American Honey
Lady Antebellum song
"American Honey" is a song written by Cary Barlowe, Hillary Lindsey, and Shane Stevens, and recorded by American country music group Lady Antebellum. It was released on January 11, 2010, as the second single from their second album Need You Now. The group's fifth single overall, it debuted on the US Billboard Hot Country Songs charts dated for January 2, 2010, and it features lead vocals from Scott.
Content
The song's female narrator, lead singer Hillary Scott, states a desire to escape her adult lifestyle and return to her childhood, which is described in the lyrics as "American honey." It is in D-flat major, with an approximate tempo of 84 beats per minute. The guitars use DADGAD or Celtic tuning decreased by a semitone, and the chords are in a pattern of D ♭ - B ♭m7 - G ♭ - E ♭m - D ♭ on the verses, and G ♭ - D ♭ - B ♭m7 - A ♭ three times on the chorus.
Critical reception
The song received mainly negative reviews. Matt Bjorke of Roughstock stated that "after one listen [he doesn't] see how this single can fail," but criticized the production by saying that he thought the drum machine was too loud. Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe gave the song a D rating, saying that the "song isn't sung well" and "certainly not interesting enough to warrant suffering through the painful mediocrity of the lead vocal." Engine 145 reviewer Blake Boldt gave it a thumbs-down, referring to the lyric as "a lazy depiction of a chaste young lass chasing after a fuzzy memory" and calling Scott's vocal "sad and pensive and the slightest bit off-pitch against a distracting drumbeat."
Music video
The video was directed by Trey Fanjoy and was filmed at Disney's Golden Oak Ranch.
Synopsis
The video shows Hillary, Charles and Dave looking back at their younger selves. When Hillary lies in the grass and walks through clothes lines she looks back at her younger self running and dancing through a field and playing through clothes lines.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “American Honey” as lady Antebellum song. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as lady Antebellum song. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1935014. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “American Honey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.