Story Behind the Song: Brad Paisley, ‘This Is Country Music’

"This Is Country Music" was co-written by Brad Paisley and Chris DuBois, based on an idea from Paisley. The country star debuted the tune at the 2010 CMA Awards, in November of 2010 -- and only then recorded a studio version of the song.

Paisley released "This Is Country Music" as a single in December of 2010 and, after making it available for free on his website, included the song on his This Is Country Music album, which came out in May of 2011.

"This Is Country Music" debuted at No. 52 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, then jumped to No. 29 the following week and eventually made its way to the No. 2 spot. Below, DuBois tells The Boot about how the song came to be.

This song was Brad's idea. When Brad and I write songs, it's never a one-day event. This song is a good example of that.

We talked about it on the phone first: He called me up one day, and he said, "I want to write a song called "This Is Country Music."" I remember thinking, "Hmm ... Okay, but what would it be about?"

He told me it would be about all the things he had found himself saying in interviews over the years about country music -- what he loves, what inspires him -- all of that. He wanted to write a song about what makes country music as a format unique from all the other genres of music. There are no topics that are forbidden, unless they are risqué. That's where the idea stemmed from.

When we got together to write the song, the first line he came up with was the opening line, "You're not supposed to say the word 'cancer' in a song." That really set the tone for the rest of the song and what we want[ed] it to represent.

What's interesting about the song is, we had so many things we wanted to talk about. We tried to touch on so many things, but there are so many things we couldn't bring up because we had to keep it under four minutes long. We had a couple verses that didn't make the record because we couldn't fit them in.

We love how the song turned out, and we were beyond thrilled after Brad debuted it on the CMA Awards, and the reaction it received from the audience.

This story was originally written by Alanna Conaway, and revised by Angela Stefano.

See Brad Paisley's Childhood Photo

You Think You Know Brad Paisley?