Peytan Porter paints a picture of her small-town upbringing in Dawsonville, GA through her brand-new song, “Lemonade.”
Premiering today exclusively with Country Now, the rootsy tune came to life over a 2020 Zoom songwriting session between Porter, Ian Christian, and Matt Willis, during which they explored the unique characters in their respective small towns. At the time, Porter had just moved back to her hometown for the first time since high school and was getting reacquainted with the people and memories around her.
“I remember Matt talking about one of his neighbors who was definitely growing pot in the basement, and then there was some type of other affair that was going on around him,” Porter shared as she recalled the writing process. “It’s so funny to see the dynamics of a small town again now that I’ve been away from it for a minute and so we all just kind of were laughing about all of the characters in our towns. I think Matt had the title ‘Lemonade’ and I was like, ‘Can’t, Beyoncé has an album called ‘Lemonade.’ I respect her, I’m not gonna step on it.’ We ended up pivoting it to be such a different concept that I was like, ‘alright, yeah, this is too good to not do ‘Lemonade.’”
For the very first demo of “Lemonade,” Porter made a recording on her phone from her childhood closet and ended up leaving it untouched for nearly a year because of how strongly she disliked the product of her original work tape.
“The people on my team were like, ‘What about ‘Lemonade?’ We love this song. This song is so good.’ And I was like, I can’t even think about listening to it because I hated the way I sounded on it. Then finally it kept coming up enough to where I was like, I need to listen to this song again, and then I understood it, and I loved it, and I just re-recorded a version of it so that I could take it.”
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