Riley Green on Honoring Toby Keith With ‘Think As You Drunk’ & What His Friends Thought: ‘Their Eyes Would Light Up When They’d Hear That Part’

When Riley Green took consecutive solo-written songs to No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in 2025, he became the first artist to accomplish that feat since Taylor Swift in 2011 and 2012.

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It’s not as common as it once was, but back in his prime, Toby Keith — acknowledged by Green as an influence — wrote a fair amount of his songs alone. That includes “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” and “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” titles that Green’s been known to cover in his concerts.

“When I realized that he wrote so many of his own songs, especially by himself, that was something that was really motivating to me,” Green says. “Probably why I have so many solo writes on my records is for that reason.”