Sunny Sweeney’s Bipartisan Plea

Country singer Sunny Sweeney thinks politics shouldn’t invade the recording studio.

“It’s music. It’s supposed to be entertaining,” Sweeney told LifeZette. “I don’t think music and politics go hand in hand. I don’t use it as a platform.”

She made an exception for “But You Like Country Music,” a new song she co-wrote with pal Brennen Leigh.

The duet, available for pre-order now on iTunes before its Nov. 9 release date, isn’t your typical political ditty. The comical ode to bipartisanship takes the form of two politically opposed pals who find common ground with country music … specifically with “the Hag,” Merle Haggard.

“I was gonna keep my distance ’cause we are so different, till one day I heard you crankin’ up the Hag.”

The song grew out of a conversation sparked by Sweeney rolling her eyes over a political figure on television.

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“Oh my God. I had no idea you were conservative,” Sweeney recalled her friend saying.

The subject simply never came up during their decade-plus friendship.

“We’re chicks. We talk about boys … talk about shoes and clothes and things girls talk about,” the Austin, Texas-based Sweeney said.

That convinced Leigh, a liberal, to cop to a song idea she had been mulling. Why not write about the power of country music to conquer the partisan divide, particularly at such a divisive time in our culture?

“I am all over that,” Sweeney told her.

The song features exaggerated portraits of the typical conservative and liberal, but never in a mean-spirited way. The instant reaction to the song was nothing but positive, Sweeney said.

Why not write about the power of country music to conquer the partisan divide?

“We played it two days after we wrote it, and they went apesh*t,”  she said. “A month later we said, ‘Dang it, let’s record it.’”

Even if the song takes off, don’t expect something similar out of the longtime friends.

“I don’t think there will ever be another political song out of me or Brennen. We pretty much said everything that needed to be said.”