Kaitlin Butts is going viral, and all it took was a cadaver-cold kiss-off. The Oklahoma country singer’s original song “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead to Me),” off her acclaimed 2024 album Roadrunner!, has been turning up all over TikTok, with creators drawn to its cutting lyrics about saying bye-bye to bad people.
“I’m glad that it’s a song that encapsulates me,” Butts tells Rolling Stone of her moment. “If you like that song, you’re gonna like my entire show, or you’re gonna like my album. It feels good to have this song be the one that pops off.”
It all started around mid-May, when Nashville country singer Avery Anna posted a TikTok of herself lip-syncing the tune. Shortly after that, Ella Langley did the same — igniting a sideshow of comment-section speculation that Langley was taking a dig at her “You Look Like You Love Me” duet partner, Riley Green. Together, Anna and Langley boast more than 3 million followers on TikTok, and their engagement helped Butts’ song take off.
As of this week, nearly 30,000 videos had been created and shared on TikTok featuring “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead to Me).”
“That sparked a huge streaming spike, and it is kind of changing my life before my eyes,” Butts says. “It’s a year later after the album release, and I keep seeing friends and people that I have followed for a long time, and random influencers who are comedians who I have followed forever, are posting them. I feel the support.”
Butts has seen her music take off on social media before. Her duet with her husband and Flatland Cavalry frontman Cleto Cordero, “A Life Where We Work Out,” has more than 100 million streams. When she and Cordero perform that song during shows, Butts is used to watching fans record the moment. But on May 31, while opening for Wyatt Flores at KC Live! in downtown Kansas City, she witnessed the same reaction to a song that was all hers, when she sang “You Ain’t Gotta Die” in concert for the first time since it started going viral.
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“When that moment happened in Kansas City, and it was just me, and it’s my song, and it’s my band, I felt so proud,” Butts says. “Me and my band were just looking at each other like, ‘Are you seeing this shit?’”
“You Ain’t Gotta Die” was given a pair of boosts recently when Dasha shared a clip of herself miming to the song. Then, podcaster Brianna LaPaglia posted her version. Butts replied, “This song was actually made for you” to LaPaglia, a reference to her public split from country star Zach Bryan.
The first verse of “You Ain’t Gotta Die” makes a pointed reference to Butts’ mother telling her to turn the other cheek when people hurt her. The second verse references a cheating spouse, whom Butts reveals to be her father, before singing, “Who? I have never heard of him,” and continuing, “I think I heard he got run over by a train? Mauled by a bear? Maybe? Hopefully?”
It’s an autobiographical song, and Butts does not shy away from telling crowds all about it from the stage. The title and hook came to her while driving, she says, while the rest was fleshed out with songwriter Natalie Hemby when the two were finishing another track for Roadrunner!.
“We were at the end of our write, and I couldn’t stay any longer,” Butts recalls, “but I told her I have this other one, and I just sang, ‘You ain’t gotta die to be dead to me.’ She picked up her guitar and went, ‘You ain’t gotta be six feet deep/pushin’ no daisies up through concrete,’ and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
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Butts already has a packed slate for the rest of the year, including opening dates with Flores, Lainey Wilson, Sierra Ferrell, Charles Wesley Godwin, and Molly Tuttle, which should provide plenty of opportunities to keep the song front-and-center. Butts says she’s still processing the moment but isn’t shy about identifying the one thing she hopes the song brings to her hard-touring lifestyle.
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“Hopefully,” she says, “a bus.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose latest books, Never Say Never and Red Dirt Unplugged are available via Back Lounge Publishing.