Songfacts®:

• In "Austin," Dasha tells the story of a guy who lets her down, promising to move with her from Austin to Los Angeles, but reneging on the deal. She goes anyway, and he stays behind, drunk and washed up.
  
  Dasha had never been to Austin when she wrote the song, but the guy was real, and so was the feeling behind it. The dude actually lived in Nashville, and Dasha was splitting time between that city and Los Angeles. He refused to commit to their relationship, so Dasha decided to take him down in song.
  
  "It's a made-up storyline around those emotions," she told Zach Sang on Amazon Music. "I was never moving to LA with this guy from Austin - that was more of like the storyline around my anger about being put off in this relationship and all these bulls--t excuses. That's where 'Did your boots stop working? Did your truck break down?' came from, because he'd tell me the most bulls--t excuses all the time. So I was like, 'Let's make fun of this dude and make him feel like an idiot.'"
• Dasha teamed up with songwriters Adam Wendler and Cheyenne Rose Arnspiger, along with producer Travis Heidelman to create this empowering track.
  
  "Once we kind of got the idea and the chords going, the song flew out in less than an hour," Dasha told Billboard. "It just felt natural and everyone I showed that song to after that session was just like, 'This is going to be a really big song.' I never doubted it once and no one else did and we were right."
• "Austin" isn't your typical heartbreak ballad. Forget the slow tempo and melancholic mood often associated with the genre. This song is a feisty anthem, propelled by handclaps, a folksy fiddle, and a boot-stomping rhythm perfect for line dancing. Its infectious groove echoes the energy of Beyoncé's "Texas Hold 'Em."
• "Austin" exploded on TikTok, garnering international attention. Dasha released the song independently in November 2023 after parting ways with Quadio Records, which signed her in 2020 when she was 20 years old. During her time with Quadio she was a pop singer; she put out an EP called 21st Birthday in 2021, and an album called Dirty Blonde in early 2023 on the label and developed a modest following on TikTok, but "Austin" was the song that caught on.
  
  It was good timing for Dasha: She wasn't signed to a label and had a viral hit on her hands, so a bidding war ensued and she got a favorable deal with Warner Records.
• "Austin" followed "Texas Hold 'Em" by Beyoncé into the charts worldwide, becoming 2024's second Lone Star State-sized country-pop hit.
• A lot of the What Happens Now? album was inspired by Dasha's breakup with the guy who inspired "Austin." He took up a lot of Dasha's mental and emotional space in what she described as "toxic" and "weird."
  
  "It just f--ked me up for so long," she told Zach Sang. "It was a situationship that lasted a year and a half. It was so dragged on and my heart was so broken by it. Seeing this guy and knowing it's not going to work out but still having this hope. It was horrible. But worth it for the songs, for sure."
  
  "It was fun because it was so dangerous and unpredictable," she added. "But it was never right because it felt so unsafe. I never felt like home around this person."
• "Austin" found its groove on TikTok thanks to a dance Dasha came up with that she performed in a video she posted with the song. The dance incorporates elements of line dancing but with a more playful and casual vibe. It became widely associated with the song, filling dancefloors at country bars and spawning lots of TikTok videos.
  
  "I know a bunch of random line dances," Dasha shared with Taste Of Country. "I kind of just pieced together parts of other line dances I like. I wanted it to go with the lyrics so it's easy to sing while you do it."
  
  Having the song garner so much attention online was an unexpected outcome for someone who was just trying to get her song played at her favorite dance halls.
  
  "People just caught on and loved the dance so much, and it started getting played in honky-tonks, which is like the reason we did the line dance in the first place," she revealed. "We were like, 'If we can get it in rotation at honky-tonks every Friday night, we're chilling - we're good.'"
  
  "The trend started and we weren't expecting that," Dasha added.
• Dasha credits Kacey Musgraves and Taylor Swift for inspiring the writing style on this song, using real-life experiences for the basis of fictional stories. As she points out, if every song was about something that happened the way it was sung, she would run out of songs pretty quickly.
• In a July 2024 interview with Evan Paul of Taste of Country Nights, Dasha was asked if the guy who inspired "Austin" knew it was about him. She giggled before responding, "Oh, he's fully aware it's about him. I haven't heard a peep from him in probably over a year."
  
  As they both tried to suppress their laughter, Dasha continued, "He's probably like, 'Damn. Damn.' You know? Which is the reaction I want."
  
  It was clear she felt a sense of vindication in that moment. "He's got a new girlfriend now, so I think he's chillin'. I don't think he really cares that much, because I'm not like, throwing his name out there, you know? No one knows who it's about, and that's just rude."
• Dasha isn't the first singer to land a hit song called "Austin." Blake Shelton released his hit of the same title in 2001 as his debut single.
• Dasha may never have visited Austin, but she did work with one: The What Happens Now? album was mixed and mastered by Austin Seltzer.
• When Dasha asks her noncommittal ex, "Did your boots stop working?" she's making fun of all his lame excuses.