Ruston Kelly Went to Jail and Wrote a Song Called ‘Asshole’ [Listen]
Ruston Kelly isn't your typical country singer, and his new song "Asshole" isn't your typical country song.
The song is a humorous self-evaluation of all the ways Kelly exhibits less-than-reputable behavior. And it was actually written in jail. Kelly spent the night behind bars in January of 2018, after being arrested for an outstanding warrant he received for driving with an expired license in 2015. The resulting lyrics are amusing, to say the least.
Kelly doesn't hold back as he recalls his night, where he spat on the floor just to annoy the cop that cuffed him and brought him through the door "like a prize." He found a place on the cold stone slab, where he listened to the two junkies beside him engage in endless conversation.
But it's the singer's self-awareness and tongue-in-cheek way of detailing his rude behavior that makes the song something of a gem. "Taking everything for granted / The moment someone does something nice / I take advantage / Easy, breezy only when it pleases me / I've been told / I'm kind of an asshole," he sings.
You can't help but laugh as Kelly packs on the humor, writing about his disrespectful habits with honesty and wit. Like when he details the car ride home after his wife — fellow singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves — picks him up from the police station. She's questioning his actions and crying, but he's just playing a game on his phone, "trying to think if there's any weed left at home."
The singer-songwriters shares in an Instagram post that he's releasing an album in the near future, and felt compelled to share his run-in with the law.
"Even though my full length record will be arriving soon, I don’t ever stop writing from my experiences. Constantly. So after writing this song in a jail cell a couple months ago, I decided to record an acoustic version of it for your listening pleasure," he writes.
Kelly and Musgraves tied in the knot in a beautiful countryside wedding in October of 2017. The couple recently paired up for an acoustic rendition of "To June, This Morning" — a poem written by Johnny Cash for his wife June Carter Cash in 1970. The song is featured on the compilation album Johnny Cash: Forever Words that finds a variety of artists reimagining Cash's unpublished works.
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