Riley Green Honors Toby Keith on New Summer Anthem, ‘Think As You Drunk,’ Featuring The Late Icon’s Vocals

Riley Green regularly incorporates covers of Toby Keith songs in his live shows and has often credited the late country icon as a major influence on his career as a singer-songwriter. While he never had the chance to meet Keith before his passing in 2024, the country artist continues to honor his lasting legacy in his new summertime anthem, “Think As You Drunk.”

The just-released track came to life within just 20 minutes, according to Green, who co-wrote it with Erik Dylan, Wyatt McCubbin and Jessi Alexander. Fans might notice that “Think As You Drunk” shares a similar melody as a very well-known country classic, Toby Keith’s As Good As I Once Was.”

“The best compliment I can give a song is ‘Man, this feels like a Toby Keith song,’” Green told Billboard. “Especially as a songwriter, I don’t know if there was a bigger influence on me.”

Green puts his own twist on the track with added guitar riffs, but the undertones immediately reflect that nostalgic feeling from the original. The result is a feel-good song that arrived just in time for the warm summer months and will serve as the perfect soundtrack for everything from a day on the boat to a rowdy night of drinking.

The lyrics are also original to the “Worst Way” singer as he depicts a long day of drinking that started at noon and is likely to continue until the honky tonk closes at 2am. He erupts into a clever play on words throughout the chorus while trying to convince the bartender who cut him off that he’s not actually as inebriated as he might seem.

“I ain’t as think as you drunk I am/ Don’t pay no mind to this mountain of crushed up cans/ No, I can’t say my CBA’s/ I can sing you every song that jukebox plays/ And I know I can’t stand or sit/ But if I was hammered, could I dance like this?/ Might have a cold one in each hand/ But I ain’t as think as you drunk I am,” Green sings with his signature charm and Alabama twang coming out in full force.

At the very end of the track, fans will hear another very recognizable voice, besides Green. Toby Keith’s iconic vocals join in to deliver the final lyrics of the 2005 hit that inspired the track, singing, “May not be good as I once was/ But I’m as good once as I ever was.”

Green says the decision to close out “Think As You Drunk” in this way came from the late singer’s manager and family. They were shown the song before release due to its close resemblance to Keith’s track and suggested he be included in this way.

“They completely thought it was a tip of the cap to Toby, so they wanted to have his vocal on it,” Green explained, before revealing that it felt like the perfect fit, especially considering how his father used to say that “As Good As I Once Was” was actually written about him.

“So it’s really a full-circle moment for me to have Toby’s vocal on that song,” he added.

The new release marks a look into the multi-PLATINUM, ACM, and CMA Award-winning singer-songwriter’s forthcoming album, which he teased on social media following the song drop. A Facebook post revealed the upcoming project is titled “That’s Just Me” and will be arriving on September 18.

He remained fairly tight-lipped about the collection during his conversation with Billboard, but did call attention to one song that is sure to be a stand-out, “10 Pairs of Boots Ago,” which finds the narrator reflecting on different chapters of his life, each represented by a pair of boots he once wore, before ending with a final pair belonging to his 4-year-old son.

“I think about it a lot,” Riley Green said of becoming a father one day.  “At this point in my life, I don’t know how I could do it. So things are going to have to slow down and get a little bit more of a sense of normalcy before I could really think about settling down and having a family,” he adds. “But it’s definitely something I’d like to do and I’m somewhat excited about where my songwriting would go with that much of a change in my life, too.”

The new music arrives amid a busy time for Green. He is currently out on his Cowboy As It Gets Tour, has plans to perform at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium on Sunday, June 7 as part of CMA Fest, and will be making his debut as a coach on The Voice this fall.