Gretchen Wilson’s ‘Last’ Thought Could Mine Grammy Gold

Gretchen Wilson is thankful for a woman's right to change her mind.

The country songbird released 'I Got Your Country Right Here,' her first album on her own label, Redneck Records, last year. The 11-track CD includes the song 'I'd Love to Be Your Last,' which was a last-minute addition to the album -- and has now earned the singer a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song.

"It wasn't originally on the album," Gretchen tells Nashville's Tennessean newspaper. "We listened to the mastered version of the record and we thought it was missing something."

The song, penned by hit tunesmith Rivers Rutherford, had been stuck in Gretchen's head for years, while she waited for the right opportunity to put it on one of her recordings. While it may seem an unlikely placement -- the final song on the CD, positioned immediately after an aggresive, rock-infused tune -- the singer-songwriter says that's what made it the perfect place.

"It's an acoustic [guitar] and a vocal and we put one cello part on it later," she explains. "I believed the lyric was all it took to make that song. It just tickled me pink to know that the lyric carried it all the way to a Grammy nomination. It didn't have to be dazzling, and it didn't have to have a bunch of reverb or 400 tracks on it or spend 12 weeks at No. 1 at radio. It didn't even have to be released as a single. It just amazes me. I'm just so shocked and overwhelmed."

Gretchen's song is the only Best Country Song nominee this year that wasn't a single. Others in the category include 'The Breath You Take,' by George Strait, 'Free' by the Zac Brown Band, Miranda Lambert's 'The House That Built Me,' 'If I Die Young' by the Band Perry and Lady Antebellum's 'Need You Now.'

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