There are certain recurring themes in country music that define it. One is love of and reliance upon family. Another is drinking, both for kick-up-your-heels recreation and to douse your sorrows. A third is cheating. Not on a final exam or your income taxes, but when a romantic partner callously steps out on you with someone else. The kind of cheating that rips your heart out, tears it in two and stomps on it by the dusty side of the road.
Cheating is a rich source of high drama. It triggers the most potent emotions including jealousy, fury, vengefulness, frustration, and loneliness. It's all the stuff that great country songs are woven from.
There is no rage like that of a cheated-on lover. There are no country songs like those that describe this primal pain that starts in your gut and seeps through your whole body like lethal poison.
So sit back and take a leisurely tour with us through some of the best country songs about cheating for the luckless lovelorn and the dumped and despondent!
Best Country Songs About Cheating
1. "Your Cheatin' Heart" by Hank Williams
Any authentic list of the best country songs about cheating has to include the granddaddy of them all - "Your Cheatin' Heart." This sturdy 1952 country classic was written and sung by the great Hank Williams Sr. It was covered by a uncommonly large gaggle of legendary male and female artists like Patsy Cline, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Connie Francis, Kitty Wells, Fats Domino, Paul Anka, James Brown, Nat King Cole, and Glen Campbell.
Per countryroadtv.com, "The song was one of Williams' biggest hits, reaching the top of the country music charts after its release." Its universality, sharply-etched images, and undisguised heartache reach out and grab the listener.
Depending on the style of the singer performing it, a ton of emotion can be poured into every word. In a way, it encapsulates Williams' brief and tragic life. He died on January 1, 1953 at just 29 years old, leaving behind this benchmark recording that will last forever.
2. "Before He Cheats" by Carrie Underwood
This monster blockbuster for Carrie Underwood, the American Idol winner from 2005, came from her freshman album, Some Hearts. Per theboot.com, "[T]he song topped the Billboard charts for five weeks, becoming Underwood's third consecutive No. 1 hit." Sassy and sultry, "Before He Cheats" conveys the rage of a woman scorned with rip-roaring acuity.
According to genius.com, "[T]he track became the first country song in history to sell over two million digital copies and won two Grammy Awards...."
The song's co-writer, Josh Kear, said, "When we were writing it, we were actually trying to keep it humorous ... but when Carrie got hold of it, she just did it so well and really made it her own. We expected it would be a little more lighthearted ... but when we heard it, we thought, wow, she really drove it home!"
Thanks to Carrie's immense talent, when she belts out this great song, it's easy to picture some furious gal angrily clobbering her unfaithful beau's car with a baseball bat and sharp-edged keys!
3. "Jolene" by Dolly Parton
The story behind "Jolene" is really fascinating. Dolly Parton wrote and recorded it in 1973. The title came from the name of a gorgeous little girl whom Parton met after doing a 1960s TV show, While signing autographs, she met this child who said her name was Jolene. It stuck in Parton's mind.
Then a bank teller was getting a tad too chummy with Parton's husband, Carl Dean. Everything finally came together in the song - the lovely name, the alluring other woman, and the irate wife. The tune has just 200 words, according to NPR, "[b]ut Parton says that that very simplicity, along with the song's haunting melody, is what makes the character of 'Jolene' memorable." It's one long, plaintive wail of desperate love. This one surely leads the pack of finest country cheating songs by female artists.
Some 30 singers have produced versions of "Jolene," from Olivia Newton-John to Jack White. Miley Cyrus does a take-no-prisoners version of it in her Backyard Sessions video with an exceptional band. Beyonce also covered it on her breakout country Cowboy Carter album.
4. "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" by Shania Twain
Co-written by Shania Twain and her now ex, "Mutt" Lange, the song is on her 1995 album, The Woman In Me. It made the Billboard Hot County Songs chart and went gold after selling half a million copies.
The high-steppin' tune is a woman's confession that she knows about her serially cheating man. The upbeat tempo of the song and the narrator's sass make you believe that she'll survive very nicely even without this scoundrel!
The inclusion of a bunch of women's names makes the song more realistic, reminiscent of a female actually confronting her unfaithful partner.
5. "White Liar" by Miranda Lambert
"White Liar" has a juicy little unexpected twist at the end that renders it unique. The song, which Miranda Lambert co-wrote and is on her 2009 album, Revolution, is the narrator's admission that she is aware of her man's infidelity. Pretty stock stuff, right?
But at the end of the tune, she admits she's been cheating, too. What's okay for the guy is okay for the gal, I guess!
In the video, she is about to wed the man who's the subject of the song, then she suddenly chooses the best man instead while they're all at the altar. So much for riding off into the sunset! Whenever Miranda Lambert needs to deliver the goods, she always does.
6. "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)" by Loretta Lynn
As country music lore goes, Loretta Lynn penned this 1966 classic when an upset fan told her that another woman was trying to coax her man away. Lynn supposedly advised the person by saying, "Honey, she ain't woman enough to take your man!" She then put this song together in ten minutes flat. Thus a terrific song was born.
Decades later, Lynn recorded it alongside Tanya Tucker.
"You Ain't Woman Enough" climbed to the number two spot on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. Fun fact: It was performed by the Grateful Dead in 1973.
7. "Wish I Didn't Know Now" by Toby Keith
This gem from the late, great Toby Keith rose to number 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs list and deservedly so. Every syllable of it oozes undisguised anguish, the pure heartache of the person whose darling love is unthinkably with someone else.
Per American Songwriter, "For the title, Keith pulled a line from Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band's 1980 song 'Against the Wind.'"
It's like a handful of drama encapsulated in a song, beautifully performed by Keith, as always.
8. "Stay" by Sugarland
When Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland sings this song, it pierces the heart. The narrator seems to be hanging by her fingernails onto a relationship that she knows is skidding to an inevitable end. The catch in Nettles' voice and the pleading tone of her words is so very searing.
She authored the tune, which went platinum and "took home the Song of the Year award at the 2008 CMAs and two Grammys -- Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best Country Song -- in 2009," per Taste Of Country.
9. "You'll Think Of Me" by Keith Urban
I love this offbeat take on cheating from the incomparable Keith Urban. He sings this tune with such a genuinely mournful tone that you get buy into the scenario he describes. The song snagged Urban a Grammy Award. The emotionally crushed narrator banishes his wayward love, telling her to clear out and leave with the mundane debris of their life together.
"Take your records, take your freedom / Take your memories, I don't need 'em / Take your space and take your reasons / But you'll think of me / And take your cat and leave my sweater...."
Isn't that the sad, unspectacular way broken relationships really do peter out? When all is said and done, he still knows she won't forget him. Ever. That's his delicious revenge. It's all he has.
10. "Someone Else Calling You Baby" by Luke Bryan
Luke Bryan is the realest of the real. Every word he sings always comes across as true and relatable. That's the case with "Someone Else Calling You Baby," which he wrote with his producer, Jeff Stevens. Per theboot.com, it hit the top spot on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
Stevens said, '"Someone Else Calling You Baby' was written from that raw emotion that you feel when someone you love rejects you. Just about everybody knows the feeling, and it was easy to write because it's something you never forget when it happens to you. It's one of those powerful, unexpected events that changes your life in an instant."
