In a new interview with Nashville Scene, Sturgill Simpson further expands his badassery and war against Nashville’s toxic music row in a fashion that Noel Gallagher would definitely be proud of. 

The quotes are too good to chop up and present to you, so we’ll keep them in full as we deliver his top anecdotes and musings on life from this otherwise fantastic profile of one of music’s biggest rising stars. 

“Nobody can ever say I didn’t warn them”

In 2013, CMA Close Up did a bland Q&A with Simpson that closed with a question asking him to tell them something about himself they’d never guess. His response? “I’m plotting your destruction.” Three years later, he finds himself on top of the charts and pulling the “I told ya so” card. Really, this is the “I am Gotham’s reckoning” of rock and roll quotes. 

“I wake up every day and feel like, ‘I wanna fuckin’ crush this game, without playing the game,’ just to prove it can be done. … I wanna hit Goliath in the forehead with a rock.”

The thought of tiny Sturg throwing a rock at a Goliath in the shape of a cowboy boot is a fantastic image in and of itself. In this case, Goliath is the Nashville establishment and Sturgill is throwing a big ol’ rock at it every time he sells out a show. 

“My fans want me to walk out with a big sign that says, ‘Fuck Nashville,’ ” Simpson says. “And some days I do feel like that. And a lot of days I don’t — most days I don’t.”

Only some days I hate you, Nashville. Other days I just tolerate you. 

“We’re doing 3- and 4- and 5,000-seat theaters now,” he says. “If I never go beyond this phase right here, who gives a shit? I wrote a cliché, sappy record [Sailor’s Guide] entirely and specifically for my kid, and it went to No. 1. I got no complaints, man.”

You all remember when LeBron James got on stage with two trophies in his hand after winning back to back titles and said  “I ain’t got no worries”? That’s what Sturgill is doing here. Kicking back, admiring his number one record and telling you to eat it if you got a problem with that. 

“The industry’s not gonna give it to me. And at this point I don’t want them to. I’m going to prove to them I can do it. In 10 years I’ll be the biggest country star on this planet, I guaran-fuckin’-tee it. And there’s nothing they can do to stop that.”

Insert. Every. God. Damn. Mic. Drop. GIF. Ever. 

“I’ve got the Rocky heart, man,” he continues, referring to the indefatigable boxer hero of seven popular movies. “I’m gonna do it now out of spite. And I’m gonna go play rock ’n’ roll, too, and take all those fuckin’ people, and I’m going to build a little army. And you’ll come to my show, and it’ll be four hours long, and it’ll be an American music show. It won’t be a country music show, Americana music show or a soul music show. We’re gonna hit it all, we’re gonna touch it all, because I love it all. And I want to love everybody.”

As if this entire line of thinking couldn’t get any more badass, we’ve gracefully floated into the “four hour rock show” portion of the interview. I love this guy. 

“I know [soda] is horrible for you,” says Simpson, who lives sober save for the occasional jazz cigarette. “But [with a] cheeseburger and fries, you know. … We used to shine brass with fuckin’ Coca-Cola in the Navy,” he continues, recalling the three years of service he put in after graduating high school. “That shit will strip saltwater corrosion. Imagine what it’s doing to our insides.”

/puts down Coke forever

“Dude, you don’t have any fucking idea how I’m in that shit,” he says. “It’s just this inner drive to, like, crush it, do the fuckin’ absolute best you can, because this is the greatest job on the planet, you’re making people really fuckin’ happy.”

And you, Sturgill, are the greatest thing about this planet at this very moment. 

“I didn’t have a car for, like, five years that I lived here. … This year, my wife was like, ‘Uh, OK, you ride around in a tour bus, you can go buy yourself a car now, asshole.’

In case you needed any confirmation, Sturgill also married a badass woman. 

“Thank God, she just leveled me one night: ‘You don’t fuckin’ suck at this. … You should share this and maybe try doing something you love with your life before I wake up and I’m stuck with some 40-year-old miserable asshole.’ ”

AND AGAIN. 

I love you, entire Simpson family. Keep on doing you.