BBR Runaway June‘s enjoying the biggest song of their career so far with the female empowerment anthem “Buy My Own Drinks.” But ironically, the idea for their top-twenty hit came from a man.
“That was the first thing we’d written with [Hillary Lindsey and Josh Kear],” Hannah Mulholland recalls. “And when we walked in, it was funny because Josh — the only guy in the room — was like, ‘What if it was like, ‘I can buy my own drinks?'”
“And we’re like, ‘Someone’s empowered this morning!’ And so we all just kind of jumped on that, and we just had so much fun writing it.”
“And Hillary… started laying down this groove,” Hannah continues, “and immediately, we just knew it was gonna be a really fun thing for the live show.”
Runaway June was so anxious to play “Buy My Own Drinks,” they took it to their band without a proper demo.
“It was a guitar vocal,” Naomi Cooke remembers. “And they’re like, ‘You guys, this is a jam!’ And so we started playing it in rehearsal. The guys sounded amazing, and it felt good, and we were like, ‘Man, let’s go with it.'”
In just a matter of days, the trio debuted the song at one of the biggest country music festivals in the world.
“A week later, we premiered it at Stagecoach,” Hannah remembers, “just because we wanted to play it — it’s so fun to play. And the crowd — we’ve never had a reaction like that… Everyone just started dancing and singing along.”
“So pretty quickly, we’re like, ‘Okay, I think there may be something here,'” she tells ABC Radio. “That song just felt special from from the start.”
You’ll find “Buy My Own Drinks” on Runaway June’s debut album, Blue Roses, which is out today.
Copyright © 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.