GOTTA TURN OUR RED STATE BLUE – Parody | Freedom Toast & Cinebot Video

Mid-terms are rapidly approaching. Be sure to vote, no matter the obstacles. We need to make this the beginning of the end for the Trump Paradigm. Thanks to Freedom Toast and Cinebot Video for the contribution of this parody video.
Executive Producers Don Caron and Jerry Pender

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LYRICS

Gotta Turn Our Red State Blue
by Freedom Toast

Don’t know when it’s been so true
Know there’s something we must do
If not us, then tell me who
Gotta turn our red state blue

We’ll be fine when it’s done
We know the way there—will be long
Please just tell what’s true
And that could turn our red state blue.

No need for MAGA, no need for lies
Just simple reason, ‘cause that satisfies
Say that you’re with us, and then tell us why
Just represent us, and don’t wear a red tie

To win you don’t have to be bad
We know that makes some—folks feel sad
But some day they will get a clue
And don’t it turn our red state
Don’t it turn our red state
Don’t it turn our red state blue!

ABOUT THE ORIGINAL SONG

“Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” composer Richard Leigh had been responsible for all three of Crystal Gayle’s previous Top Ten C&W hits, the third of which “I’ll Get Over You” had reached number 1. According to Gayle’s regular producer Allen Reynolds, he was advised by Leigh’s landlady, songwriter Sandy Mason Theoret, that Leigh was “a little down in the dumps lately because nothing much [was] happening” after the success of “I’ll Get Over You”.
At Theoret’s suggestion, Reynolds visited Leigh to cheer him up. Reynolds explained, “we were sittin’ on the floor…singing songs to one another. [Leigh] mentioned a song that his publisher was gonna get to Shirley Bassey…[and] sang it for me: ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’. I said, ‘Shirley Bassey my ass, I want that song!'” Reynolds recalls that when he played “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” for Gayle “she was just as excited [by the song] as I was.”

The track was recorded at Jack’s Tracks recording studio in Nashville on October 27, 1976. As Reynolds’ regular session keyboardist Charles Cochran had suffered a stroke with some resultant numbness in his hands, Reynolds hired Hargus “Pig” Robbins to play keyboards, and Robbins instantly devised the song’s signature acoustic piano riff; Cochran was also featured on the session playing the horn parts on a Wurlitzer.
Reynolds noted “it was just one of those charmed sessions…We presented the song to the musicians…it was about the third time running that song that we ran tape…[Gayle] sang wonderfully. It came so fast that she wasn’t sure that she had done her best job. I had to let her try to sing it again on two or three different occasions until she was comfortable with the original, and that’s what we went with. Everything on that recording was the original take as it went down, except the string section I added later.”

The song became Gayle’s signature piece throughout her career. In 1978, the song won Gayle a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. In 1999, the song was recognized by ASCAP as one of the ten most-performed songs of the 20th century. The song has a jazzy feel to it when compared to many other country songs of that era. Gayle had many more hit singles for the next ten years, such as “Talking in Your Sleep”, “Half the Way” “You and I” (a duet with Eddie Rabbitt) and “I’ll Get Over You”, but none have achieved the same level of success as “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue”.

In 2024, Rolling Stone ranked the song at #109 on its 200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time ranking.

In a 2004 Country Music Television interview, Gayle stated that Leigh wrote the song because his dog had one brown eye and one blue eye. However, in a 2016 interview, Richard Leigh set the record straight and said that this was not the case. His dog, Amanda, a terrier, had two brown eyes.