Okay, but this SLAPS. If you grew up in the '90s or early 2000s, and didn't have some sort of an emo "phase" (it's not a phase, dad), then you missed out on some great music... The other day, I was scrolling through TikTok, and of course, my feed is filled with all sorts of musical content (I'll admit, right now, it's mostly Wicked-focused, and I can't get enough, but I digress...), and a video popped up that I can't get out of my head. It was a clip from an interview the The All-American Rejects recently did on the Zach Sang Show, where they talked about how their hit song "Dirty Little Secret" came to be. And it was actually written as a country song, believe it or not. Frontman Tyson Ritter explained that it actually started out as a simple acoustic little tune, nothing like what it ultimately became, obviously: "'Dirty' was like, it was written as this kind of country, acoustic song. Like it used to swing like... no sh*t. That's how Nick translated it. 'Cuz he wrote the opening riff, and that was the riff... and then when we in to Atlanta, we just put it on the floor, Chris straightened it up. We're like, let's just make this possible to see what this feels like as a rock, sort of, interpolation or something. And then it worked, it was just that easy. But yeah, it started out with me laying on the floor of the place we were living down in Florida, and I was chasing my girlfriend at the time around, singing that chorus to her, just that little hook. And Nick's like, 'You got anything?' And I was like, 'I don't know, I've got this, this is stupid.' And that's how 'Gives You Hell' was written, too. We were drunk on the top of a Vancouver high rise on a writing trip, and trying not to go mad finding songs and this was just an afterthought kind of thing..." Nick Wheeler, guitarist and co-founder of the band, added that he naturally strummed it that way when they first wrote "Dirty Little Secret": "We were trying to sh*t out songs real fast, so there was just acoustic guitar and a vocal. So the way I strummed it, just made it sound like a sh***y Tom Petty B-side." I mean, they're all from Oklahoma, so it tracks... @zachsangshow @All-American Rejects say “dirty little secret” was originally written as an acoustic country song #dirtylittlesecret #aar #theallamericanrejects #country #acoustic #zachsangshow #zachsang #fyp #foryou @Amazon Music ♬ original sound - Zach Sang Show Of course, "Dirty Little Secret" was written by Tyson and Nick, and it was included on the All-American Rejects' 2005 second studio album, Move Along, and released as the lead single. It ultimately became their first top 10 track on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #9 in January of 2006. While maybe not quite as big as their song "Gives You Hell" that came out a few years later, I remember being obsessed with "Dirty Little Secret" and I played the hell outta that guitar on Rock Band, too... And a band on TikTok put Tyson's vocal riff to music (the one he demonstrated in the interview) as a full-on country song, and I'll tell you what, it just works. I'd love to hear the Rejects version with the acoustic, country production, or even a current country artist like Koe Wetzel or someone do it, because I'm in love with how this sounds and hearing it in a completely different genre. Check it out: @_mackmartin_ @All-American Rejects maybe somethin like this ?? #countrymusic #country #countrycovers #dirtylittlesecert #aar #countrymusictiktoks #countryduo ♬ original sound - MackMartin You can watch the full interview here. https://youtu.be/vp9VnMf10uQ?t=1 If I have to have this stuck in my head for the rest of the day, so do you... "Dirty Little Secret" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPDcwjJ8pLg