The Poignant Lyrics to Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse,” Explained
Here's what the hit's all about.
For her Playoff performance on Season 27 of The Voice, Team Kelsea Artist Iris Herrera will lend her signature rasp to Chris Stapleton's modern country hit "White Horse." It's a monster of a song about being honest with yourself at the deepest level. Get into the poignant lyrics, here.
What "White Horse" is really about
The song plays with the familiar image of a knight in shining armor, riding a white horse, the ultimate romantic hero. That type of cowboy, the singer explains, isn't who he is. But someday he could be. "Hold on tight, girl, I ain't there yet," he belts, asking for patience and understanding as he grows into the kind of man the girl is waiting for.
The lyrics are vague about the when/how/why of it all, simply suggesting that there's "something" the man has to do before he and the girl can be together, but the picture is evocative nonetheless.
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Why "White Horse" sat on the shelf for a decade
Released in 2023, "White Horse" was actually written a decade prior. "We were out in Los Angeles, it was about, I think, probably late 2012, early 2013. And there was a movie called 'The Lone Ranger' that was coming out. I walked in the room to write with [Semisonic's] Dan [Wilson] at his house. He said, 'Hey they're looking for songs for [Disney's] Lone Ranger movie.' I said, 'Cool. Let's write something. What do you know about it?' He goes, 'Well, we don't really know anything,'" Stapleton revealed to QYK.
"I was like, 'Well, let's just make a song that might sound like that.' And so, that's kind of where that came from. And we got to talking about how it would be cool to have a kind of rock-driven-western-themed song. That's kind of where the song came from, and we kind of built it around a guitar riff, really," he added. Ultimately, the song was cut from the movie, and this may have been a blessing in disguise. Ultimately, it became a number-one hit for Stapleton.
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"When I watched it slowly climb the charts…it’s just sort of a crazy surprise," Wilson reflected to Billboard.
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