If you ask Kassi Ashton why men keep coming back to women they call crazy, she’ll say, “Because we’re fun.”

Turns out the “Called Crazy” singer isn’t just dreaming when she sings lyrics like:

“I heard I put sugar in your gas tank / That’s gotta suck on an empty bank.”

Emily Weisband and Jared Keim helped Ashton write, “Called Crazy,” the first single from her new Made From the Dirt album (Sept. 20). Don’t be fooled, though — this is very much her story.

“Not the things mentioned in the song, but I’ve done my share of debauchery, for sure. It’s just fun, right?” she tells Taste of Country Nights.

Yeah, we’re gonna need an example.

“I’m from a little town,” the California, Missouri, native begins. “I remember the first guy that ever cheated on me. He was a lifeguard at the pool and I took all of his stuff that he left at his house and filled a duffle bag. And you know the glitter trick? I filled it with a half gallon of glitter and dumped it in the pool.”

That trick hurt on several levels. One imagines the guy forever looking like he’d just come from a strip club, even if he tried to wash out the glitter. It damaged the pool’s filtration system, too, but “the owner of the pool was my friend and they made him take it out of his paycheck to fix it.”

Related: See the Top 20 Country Songs of 2024, So Far

Dang, that’s good. And by good, we mean bad, and you should never do this.

“Just glitter somebody, honestly,” she says.

Wait — no, definitely don’t do that!

Ashton was just 17 at the time, and she says that with time and therapy, she’s matured. Her fiancé knows his clothes are safe in 2024, but he’s very aware of her past.

“He literally knows that the second pre-chorus of this song ‘Pushing my buttons / Don’t act like you don’t love it,‘ he knows that those are his lines specifically.”

Find the full lyrics below. “I’ve never been called crazy by a man who didn’t come back for more,” she sings to close each chorus.

“I think that we just have that little something extra,” she tells Evan Paul, explaining the phenomenon. “It’s the same reason that girls look for bad boys. It just seems interesting.”

Made From the Dirt is Ashton’s debut album on MCA Nashville after five years of hard work and songwriting. It’s a dynamic album that shows a range of emotions (skip to “Juanita” to hear the song she wrote for her grandmother’s funeral) and sounds.

Part of what’s made her such an interesting artist is her refusal to be defined by one thing. Early songs like “Taxidermy” and “Violins” sound nothing like radio singles “Dates in Pickup Trucks” and “Drive You Out of My Mind.” She’s an artist for men and women who like — we won’t say “crazy,” but unpredictable.

Kassi Ashton, “Called Crazy” Lyrics:

I heard I put sugar in your gas tank / That’s gotta suck on an empty bank / I heard I got some spray paint / Big red letters, yeah, I wrote my name / On your drive that’s how you told it / But it drives you wild, don’t it.

Chorus:
Well, I plead the fifth since you won’t admit / That you like that look in my eyes / You lit a match too close to the gas / And now you’re gonna sit here and cry / Well, I’ma let your mouth keep running, running / But you ain’t gonna hear me say nothing / ‘Cause if there’s one damn thing I know for sure / I’ve never been called crazy by a man who didn’t come back for more.

Well, I never played the nice card / You knew who I was and it stole your heart / You were my getaway car / Ain’t it convenient, forgetting that part / Pushing my buttons / Don’t act like you don’t love it.

Repeat Chorus

Oh, I’ve never been called crazy, never been called crazy / Oh, by a man who didn’t come back, a man who didn’t come back.

Repeat Chorus