“Stay”
Sugarland
Written by Jennifer Nettles
2007
“The other woman” is such a familiar stock character in country music that she’s often reduced to a single name: Jolene. And while there have been some hit records that have given her a different story or have spoken from her perspective, no other Other Woman in country music history has laid bare her inner monologue like the one in Sugarland’s “Stay.”
Jennifer Nettles wrote the song entirely on her own– the first time she’d done so for a Sugarland song, incidentally– and she claims to have been inspired by Reba McEntire’s “Whoever’s In New England,” wondering whether or not the woman in Boston really did have better things to do. If not a direct response to Reba’s hit, “Stay” actually does something even more interesting and important. The song recognizes that each person in this love triangle has their own independent agency.
“Stay” is a song by and for adults who understand that their own decisions are complex patterns of behavior that have been shaped by their learning histories as individuals. Nettles’ narrator is fully aware that she’s continued this particular affair because the promises this man has made sound like the type of affection she’s most desperate for. She doesn’t apologize for that, nor does she vilify the man’s wife for anything. She’s coming at this from a perspective that hurt people hurt people, and she knows that, while she’s prioritizing her own desires and needs, neither her nor her partner’s hands are clean.
Still, this is a marvel of confessional songwriting. As Nettles’ narrator grows impatient in the face of unfulfilled promises and divided attention, her calculus changes until she asks, “I’ve given you my best / Why does she get the best of you?”
The idea that, no matter our transgressions and no matter the context, we should never settle for feasting on scraps? That’s powerful. We don’t have to live that way.
The single is all the more striking for the fact that Nettles delivers a torrid vocal performance while Kristian Bush strums the guitar and otherwise stays the hell out of her way. It’s no wonder that Nettles became one of the only women– and the first since the great KT Oslin– to win major industry awards as the sole writer of a song, or why the video, inspired by Sinéad O’Connor’s iconic “Nothing Compares 2 U” clip, remains one of the country genre’s few memorable music videos of this century.
Once the bro-country era kicked into high gear, Sugarland faded from radio, as did most songs in which women had this kind of fully realized interior life and weren’t simply props for or reactions to emotionally stunted man-children. To that end, “Stay” stands as a reminder that we can and should always demand better.
Additional Listening:
More tales from The Other Woman:
- Cam, “Diane”
- Sunny Sweeney, “From a Table Away”
- Trisha Yearwood, “Your Husband’s Cheatin’ On Us”
- Chapel Hart, “You Can Have Him, Jolene”
Other essential Sugarland:
- “Misbehavin’,” from The Righteous Gemstones, Nettles’ single finest cultural moment.
- “Georgia is Yours,” from 2024’s There Goes the Neighborhood, the best Sugarland track since “Stay”
- “Life in a Northern Town,” featuring Little Big Town and Jake Owen, a just flat-out gorgeous Dream Academy cover that was gaining airplay before Sugarland released the dreadful “All I Want to Do” and took it out at the knees.
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