On November 6, 2013, at the CMA Awards in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, Luke Bryan reached the last notes of “Drink a Beer,” turned around to face the big screen behind him, and looked up at a photo of himself with his brother Chris and his sister Kelly. Under the picture were the words “In Memory of Chris & Kelly.” He picked up a can of beer that had been sitting beside his stool, raised it to them, and tipped it back.
It became one of the most talked-about moments of the night. What made it hit even harder is something many viewers didn’t know: Luke Bryan didn’t write the song, and the men who did weren’t writing about his family at all.
A song written about no one in particular
“Drink a Beer” was written by Jim Beavers and Chris Stapleton, years before Stapleton became a household name. According to Stapleton, Beavers walked into their writing session with the whole chorus already done, but no idea what the verses should be about. The two of them were looking for a way to write a song with that title that wasn’t a party song.
Stapleton pushed it toward loss.
“Me being me, and slightly morbid sometimes, I thought maybe it should be about somebody that passed away.” — Chris Stapleton
Jim Beavers later told Roughstock that the key came when they realized why the man in the song goes out to the pier with a beer: because that was what he and the person he lost used to do together. To Beavers, that was the point of the whole song. The writers didn’t even bother with a full studio demo. What went out was a simple recording with Stapleton singing it.
Stapleton has been clear that none of it came from a real death. In his words, the song “was written from a fictitious place.”
Why it found Luke Bryan
Luke Bryan remembered how the song reached him: someone emailed it to him. “I listened to it and it just tore me to pieces,” he said. That same week, he called it “one of the coolest sad songs I’ve ever heard.”
He had his reasons. His older brother, Chris, was killed in a car accident in 1996, at 26, just as Luke was getting ready to leave Georgia to chase music in Nashville. He put those plans on hold for years. His sister Kelly died unexpectedly at home in 2007. She was 39.
Chris Stapleton saw what that history did to the song. “It really brought weight to it when Luke did it because of his family situation,” he said later.
The night itself
Luke Bryan had a full night at the 2013 CMAs. He had already opened the show with his upbeat No. 1 hit “That’s My Kind of Night.” When he came back later in the broadcast, the mood was completely different.
He sat on a bar stool among his band, in a t-shirt and jeans, holding the microphone. Taste of Country, which covered the show, described him as choked up through much of the song, with his eyes closed for a good part of it. Chris Stapleton was on that stage too, singing the same harmony part he had sung on the album version.
Then came the final moments. The photo of the three Bryan siblings appeared behind him with its short inscription. Luke turned to look at it, reached for the beer can next to his stool, raised it in salute to Chris and Kelly, and took a drink.
What happened next
Five days later, on November 11, 2013, “Drink a Beer” was released to country radio as the third single from Crash My Party. When it came time for a music video, there was no new shoot. The video, released that December, was the footage of that CMA performance.
On the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart dated February 15, 2014, the song reached No. 1, and it stayed there for five weeks.
Looking back, Chris Stapleton gave Luke Bryan the credit for what the song became.
“When Luke took it on as a song that he wanted to perform, that’s when it got legs and got life.” — Chris Stapleton
Today the video still shows the same thing it showed on that November night: a man on a stool, a song someone else wrote, and a can of beer lifted toward two faces on the screen behind him.