Little Big Town Responds to Controversy About New Song 'Girl Crush'
Radio morning host says she'll no longer play song after complaints.
— -- An Idaho radio station morning show reportedly has pulled Little Big Town’s new song, "Girl Crush," because of complaints over the provocative lyrics, but the singer says the song is being misunderstood.
Karen Fairchild of Little Big Town said the song is more about "a girl saying [to her ex], 'Why do you love her and not me' and not about a lesbian relationship."
"The lyric of 'Girl Crush' is written in kind of a sexy way. So some people might turn it off when they get to the 'I want to taste your lips' and all that. But once they get to the hook they go, 'Oh,'" Fairchild said this week on the Bobby Bones show on The Big 98. "You've got to lean in a little bit, but the fans are really loving this one."
Fairchild, who sings lead on the song, acknowledged to ABC News that the song is provocative, but the band never thought twice about recording it.
"[The songwriter] Liz [Rose] said, 'Hey, I gotta play this song we just wrote. You guys'll never cut it, but I gotta play it for you,'" Fairchild told ABC News. "I couldn't get finished with the song, listening to it, before I could say, 'Can we please have this song?'"
However, Alana Lynn, a morning host at 104.3 FM in Boise, Idaho, told The Washington Post she stopped playing the song during her morning time slot because of complaints from parents.
The Boise station did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment.
Along with the lyrics mentioned above, the song boasts lines like, “I want her long blond hair, I want her magic touch ... cause maybe then, you’d want me just as much. ... I got a girl crush."
The move to cut the song's play time had Bones, who hosts a syndicated radio show, up in arms when he spoke to the band this week.
“It shouldn’t even matter if it’s a lesbian song, is the first thing,” Bones said. "['Girl Crush'] is one of the Top 10 sellers for weeks and weeks and weeks -- and people on the radio are still afraid to play it."
The song is also a bona fide hit, close to the top of the iTunes charts.
Fairchild told The Washington Post that it's "shocking to me" that people focus on one lyric -- about one girl wanting to kiss another.
"The close-mindedness of that, when that’s just not what the song was about,” Fairchild said. “But what if it were? It’s just a greater issue of listening to a song for what it is.”