“When you pass on, what you gonna pass down?” the country stars ask in the song, which tells the tale of a landowning family
Hardy assembles an all-star cast of male country singers to chronicle the history of a plot of land in the old-timey ballad “McArthur.” Featuring Tim McGraw, Eric Church, and Morgan Wallen, the song finds each artist inhabiting a specific member of the landowning (fictional) McArthur family.
McGraw is John McArthur, a farmer with a mule and a plow who’s now just a “whisper in the wind through the pine trees.” Church portrays his son, Junior, killed in Vietnam. Hardy embodies Jones McArthur, who raises an heir more invested in money than dirt. And Wallen voices Hunter McArthur, the money-focused son haunted by second thoughts over selling the family’s acreage.
“I’m Hunter McArthur and the deal looks good/In 18 months this’ll be a neighborhood,” Wallen sings. “I got a million-dollar line I can sign my name on/But there’s a whisper in the pines that’s tellin’ me don’t.”
In the chorus, the song poses one key question: “When you pass on, what you gonna pass down?”
Produced by Jay Joyce (Eric Church’s longtime producer), “McArthur” also features Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor on fiddle.
“‘McArthur’ is a very special one,”Hardy said in a statement. “It came together pretty fast. I know I wrote the song, but I also feel like how did I end up on this song? It’s a lineup of absolute legends.”
Hardy kicks off his Country! Country! Tour! in February. Church recently released the live album and film Evangeline vs. The Machine Comes Alive. And Wallen’s I’m the Problem spent 34 consecutive weeks topping the Billboard Country Albums chart.
McGraw, meanwhile, has been rallying support for those affected by Nashville’s crippling ice storm. “If you need help, ask. If you can help, go. That’s how Nashville works. We take care of our own,” he wrote on social media earlier this week.