Monroe gets "Bitter Swisher Sweet"

The song is the latest offering from her upcoming album, "Tennessee Lightning," due out Aug. 8. Accompanied by a video with footage of the two artists collaborating in the studio, the song is about the highs and lows of escaping through self-medication.

Monroe said, "The day Logan Wall, Emily Landis and I wrote this song, we were just chatting before we started and Logan said the phrase 'Bitter Swisher Sweet.' I don't even really remember the context, but we all looked at each other and knew it was a title we should chase. I had a little groove and bass thing going (a sick beat, as I call them) that gave us our vibe. We wrote it in less than an hour, and I've dug it ever since."

"This song makes me think of a specific season of my early teenage years, when my older brother and his friends sometimes allowed me to tag along while they cruised Gatlinburg or some random East Tennessee backroads. Whilst they smoked Swisher Sweets, I sipped Zimas in the back seat, and we would just get lost in whatever music we had blasting and forget we had a care in the world. We had lost our dad a couple years earlier, and when I look back on that time in my life, I think how those 'young and dumb' seasons are never really wasted. In a lot of ways, they keep us alive... so get high, get low, light up, come on, the night is young."

"When Gena [Johnson] and I were recording it, we kept saying, 'I wish Brittney Spencer would sing on this.' She is a dear friend of both of ours, and we are just blown away by her voice and her spirit. We're so lucky she said yes."

Spencer added, "I only have one video of my busking days down on Broadway. It's a video of me playing 'Hell on Heels.' Ashley, her golden voice and magnetic lyricism shine so beautifully on 'Bitter Swisher Sweet,' and the whole album really. Getting to sing with her is an actual dream come true every time it happens. She's the pop twang queen of my heart."

"Bitter Swisher Sweet" follows the release of the song "The Touch" featuring Marty Stuart.