Brad Paisley enlisted several of his celebrity friends for a new, star-studded video for his current single, “No I in Beer,” including Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw, Kelsea Ballerini and more. The video also includes fan-submitted footage from 39 countries around the world, resulting in more than 225 people participating in the video.
“So I wrote this song two years ago with my best buddy Kelley Loveless, and it’s crazy as I look around at life right now how everybody is just doing what they can to get through this,” Brad said (via The Country Daily). “And this song, which wasn’t written for this pandemic, but it takes on new meaning for me when I hear it now, I just feel like, you know what, life sort of sucks right now in some ways and we gotta do what we can to get through this.
“And if we’ve ever felt unified as Americans as citizens of the world,” he added, “it’s in the fact that nobody loves what we’re going through but everybody’s willing to do what we have to do and one of those things is let’s be a team—let’s be a drinking team and that’s what we are right now.”
Brad previously said “No I in Beer” was originally written before the coronavirus pandemic, and then changed slightly to reflect what was happening in the world, in light of the global health crisis.
“When I wrote the song, it didn’t have this large scale, over-arching theme of unity,” Brad shared with Sony Music. “Well it did, but it didn’t have this feeling that it has. The same exact words, two months ago, ‘We’re all in this together, there’s no I in beer,’ two months ago that’s just a ‘Yay let’s party.’ Now it’s like defiant and a rallying cry almost. Like a fight song.
“It’s crazy that that can mean such a different thing in less than eight weeks,” he continued. “Of course that last verse as well, that last chorus. It would have been a slightly different list of the people I am toasting at the end that are keeping this country going. Nurses are the new soldiers. For many years we’ve slowly learned how much we need to appreciate our soldiers, and it’s no different with nurses now. I was thrilled to be able to throw that line in, because they deserve a beer and then some. They deserve a bar.”
Other artists who appeared in the video include Lindsay Ell, Jimmie Allen, Peyton Manning and Darius Rucker.