Story Behind the Song: Brandy Clark, ‘Long Walk’

Brandy Clark's newly-released third studio album, Your Life is a Record, is -- all things considered -- a pretty sad project. It's a breakup album, the singer says, and she doesn't just mean that it's an album about a romantic dissolution. 

Your Life is a Record also tells the story of Clark shedding previously-held conceptions of who she is as an artist, letting go of any dreams of dominating country radio and settling into making the kind of music that both she and her fanbase love.

That's heavy subject matter, but that doesn't mean that every single track on the project has to be sad and introspective. Case in point: "Long Walk" is a kooky kiss-off addressed to those who say mean things and spread rumors.

Read on to learn the story behind the song, told in Clark's own words. 

This is a song I wrote with Jessie Jo Dillon and Jesse Frasure, and this for me is one of the moments of levity on the record. You know, like a lot of people, I can get tied up in what other people say or think about me if it's not, uh, glowing...

No, I say that in jest...but I remember as a kid, if somebody said something bad, or if somebody said, "Well, so-and-so said blah blah blah..." my mom would be like, "Well, tell 'em to take a long walk off a short pier."

So that was where this song came from -- it was something my mom said.