling that it could work. “Spencer,” she says, “always knows.”

It was the best-streaming track left on the Famous Back Home album, and the energy was perfectly suited for this phase in Dickerson’s release schedule, as well as his live show. Triple Tigers issued “Worth Your Wild” to country radio via PlayMPE on Oct. 14.

“’Happen to Me’ was uptempo,” he notes. “Why would we not just keep the pedal down? I want people to come to Russellmania and have the freaking time of their lives.”

Dickerson promises to make it “Wild.”