Toby Keith's 'Hope on the Rocks' lyrics chipped away at the singer's mind for quite a while before he finally put them to paper last year. The tune is the latest single from Keith's album of the same name.

"Last fall I was driving out to my hunting and fishing ranch in southern Oklahoma," recalls Keith. "And all the way there, I had a verse and chorus going that I'd had for a couple months. I knew it was dark and a little out there, but I just couldn't let it go."

"Brady was a baseball star / Til he struck out and took his car and drove away / Sissy lost her little boy / Hitchhiked up to Illinois, so they say / Then it rained so hard that Mary tried / To take her life with suicide / And disappear just like the thunder / You ask around and no-one knows / Where they went or what they do / But you wonder, I know you wonder," Keith wrote in the opening 'Hope on the Rocks' lyrics.

"I spent two days down there and the whole time, whenever I wasn't talking to anybody, I was working that song in my head," the superstar recalls. "I just hammered on it; completely obsessed. When I finally nailed it, I played it for a couple guys and knew it was exactly what I thought it was"

"Where do they go? / They come here / To drown in their sorrow and cry in their beer / They’re in need of a mindbender / I’m a bartender / At the end of the day / I’m all they’ve got / Hope on the rocks," he penned in the chorus.

"When I handed the album over to the label and management, it wasn't the first one that popped up, but it wasn't three days before it reared its head as the pick of the litter," says Keith. "Now when they're out playing stuff for radio, this is the one they're coming back on across the board. One of my favorite things I've ever written."

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