Jackson Dean admits he’d never heard the phrase “Heavens to Betsy” before he started to write the lyrics to the stirring, country-rock power ballad.

Songwriter Driver Williams suggested the title during a writing session on Music Row, and almost instantly Dean was hit with a vision of what the song should be. It started with memories of friends sleeping on his couch for years at a time. These boys would become men before they’d truly know their fathers.

“And I know I didn’t do / Enough watching over you / But I will until I see you again,” Dean sings mid-chorus. The first time through he’s calling out the words, but as the music builds, his character’s pleas become more urgent.

“If you’ll let me / Heavens to Betsy.”

• “Heavens to Betsy” is the lead single from Dean’s new On the Back of My Dreams album.
• “Don’t Come Lookin'” and “Fearless” are two previous hit singles.
• Benjy Davis helped Williams and Dean write this new song.

The Maryland native is nobody’s Betsy, but that’s not to say he doesn’t look up to heaven and wonder. It’s grandparents, mostly. Dean’s grandmother was a huge presences in his life until she died when he was nine. In memory, her husband was, too.

“I grew up with legends of him,” he tells Taste of Country Nights. “He was a Marine and died with a six-pack. Alzheimer’s took him when I was six months old.”

“And I bet you’re just as surprised as I am / They’d ever let a sinner like me in.”

“Heavens to Betsy” may challenge one’s concept of the afterlife.

For starters, the man Dean describes obviously didn’t live the most Godly life on earth. He’s singing to a daughter he abandoned at a young age and admitting that drinking robbed him of some good years.

Beyond that, Dean and his co-writing team paint a picture of a CB radio-esque form of communication between the living and departed. There again, you’ll find Dean’s heart.

“My grandfather is married at Cheltenham,” he begins, referring to a larger veterans cemetery in Maryland. “One of his famous sayings, before I was born, was, ‘That’ll be 25 cents’ if he did anything for you.”

Put that in your pocket. Dean sounds a bit emotional thinking about his grandmother, who is also buried there, and their tradition of going to lay wreaths on tombstones.

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“I remember standing there,” he continues. “(I) bent down and I took a quarter out of my pocket and I started to put it in between the grass and the headstone and it shot out of my hand. I dug down eight inches by a foot-wide semicircle. Dug down as far as I thought it could maybe fall. No quarter.”

“Heavens to Betsy / I don’t know if you can hear me / But up here you’re coming in clear as a bell,” Dean sings. He first performed the song nearly three years ago, and in recent months has taken it to radio to play for programmers often brought to tears.

When they say a song “slaps,” they don’t usually mean it in this kind of way, but that’s exactly why it was chosen as a radio single.

“Even without the picture frame reference — which is why I love it — it hits both sides of the plate so hard. It’s just a different perspective you didn’t know you needed,” Dean tells ToC Nights‘ Evan Paul.

Find the full lyrics below.

Here Are the Lyrics to Jackson Dean’s “Heaven to Betsy”:

Heavens to Betsy / I don’t know if you can hear me / But up here you’re coming clear as a bell / Now heavens to Betsy / I finally quit the drinking / I hate that my demons put you through hell.

Chorus:
And I bet you’re just as surprised as I am / They’d ever let a sinner like me in / And I know I didn’t do / Enough watching over you / But I will until I see you again / If you’ll let me / Heavens to Betsy.

Blink twice if you remember / Just skipping rocks on the river / Weren’t knee high to a stump / And they still haunt me / Your pink rain boots in the driveway / What kind of man would drive away / Just give up and run.

Repeat Chorus

Repeat Chorus

Heavens to Betsy / I don’t know if you can hear me / But up here your coming in clear as a bell.

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