Bobby Bones shared on air a couple weeks ago how much he loved Kaitlin Butts song "Ain't Gotta Die (To Be Dead To Me)." She came by the Bobby Bones Show studio today to perform the song and share the inspiration behind it.
Butts grew up doing musical theater and loved country music, so she has interwoven those two things together to create her music. She based her last album Roadrunner off of the musical Oklahoma! Her husband had never seen it, so she rewatched it with him and it inspired her album as she was seeing common themes with her music. Her hope was to recreate the musical by seeing what those songs sound like in country music and in today's world. She wrote "Ain't Gotta Die (To Be Dead To Me)" for that album, inspired by something her mom always told her. Butts admitted there have been terrible people in her life and her mom always taught her to be the bigger person, so she has written a lot of murder songs to get out her feelings. She wrote the song with Natalie Hemby and the song flew out of her, at the time she wasn't thinking about it being a big hit, she just wanted to write what felt good to her. Butts loves that the song is having success now, because it's very her and traditional country.
The first video that went viral of the song was Avery Anna making some videos with it. She created a trend with the song on TikTok and that's when Butts first saw a spike, then Ella Langley posted her "stirring the pot" video to it and it's at over 9 million views. Another full circle moment with the social media trend, Butts was Honey Boo Boo one time for Halloween and she saw her sister did the trend. It's felt really good for Butts that someone else created the trend and everything with the song is happening organically without her begging people to either do the trend or listen to the song. She's been touring with Wyatt Flores and at the beginning of the tour, some of the audience knew her name or music, but now she's started seeing a whole wall of phones go up when she starts singing "Ain't Gotta Die (To Be Dead To Me)."
Beyond this song, Butts has been pursing music for years. She started playing guitar at 15-years-old after seeing people like Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert, The Chicks, and The Wreckers writing their own songs and performing with a guitar on stage. She began traveling to Nashville on trips in 2017 and 2018, and then bought a house in town in 2021 to continue pursing music. She met her husband in her pursuit of music, he is in Flatland Cavalry and heard her song on the radio when they were driving through Ft. Worth, Texas. He had a song that his friend said was super depressing and needed a woman on it. He remembered hearing her voice and texted his fellow artist friend Dillion about her, since she was touring with him. They went into the studio to record "A Life Where We Work Out" and started dating after that first meeting. The song now has 100 million streams on Spotify, it bought their home in Nashville.