Jamey Johnson recently dropped his new song "Sober" at the end of August. It turns out that the song comes from a very real place.
The singer got candid about his past struggles with substance abuse. Johnson has been sober for years now. He said it's a daily decision on his part. The struggle is harder thanks to Johnson often playing at bars and other venues with alcohol.
"'Sober' is about how hard it is to stay sober in a town that glorifies drinking and other kinds of debauchery — not just glorifies it, but it is in just about every song in country music one way or the other," Johnson said in a press release. "It's about how difficult it is being a songwriter to stay sober in the presence of it."
"I am 13 years sober now. I haven't had a drop of alcohol since 2011, and I know that could end this afternoon," Johnson continued. "It is a day-to-day, hour-to-hour decision. Most of the places I play are bars, or I am still hanging out in bars. That's where most of my friends are. Now I can hang out in them and not be drinking like I used to. That is what 'Sober' is about."
Jamey Johnson Talks Songwriting
Lyrics for "Sober" include: "I've been mad/I've been drunk/I've been so high I can't tell up from down. But lately I've been working/on trying to get my feet back on the ground. It ain't easy on the wagon/Hell I lost more of my mind than I have found. All these drinking songs we're playing/make it hard staying sober in this town."
It's not the first time Johnson has got candid about songwriting and tackling the difficulties of his own life.
All aspects of life are fair game when it comes to songwriting, not just the hard stuff, and not just the fun stuff, and not just the whatever stuff," Johnson said in a 2015 interview with AL.com. "All of it is. ... You definitely draw from the mood that you're in that day. The good thing about songwriting is that you get an immediate feedback from yourself — whether or not this is good material, whether or not it's worth passing along, letting somebody else hear, or if it's just an echo rattling around inside of a hungry mind."
