We already know Ashley McBryde isn’t afraid to take chances, but perhaps that has never been illustrated more than in her shocking new video for “One Night Standards.” Both brave and cinematic, the video is the first of three parts that will unfold into one story about a song that is about the complexities behind a one night stand.
“My manager John Peets and I had this idea to listen to the record and see what stories appeared … what threads of ideas were consistent in the songs we had gathered and what characters stood out,” McBryde said in a statement. “Lo and behold, one night on the bus Chris Harris (acoustic guitar, mandolin, harmonies) and I were having a few beverages after a show. I got out my sketch pad and we wrote down each song from the record and each character. It looked like a crazy road map. It looked like a child had drawn it.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“But there it was,” she added.. “A way to connect every song and every video. I showed it to Peets, and we put it in (director) Reid Long’s hands. And the rest is history.”
McBryde knows that “One Night Standards” pushes the envelope of what people might be comfortable talking about in country music –– not that she cares. Much like the female artists she grew up idolizing years ago, she vows to not look away from hard topics, especially in her music.
“It was taboo then and they did it and it’s taboo now and we do it and that’s why we do it, because it’s taboo,” McBryde shared with PopCulture.com and other media. “It’s like having too many tattoos. I don’t know, I think the touchy subjects are okay to handle. I think it’s alright to do and if it’s uncomfortable, it’s okay, the song is only three and a half minutes long. It’s okay to be uncomfortable for three and a half minutes.”
McBryde will get plenty of chances to perform “One Night Standards” next year, when she heads out on her headlining One Night Standards Tour, even though she knows not everyone will approve of the song.
“Every night when we play it live, I watch the crowd, because there’s going to be a few nods that go from left to right, and there’s gonna be a few tongue clicks: ‘She shouldn’t be singing about this,’” the reigning CMA New Artist of the Year told The Boot. “But then there are the other nods, where they kind of look at each other and then kind of nod up and down, which is of course the preferred response, but both are genuine and valid.
“It’s not all that common for a chick to be singing about one-night stands, and some people feel that we shouldn’t be doing that, but Loretta [Lynn] did it, Tammy [Wynette] did it,” she added. “It happens all the time, so why not tackle it?”
Photo Credit: Getty Images for CMT/Viacom
