Rolling Stone Live: Justin Townes Earle Channels His Dark Past in New Songs

Justin Townes Earle, the son of legendary country singer Steve Earle, recently came by the Rolling Stone office to play a few songs and talk about his new record Harlem River Blues. Earle is incredibly candid in this interview, citing Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York album as his gateway to discovering Leadbelly and classic blues, and explaining how his father's advice to write only about what he knows led him to pen songs about a rough period in his early 20s when he was a homeless drug addict and hustler on the streets of Nashville.

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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