Songfacts®:

• This is one of several cuts Eric Church recorded for his seventh album in his home state of North Carolina. The location was an old restaurant in the mountains that they turned into a studio for the occasion.
  
  The social commentary on the state of the world finds the singer decrying empty factories in Detroit, drugs and guns in Baltimore, and overworked school teachers nationwide. Each verse culminates in an emphatic "Stick That In Your Country Song" as if Church is entreating his fellow songsmiths to be more honest about the current times.
• Davis Naish and Jeffrey Steele originally wrote the song back in 2015. Their first few lines echo the City of Detroit filing for bankruptcy in 2013.
  
  Take me on up to Detroit city
  Jails are full, the factories empty
  Mama's crying, young boys dying
  Under that red white and blue still flying
  
  Naish explained to The Boot. "They'd filed for bankruptcy as a city a couple of years before then. And I had taken a trip up there at some point ... and I just couldn't believe that some of these outskirts of the city, and definitely places inside the city, were just kind of being forgotten. And it was the first time I'd seen that, so I think I probably carried some of that with me when we started talking about these little vignettes."
  
  The rest of the song reflect items making the headlines in 2015 such as the death in Baltimore of 25-year-old African American Freddie Gray whilst in police custody, war and violence in schools.
  
  According to Church it is about "real people, real lives, real places... from the front line to the food line."
• Church recorded the track in January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the country and the killing of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests. "I've never had a song in my career that was a harbinger of things to come,' he said. "When we recorded 'Stick That in Your Country Song,' we had a booming economy and a pretty great world going on. And I remember thinking when I did it, 'Wow, I'm not sure this, I'm not sure how relevant this is for right now. I love the song. I love the sentiment, but I'm just not sure.'"
  
  Then COVID-19 started spreading worldwide, making the song's message more timely. "Within about 30 days, the world changed, and it changed for a while, and this song just became more and more real and more and more relevant," he said.
  
  Church was still unsure about leading his seventh album with this song, but as coronavirus continued to wreak havoc, he knew it was the right time to release it. "The world kept changing and it kept bringing itself almost like a magnet back to this song and back to this moment," he said. "So, this song found itself. It wasn't me finding it, it found itself."
  
  After Church shared a teaser of "Stick That in Your Country Song" directly with members of his Church Choir fan club, he released the single on June 25, 2020.
• Naish and Steele had always had Church in mind to record "Stick That in Your Country Song," but wanted to wait for the right moment. When Church invited Steele to write with him for his follow-up to Desperate Man, the songwriter sent him the song to see what he thought of it. Naish recalled to The Boot. "I remember Jeffrey telling me that Eric basically spent an hour where he couldn't get past the first verse: He just kept rewinding it and kept playing it."
• "Stick That in Your Country Song" is only the second song Church has ever recorded that he did not write. The first was "Like Jesus Does."
• Sing about the man coming back from war
  A 23 going on 54
  He lost a friend, his sight, his hands
  Baby girl, he'll never see again
  
  Naish explained that the lines about soldiers came from a conversation with Steele about the difficulties military personnel face when they return home after serving overseas. He said: "We often forget about the re-acclimation of coming back... that, actually, the scary part is trying to get back into normal life. We're trying to try to just feel for that type of American that's done so much for those of us that haven't served and enjoy all the freedoms without ever risking our lives. That felt important to us."