Chris Stapleton scored another No. 1 on country radio with “White Horse” from Higher. The singer/songwriter kept the song in his back pocket for more than a decade. Now, it is his fourth career chart-topper as an artist.
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Stapleton co-penned the song with Dan Wilson in 2012. At the time, they hoped to get it on the soundtrack of The Lone Ranger (2013) starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer. Unfortunately, the song didn’t make it into the movie. As a result, it joined other songs in Stapleton’s vault. Then, he included it on his 2023 album Higher. He released the song last July as the lead single from Higher.
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A Closer Look at Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse”
“White Horse” is a solid example of Stapleton’s signature blend of country, blues, and rock. A rock-solid guitar riff is the heartbeat of the song. The rocking instrumentation creates a near-perfect backdrop for the lyrics. In the song, Stapleton sings from the perspective of a man who knows he can’t give the woman who loves him what she wants. However, he hopes to someday change that and be her cowboy on a white horse riding off into the sunset.
In a press release, Stapleton explained the origin of the song. “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,” he recalled. “I walked in the room to write with Dan at his house and he said, ‘Hey, they’re looking for songs for this Lone Ranger movie.’ I said, ‘Cool. Let’s write something. What do you know about it?’”
Wilson didn’t know anything about the movie. So, the pair sat down to write something that sounded like it belonged in a Western film. “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,” Stapleton added. “We kind of built it around a guitar riff.”
Featured Image by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
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