It's human nature to gravitate towards the devil we know, even if it's not perfect, rather than taking a leap into the treacherous unknown. Ashley McBryde, though, is known for being true to herself and blazing her own trail no matter how unconventional it may seem. That determined mindset is at the center of this song.
McBryde's momma is urging her to find solace in the church, daddy is pushing her towards the grind, and the doctor demanding she give up her vices. But amid it all, McBryde holds her ground, standing tall and unyielding, ready to embrace the devil she knows.
Everybody's got something to say
About how I gotta change my ways
Well, I got something to say of my own
Hell, there's hell everywhere I go
So I'm sticking with the devil I know
McBryde co-wrote the song with Jeremy Stover and Bobby Pinson. "I walked in and sat down with Bobby Pinson and Jeremy Stover on August 12, 2020 and THIS song came out," she said. "We're all the time hearing something from somebody who thinks they know what's best for us. Lose weight, your hair's too curly, change this, change that. When things just seems to go better when you trust your own lens to see what's good for you, stick to the devil you know."
"The Devil I Know" is the title track of Ashley McBryde's sixth studio album. The singer ignored the naysayers and critics as she laid down the record with her band. Instead, she set out to explore the vast spectrum of her musicality, transcending genres from country to rock to bluegrass.
"When it was time to put together The Devil I Know, my band and I did what we always do: got together in the purple building in East Nashville, played through a bunch of songs and discussed where we wanted it to go," McBryde shared. "We decided to take all the things that people tend to give us a hard time for and turn it up. We listened to all those opinions and said, 'I hear you. I understand what you're saying. But sadly, there's no room on the record for your opinion. We'll do what we want.'"
As McBryde wrote "The Devil I Know" with Jeremy Stover and Bobby Pinson, she recalled the negative reactions she received as a teenage girl playing bars in Bardstown, Kentucky. Discouraged from pursuing music, a young McBryde learned early on to trust her own path. She swapped Bardstown for the sweeter-sounding Elizabethtown as the setting on the song.
"I thought it would sound a little nicer and float along a little better,"
she explained to Billboard.
The chorus keeps acknowledging outside voices before McBryde delivers the defiant line: "I'm stickin' with the devil I know."
"For me, living and getting it right is kind of like skiing," Bobby Pinson said. "You can have a professional skier tell you how to do it, you can have your friends tell you how to do it, you can have your loved ones tell you how to ski, but at the end of the day, you take a little cart up the hill, and if you get down unbroken, you skied. And that's kind of what living is. It's like how do I want to fall? Do I want to fall going down this mountain? Or do I want to fall going over this cliff? I'll stick with the devil I know."
When Ashley McBryde belted out the final vocals for "The Devil I Know," producer Jay Joyce threw her a curve. He had her record a pass standing 10 feet away from a telescope microphone. McBryde figured it was just for some subtle background effect. Instead, that distant, filtered vocal ended up becoming the lead for the first chorus, pulling the entire song in a whole new direction. Rather than the expected energy boost that most producers would go for at this point, Joyce created a sense of hushed intensity.
For McBryde, the effect transformed the chorus into a powerful internal monologue. Joyce, on the other hand, saw it purely as a way to add a unique texture to the song, leaving the interpretation wide open. "Usually, if you change the scenery, the listener will put it together in their own sort of way," he reasoned.
