Songfacts®:

• Runaway June is a country music band comprising Naomi Cooke, Hannah Mulholland and Jennifer Wayne. Jennifer comes from exalted show business stock: her grandpa was Hollywood legend John Wayne.
• This empowering anthem is about a woman who goes out for a solo night on the town following a breakup.
  
  I can buy my own drinks
  I can pay my own tab
  At the end of the night when they cut on all the lights
  I can call my own cab
  
  The girl is celebrating how she doesn't need a man to run her life.
• All three members of Runaway June wrote the song along with Josh Kear and Hillary Lindsey. It was the lone guy among the five songwriters who suggested the title. Wayne recalled to The Boot that Kear said, "I have this title, and it's called 'Buy My Own Drinks,' but I don't know what it means." The four girls responded, "We do!"
• Runaway June scored their first-ever Top 20 hit on the Country Airplay chart with this song. In addition to that personal milestone, it was also the first time a female group or trio had reached the Top 20 on country radio in 14 years; both Dixie Chicks and SHeDAISY did so in 2005.
• Hillary Lindsay explained to The Tennessean that the phrase "buy my own drinks" is a metaphor for self-empowerment. "It's a 'funner' way of saying 'I'm heartbroken, I'm getting over someone. And I don't need to just bounce from like one guy to the next. I can be within myself, I can be alone, I can treat myself, I can buy my own drinks. And ultimately I can find who I am within myself without another man, without just jumping from one (relationship) to the next up.'"
• Runaway June debuted the song on April 29, 2018 during their set at the Stagecoach festival. "We never had that kind of reaction to a song before," recalled Naomi Cooke. "And I think that's a big, big barometer on how you kind of choose a song is like, what do the people want? Like, how do you feel when you're performing it? What's it doing here?"