In 1995, David Lee Murphy released “Dust On The Bottle”. On Murphy’s freshman Out With A Bang album, “Dust On The Bottle” became Murphy’s first No. 1 single.
The chorus of “Dust On The Bottle” says, “There might be a little dust on the bottle / But don’t let it fool ya about what’s inside / There might be a little dust on the bottle / It’s one of those things that gets sweeter with time.”
Murphy’s biggest hit, the singer-songwriter later said the song practically fell in his lap.
“We had just started recording my Out With a Bang album,” Murphy told The Boot. “I had the idea for that song, but I hadn’t ever done anything with it. I just remember being at my house the second day [of recording]. We started recording on Monday, and Tuesday morning, I was drinking coffee at my kitchen table. I started playing the opening chords on my guitar for ‘Dust On The Bottle’. It just came out of nowhere. The song just fell out in, like, 15 minutes.”
What David Lee Murphy Remembers About Recording “Dust On The Bottle”
Murphy remembers calling his producer, Tony Brown, to tell him about his brand-new song, which came in at the very last minute.
“We had all the songs picked out already for the album,” Murphy remembers. “He told me to bring it in and play it for him that day. When he heard the song, he said, ‘Man, we’ve got to cut this.’ So we cut it, and what’s on the record is the first take of the song. A lot of the vocals on it were the first time I sang it.
After this song, Murphy had plenty of other hit singles at country radio. However, he didn’t return to the top of the country chart until 2017. That year, he had a four-week No. 1 hit in 2017, with “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”, a duet with Kenny Chesney. That collaboration gave Murphy his only CMA Award.
Still, Murphy did have other hit singles, including “Out With A Bang”, “Every Time I Get Around You”, and “The Road You Leave Behind”, among others. Murphy also has plenty of success as a songwriter. It’s Murphy who is a co-writer on Chesney’s “Living In Fast Forward”, Jason Aldean’s “Big Green Tractor”, and Thompson Square’s “Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not”.
In 2026, Aldean recorded a duet version of this song for his Songs About Us project.
Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
The post David Lee Murphy Says This No. 1 Hit “Came Out of Nowhere” appeared first on American Songwriter.