Dierks Bentley says he’s excited to slip his new song “She Hates Me” into his live show, but he ought to give a shoutout to a few special people every time he plays it.

The anti-love song is in the spirit of other humorous love-gone-wrong songs in his catalog. Think “Drunk On a Plane” or “What the Hell Did I Say” and add one very angry ex-girlfriend.

A music video find a blonde smashing his house, spiking his drink and administering a (possibly fatal?) does of oxygen after he gets hit by a car.

• “She Hates Me” will appear on Bentley’s next studio album.
• Ashley Gorley, Chase McGill and Ross Copperman wrote it with him.
• He released the song and its music video on Valentine’s Day as a way to give the middle finger to a holiday he’s not a fan of.

Related: The 25 Best Country Songs of the Last 25 Years

“In between some serious songs, we just started goofing around on this thing and had so much fun writing it,” Bentley tells Taste of Country Nights of the writing experience.

He starts off describing this girl he just met. She’s perfect, except:

“She hates me / My hair, my truck, my dog, my music makes her crazy / She done been there, done that, ain’t coming back, no maybes / Thought one day we’d be on some acres raising babies / She should be falling, only problem is / She hates me.”

Bentley didn’t plan on taking the song to radio. In fact, he says he might not have even recorded it, but in his 20-plus years in the business, he’s learned to trust his team. In 2025, that includes his daughters.

“(I) Didn’t take it too seriously until my kids started singing it back to me and the friends I sent it to kind of freaked out about it,” he tells Evan Paul.

You just don’t fight that kind of instant feedback, so the “Gold” hitmaker made a hard pivot and went all in on a lyric about not giving up.

“Yeah, we were meant to be, she don’t know it yet / But just wait and see, even though she says / She hates me,” he sings at the bridge.

Look for Bentley’s full interview next week on the Taste of Country Nights, On Demand podcast. He opens up about his 2025 tour, his dubious Grammys record and his daughter’s fledgling music career.