Trace Adkins – Honky Tonk Badonkadonk

Written In An Hour While Laughing At A Drunk Girl

Released in October 2005 as the third single from Songs About Me, “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in early 2006, held from the top spot by Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take The Wheel” for two consecutive weeks. But here’s the kicker: the song entered the country charts months earlier at No. 58 based entirely on unsolicited airplay before Capitol Records even released it as an official single. The track became Trace Adkins’ first top 40 hit on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Pop 100 charts, reaching No. 30, while earning gold certification for over 500,000 downloads and racking up more than 75,000 ringtone downloads in an era when ringtones were serious business.

The commercial success extended well beyond country radio. While it peaked at No. 2 on the country chart, it spent weeks climbing the mainstream charts during winter 2006, proving country music’s crossover appeal was stronger than ever. The album Songs About Me hit No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart and reached No. 11 on the Billboard 200, eventually earning double platinum certification with 1.5 million copies sold. In 2022, the single itself received triple platinum certification, making it one of the defining country tracks of the mid-2000s. The success came at a time when Toby Keith’s machismo-driven Southern rock dominated country radio, and Adkins fit perfectly into that landscape with his signature growl and honky tonk swagger.

The origin story reads like a country music urban legend, except it’s completely true. Co-writers Jamey Johnson, Randy Houser, and Dallas Davidson were hanging out at Nashville’s Wild Horse Saloon in late 2004, drinking free beer courtesy of Johnson’s bartender buddy Rob. They watched a woman stumbling around the dance floor, as Johnson later described it, looking like somebody had stuffed a beach ball in her pants. She was completely wasted, bouncing into people and causing a ruckus, but having the absolute time of her life. Houser shouted out the slang term badonkadonk, then immediately added honky tonk in front of it. Johnson and Davidson were so thrilled to have another word that rhymed with honky tonk they didn’t know what to do. Within an hour they’d written the entire song, spending half that time just laughing.

Recording took place in early 2005 at Blackbird Studio in Nashville, with Scott Hendricks producing the track alongside Dann Huff who produced other cuts on the album. The sessions captured Adkins’ distinctive baritone rumble against a driving country-rock arrangement that emphasized the humor without sacrificing the musicality. Guitarist J.T. Corenflos laid down electric guitar parts that gave the track its honky tonk edge, while the production balanced traditional country instrumentation with modern studio polish. Michael Salomon directed the music video featuring a remixed version of the song, filming at Nashville locations designed to evoke authentic honky tonk atmospheres complete with line dancers and neon lighting. The video emphasized the song’s party vibe through rapid cuts and energetic choreography.

“Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” appeared as the tenth track on Songs About Me, released March 22, 2005 through Capitol Records Nashville. Other singles from the album included the title track “Songs About Me”, which also peaked at No. 2, and “Arlington”, a moving bluegrass-tinged war ballad that reached No. 16. The album showcased Adkins’ range beyond the party tracks, with deeper cuts like “Metropolis” sketching emotional portraits of small town life. What made the album remarkable was how it balanced Southern rock machismo with genuine emotional depth, all anchored by Adkins’ undiluted vocal style that could sell both vulgarity and sincerity with equal conviction.

The song’s cultural footprint extended far beyond country music. It appeared in the 2009 film Crank: High Voltage, earned a memorable cold open on the 1,000th episode of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and showed up during a dream sequence in the tenth season of The X-Files when Fox Mulder trips on what he thinks are magic mushrooms. The track became an in-game radio staple on the theme park strategy video game Thrillville. In 2025, producers MOONLGHT and Country Night released an electronic remix, proving the song’s grooves still resonated two decades later. The original even spawned a European compilation album built entirely around various remixes of the track.

Jamey Johnson summed it up perfectly when he called it the best damn joke any of them had ever told. What started as three broke songwriters cracking wise about a drunk woman dancing became Adkins’ signature party track and a defining moment in mid-2000s country music. The song proved you could push the boundaries beyond the genre’s usual themes of love, heartbreak, and patriotism into completely absurd territory and still connect with millions of listeners. As one critic noted, the mix of machismo, roadhouse vulgarity, and undiluted sincerity captured exactly where mainstream country music was heading. Twenty years later, it remains the gold standard for country music humor done right.