‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’ has enjoyed record‑breaking success on the Billboard Hot 100.
The biggest hit of the decade so far took Shaboozey and his team half an hour to write — and weeks to perfect.
“It was crazy,” remembers Sean Cook. “It wasn’t a planned thing. It was wild. We were working on ‘Annabelle’, a song on the album, and we were like, ‘Let’s take a break.’ Nevin and I were joking around on guitar, playing whatever chords came to mind, and Shaboozey responded with some words and melodies. In that moment it just happened. We went with it, and boom, the song gods gave us this idea! We weren’t really thinking. For me it was a blur.
“Shaboozey knew right away that we had something special. I also had a gut feeling, and put my iPhone on record and set it to the side. I recorded the whole song being written in a 30‑minute voice memo. Afterwards, in about 15 minutes, we cut Shaboozey’s lead vocal. We later recut a couple lines, but 95 percent of his vocal is from that day, which is shocking because Boozey is very particular with vocals. But he was like, ‘Don’t change it!’”
“Sometimes when making an album,” adds Nevin Sastry, “you’re trying to fill a spot. This was absolutely not that. It was just us having fun, messing around. And it turned out great. In the clip that Sean has on his voice memo while we were writing it, you can hear Shaboozey saying, ‘This is my country number one. I know.’”
Along with Shaboozey himself, Sean Cook and Nevin Sastry were the main production and writing team behind ‘A Bar Song’ and its parent album.
Magic Moment
At that moment in November 2023, the three musicians in the room — Sean Cook, Nevin Sastry and Collins Chibueze, aka Shaboozey — knew they had struck gold. Even so, none of them could have predicted what would follow. At the time of writing, Shaboozey’s ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’ has been number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for 15 weeks. By the time you’re reading this, you will know whether ‘A Bar Song’ will have surpassed the current US record of 19 weeks at number one, set in 2019 by another crossover country song, Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ ‘Old Town Road’.
‘A Bar Song’ has made Shaboozey the first black male artist to top Billboard’s Hot Country Songs and Hot 100 charts at the same time, immediately after Beyoncé had paved the way by becoming the first black artist to do the same with ‘Texas Hold ’Em’. In fact, Beyoncé’s number one album Cowboy Carter, released in March 2024, helped introduce Shaboozey to a wider audience, thanks to guest performances that were in themselves inspired by ‘A Bar Song’. This was the result of a showcase Shaboozey did in January at Winston House in Venice Beach, LA, appearing on stage with Cook and Sastry.
“We were only showcasing four songs,” says Sastry, “and although we had not quite completed the production of ‘A Bar Song’, we decided that we had to perform it. So the three of us performed the song with a backing track that was pretty close to what the world would eventually hear. The reactions were crazy. We saw everybody from everywhere in the bar run to the stage. Shaboozey was still a bit skeptical about the 808 that Sean and I had put at the end of the song, but when he saw the audience reaction when the 808s came in and rumbled the stage, he was like, ‘OK, I get it.’”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” agrees Cook. “When the pre‑chorus started, 20 people immediately walked in from the other room, asking, ‘What song is this?’ It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the energy shift instantly like that! Apparently, the show also led to Shaboozey being invited to appear on her album. That night and that song are such a launching pad for everything, it’s crazy.”
Getting To The Start
As is always the case, the 30 minutes of magic that produced ‘A Bar Song’ were made possible by a long history of production and writing work. “I’m an Indian kid from Ohio,” explains Nevin Sastry. “I started playing piano and guitar when I was 12, and did all the guitar shredding and so on, which led me to jazz. I then went to med school and worked as a doctor, but in 2016, when I was 24, I decided that music was my calling, and moved to LA. I’m a guitarist, writer and producer, and first met Shaboozey in 2016. He ended up moving into my apartment. He signed with Republic that year, and through that I signed with Savan Kotecha, a producer who worked with Max Martin.
“Having come from making beats in my bedroom, pure instinct, I got to learn from the Max Martin crowd! Savan got me to really cut my teeth. I worked on Shaboozey’s first album, Lady Wrangler [2018], but because it was hard to make money through placements, I also did a lot of music for sync. I did all the music for two seasons for a CBBC kids show called Almost Never. I had to write and produce and cut all these covers and mix and master everything for TV. To learn more, I spent a lot of late nights watching YouTube videos and reading Sound On Sound!”
Sean Cook, meanwhile, grew up in Southern California, mostly Sevenoaks and Orange County. “My mum was a vocal teacher and my dad a guitar teacher, and they wanted me to play music in church. I learned to play guitar and bass, and was playing basketball competitively, but after an injury I went into making beats to pass time. My dad said, ‘These are actually pretty good,’ and I got an internship with a producer, which opened me up to the idea of it being a job. I played in a lot of bands in my 20s, but always with a producer brain, wanting to be in the studio writing and producing songs.”
Like Sastry, Cook eventually signed a publishing deal as a songwriter. He first met Shaboozey in 2020, and worked with the artist on his second album, Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die (2022), a title that already revealed clear country inclinations, despite the artist starting out as a rapper. Cook: “When I first met him, he said, ‘I’m from Virginia, and want to have a sound that really represents Virginia.’ He grew up listening to Willie Nelson, but also Young Thug, and wanted to combine both worlds.”
Crossing Boundaries
In 2023, when Cook and Shaboozey were about to start work on the artist’s third album, Shaboozey suggested involving Sastry, who had contributed to one song on Cowboys Live Forever. Sastry recalls that Shaboozey was by now more determined than ever to integrate all his influences, especially country.
“When I first met him, he was wearing a Canadian tuxedo, ie. all denim, and the first thing I heard by him, unreleased, was based on a Led Zeppelin sample. He’s always been inspired by classic rock, country, guitar‑driven things. He’s so good at rapping that people constantly wanted him to rap, but we made real progress when he decided that he could do whatever. He had an understandable fear of the market not understanding him. It took him a while to get to the point where he felt he could release these country‑influenced records. In the end, the timing worked out.”
The timing involved Shaboozey riding a crossover country wave spearheaded by black artists that was arguably started by Lil Nas X in 2019, and led to the success of Beyoncé’s country album, and eventually ‘A Bar Song’. Sastry and Cook, meanwhile, brought their own country experiences to the table. “I grew up by corn fields close to Ohio, which is the Midwest,” says Sastry, “and I was working with country crossover artists right before Shaboozey.”
“I did not grow up with country,” admits Cook, “but in 2020‑21, when Covid shut down the LA music industry, I stayed in Nashville, and was around a lot of country music, and was at many sessions and saw the inner workings of that world.”
Most of the songs on Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going were co‑written by Shaboozey, Cook and Sastry, with the latter two producing. Perhaps for this reason, the album has a consistent and unique sound, with songs that often have anthemic melodies, and production that is strongly country‑influenced, but also, as Rolling Stone put it, “a full‑on barrage of post‑genre possibilities”. In other words, ‘A Bar Song’ is not an outlier on the album.
“We never walked into a room saying ‘Let’s make a Nashville country song,’” insists Cook. “We just made Shaboozey songs. Nevin’s skill set and mine catered to that. When the three of us combined, it made the Boozey sound.”
“Definitely,” Sastry adds. “A lot of it comes from the writing and Boozey being authentic in what he appreciates about country music. He loves simplicity, directness, hitting the emotions. The first album he and I did had maybe a few country influences, but was more a pop‑rap‑trap album. The album he did with Sean had more country influences, but was still mostly trap, with maybe two fully organic songs. The new album is far, far more organic.”
The hitmaking trio at work in LA’s Playhaus Studio, with Nevin Sastry picking up the acoustic guitar that features prominently on Shaboozey’s album.
High Contrast
On the day in November 2023 when ‘A Bar Song’ came into being, Shaboozey, Sastry, and Cook were at the end of the writing and production process for the artist’s new album. They had occasionally collaborated with co‑writers and co‑producers, and some of the recordings had taken place in Nashville, but the two of them held the overall production vision, and were for the vast majority of time holed up in Cook’s studio, because there was building going on in Sastry’s house. Cook’s studio contains “Barefoot Footprints. I have an M3 MacBook Pro, and an Apollo 8 that I run everything through. I also have Yamaha HS3s. They’re crappy speakers but good for referencing. I have some toys, like some outboard and pedals and synths and stuff, but obviously we were more organic for this project.
“When we took that ear break one evening and Nevin and I came up with the guitar rhythm and chords, Shaboozey said, ‘I want to do a 2000s rap song flip.’ He loves that era of rap, and came up with lyric references to J‑Kwon’s ‘Tipsy’, mainly ‘Everybody at the bar getting tipsy,’ and ‘One, here comes the two to the three to the four.’ He referenced the lyric and the cadence of the song, not really the beat. We were playing guitars as he was figuring out the idea, and then he made the cadence fit what we were doing.”
Sastry: “I remember Boozey fishing for melodies, and we were like, ‘Oh, that one!’ Then he came up with the opening lines, ‘My baby want a Birkin, she’s been tellin’ me all night long / gasoline and groceries, the list goes on and on,’ and it’s really cool how he was blending rap elements and country elements. Birkin is rap and gasoline and groceries are country. We did this juxtaposition of rap and country with the entire song, the production, the lyrics. Everything is a contrast, which makes it interesting.”
Endless Guitars
Being aware that they had struck gold, the trio spent somewhere close to two weeks in total on the arrangement and production, making sure they got them absolutely right. In so doing they expanded on some of the production elements that were already present in many of the other songs on the album: specifically, roomy, moody atmospheres, often with acoustic guitars, gang vocals and percussion elements, recorded with mics at a distance.
“A lot of that is to Boozey’s credit,” explains Cook. “He said to us, ‘I don’t want it to sound too clean, too pop, too in your face. I want there to be an element of roominess in it.’ ‘A Bar Song’ has many acoustic guitars. In the verses there’s my initial acoustic with a Nashville high‑strung guitar [the three lower strings replaced with a lighter gauge and tuned an octave higher], and the choruses have a bunch of guitars, played by Nevin, John Mark Nelson and myself. The main ones are Nevin and I each playing a double left‑right of acoustic, and then a high‑strung underneath. We ended up adding tons of layers of acoustic guitars, and also some electrics, and a banjo.”
“There always is a deceptive amount of guitars in our music,” agrees Sastry. “With the acoustics in ‘A Bar Song’ we were using different distances from the mics, to get different tones and different ambiences. We had a couple of days when we set up four different mics in Sean’s living room and were recording every possible permutation. We tried to get that Lumineers big room vibe playing 10 feet away from the microphone. We’d also throw a Valhalla Room verb on these guitars. I don’t know if it was 100 percent wet, but we tried to give them as much depth as possible.
“The challenge with acoustic guitar is that once it is in the box, you can’t do too much. You can time and chop and do whatever, but the main thing is how you perform it and how you mic it. We also added a lot of fingerpicking and more arpeggiated guitar patterns. A lot of the creativity in the production comes from layering voicings, using different players, different performances, and mics and distances and everything. And the creative mixing after that, so in the end, people think it’s just one guitar! It was really important that it felt as much as possible like Shaboozey singing over one strummed guitar!”
Sean Cook: “We recorded five or six guitars up to 15 feet away from the mics, all in different tunings, mostly using my Mojave Audio MA‑200 mic, Nevin’s Warm Audio WA‑251 mic, the sE Electronics RNT Rupert Neve tube mic and a Royer ribbon.”
“We recorded five or six guitars up to 15 feet away from the mics, all in different tunings, mostly using my Mojave Audio MA‑200 mic, Nevin’s Warm Audio WA‑251 mic, the sE Electronics RNT Rupert Neve tube mic and a Royer ribbon,” adds Cook. “John Marks brought some Neumann KM184 mics. We used several preamps, but for the most part we went through my Hazelrigg VLC, which is amazing, and adds a wonderful colour. We panned the guitars, and added more reverb, all to give this air of them being in a room.”
In The Room
While roomy acoustic guitars are the most immediately apparent element of the ‘A Bar Song’ production, there also are roomy claps, stomps, gang vocals and more, all contributing to the unique feel.
“We spent a lot of time doing the claps,” elaborates Cook. “There’s Nevin and I clapping in the living room with the mic in my hallway, really far away. There’s a hall clap like that in the verses, and in the pre‑chorus we added two more, left and right, and in the chorus two gang claps. So the claps are constantly growing throughout the song. There’s a lot of detail that gives the song a roomy feel, which makes you feel like you’re in a saloon, singing the song.”
“We also did a lot of gang vocals,” adds Sastry, “again recorded with mics at a distance. We had all guys and then we were like ‘We need some female energy. Nobody wants to be in a bar with only guys!’ So we got some girls together as well. We also took parts of the audio from the video of the showcase to get the vibe of the crowd noises from the show. We added a crazy amount of details, which resulted in a huge amount of tracks. It’s very multi‑layered.
“We also had a fiddle. Shaboozey came over and he and I found this Splice fiddle loop and we chopped it up and created a melody from that. We then had a real fiddle player come in and play the line and we blended the loop and live fiddle together. She’s playing the main line in the post‑chorus, and also the fills, and really brought it to life. We used some creative panning in using them both, because there was some magic in that original loop. It’s funny that the fiddle ended up becoming such a staple of the song.”
“The day we wrote the song, we had just guitars and vocal,” says Cook. “We tried re‑tracking them and we tried different options later, but in the end, they didn’t have the same magic. So we ended up keeping the original vocal and guitars. We recorded Shaboozey’s vocals with the Mojave MA‑200 going through the Hazelrigg. I also added an 808 on the first day, but I muted it because I knew Boozey would go, ‘No, no, no, no, I want something that’s not been done before.’ Credit to Boozey, because he always wants to do something that’s different, and 808s are everywhere now, even in country. So during the month we produced the song, he said he did not want to do anything trap‑related at all. I respected that, because it’s become a lazy thing to put trap drums and an 808 on a country track.
“The drums on many of the songs on the album had been played by my brother, who has a 12‑mic drum setup in his studio. But after that first session, Shaboozey told us that he did not want any drums on ‘A Bar Song’. Nevin and I were like, ‘This is the biggest song ever. We have to put on drums!’ So we bounced guitars and vocals of the first day, and Boozey sent us some references. Once we had all the guitars and claps and roominess and the more indie acoustic vibes to where Boozey liked them, we threw in that 808 at the end, which ties the production together.”
“We tried to keep it simple, but we didn’t really manage!” admits Cook. “There’s a lot of ear candy, and the drums really push the song. Most of them are programmed, using samples that we recorded ourselves. There’s a kick stomp that’s a hit on a guitar case. We layered in many of these stomps. And there are some live drum brushes, and a soft crash cymbal when the chorus hits. There’s also an upright bass and the gang vocals coming in, which gives that moment a lift. Plus there’s a piano on the second hook, and Farfisa and B3 organs in the last hook.
“Boozey likes to add cinematic live textures. We were trying to add that extra one percent of energy and fun. One example of this was when Nevin got on the mic and recorded himself opening a White Claw alcohol drink, and then pouring it into a pint glass with the sound of the fizz and everything. It’s right in the beginning, when we’re also talking and laughing. The talking and laughing goes on throughout the whole song and gradually gets louder and louder.
“We automated the rise in volume of these gang vocals. So the last hook is massive, with a lot of talking and laughing in the background. We aimed for the sound of everyone singing by the end of the song. These room fun noises under the whole track give it the feel of liveliness that it has. There’s a lot of those cinematic textures across the album.”
Nevin Sastry works mainly in Ableton Live. This screen shows part of the initial production session for ‘A Bar Song’.
Glueing The Sound
Sastry and Cook both stress that the distinctive sound of ‘A Bar Song’ was primarily down to experimenting with mic placements. “Looking back, most of the technical stuff I did on this project was to do with miking,” recalls the former. “I work in Ableton, and Sean works in Pro Tools. Most of what I did was record into Ableton, tracking with light EQ and compression, using mostly stock plug‑ins, because my laptop was in bad shape. I’d say half the production was done in Ableton, and the other half in Pro Tools. And then we ended up rough mixing in Pro Tools. Eventually, things always end up in there, and with modern production you are also mixing.”
“During recording, we were being very creative, cranking up the Hazelrigg and trying different settings to get different sounds,” agrees Cook. “After recording we added plug‑ins; there’s a lot of EQ on the guitars, and for the gang acoustics we did a bus with a room verb, to make it darker. We used the FabFilter Pro‑Q 3 and the Safari Pedals Flamingo Verb for that. Also, we sent all the acoustics to a mono bus that’s mixed in at a low level behind the panned guitars, because we have so many wide instruments. We gave it more clarity with some EQ. Nevin’s acoustics in the chorus were played harder and more aggressively, so we had to be careful how we blended them in.”
Halfway through production, ‘A Bar Song’ was transferred to Pro Tools for mixing. This screen capture shows the various handclaps that Nevin and Sastry recorded, making clear how they build throughout the song.
Nevin Sastry: Once you get to 30 acoustic guitar tracks, you really have to make sure they’re all glued together, otherwise the mix gets terrible.
“Sean and I put as much love as possible into timing the acoustic strums, beyond even the performance, because once you get to 30 acoustic guitar tracks, you really have to make sure they’re all glued together, otherwise the mix gets terrible,” says Sastry. “Also, there’s not a ton of processing on Boozey’s vocal. There’s a basic Pro Tools EQ taking out low end, there’s the Waves CLA 76 doing some slight compression, and the Waves Rvox pushing it forwards a little. And then there’s a de‑esser. From there it goes to a lead vocal bus, which goes through the [IK] T‑RackS 6, and there’s a FabFilter Pro‑MB, a mono Flamingo Verb, centred, and we also had a Valhalla reverb on his vocals. Shoutout also to Raul Lopez, who mixed this album. On ‘A Bar Song’ specifically he ran all the claps through the tape machine at his studio and back into Pro Tools.”
Stillwell Audio’s Event Horizon was used on the drum bus at the mix “with slight clipping, to give the drums grit and punch”.
Framing Art
“Boozey likes to throw a lot at the wall,” concludes Sean Cook, “and then we figure out what works. With this one, it was finding the right balance of the organic vibe that Boozey liked, but also keeping the hip‑hop side. It’s such a big song, we didn’t want to shy away from that. We tried all these different things and then we reeled it in and muted what we needed to mute.”
“Boozey was quite involved, because he cares about the framing,” saids Nevin Sastry. “He cares a lot about his art. He’s a great artist. There’s really no other way to put it. He loves music and likes to be involved in all the details of it. That’s why he’s been successful. You’re hearing something unique and true to him, and we’re helping him bring that vision to life.”