OKLAHOMA CITY – Sometimes all you need to score a serious hit in songwriting is a truly universal message that can bring everyone together in a real collective moment of understanding.
And what’s more universal than being annoyed by some stupid jerk?
That’s the sentiment that’s unexpectedly propelled OKC-based song-slingin’ alt-country married couple Rachel Lynch and Griffin Wade into the realm of viral sensation, thanks to a clip of the duo performing their song “A**hole” that’s spontaneously skyrocketed on social media in recent weeks.
It began simply as a short clip of the couple performing the song’s chorus on OKC’s instantly recognizable Blue Door stage, posted back in late-February as a spur-of-the-moment promo for their show that night at Shawnee’s Grand Casino.
Before they knew it, and before they even got to the stage that night, the clip had started to explode across Facebook.
“I was like ‘baby, I think something weird is happening with our Facebook page,’” Lynch told Free Press. “Somebody came up that night and was like ‘hey, are you gonna play this song tonight?’ and showed us the video. We were like ‘yeah?’ And by the next day, it had started gaining a lot more traction. A day later, we were at almost a million views.”
You can probably imagine the gist of the song. It’s like a 21st century “Ballad of a Thin Man,” but you know, way less pretense and clever wordplay, and way more glorious, gang-vocal profanity.
It’s pretty straightforward, really, and generally universal (who hasn’t endured some pushy, insensitive loudmouth at some point?,) and it’s that easy appeal that seems to have struck a chord with the couple’s thousands of new fans and followers.
But even though it’s a song and a sentiment that practically anyone can get behind, it’s actually stirred up a little confusion and contention among some of those new listeners.
“We don’t really fully understand what happened at the beginning, but it does look like it got into some sort of political group or something,” Wade said. “And then it spread and it was, like, causing a lot of arguments in the in the comments and stuff.”
With lyrics accusing the titular tool of misrepresenting the Constitution and degrading women, it feels pretty clear that they’re singling out a particular type of unsavory character, one that espouses an ideology that the couple are no fans of. But they do say that it wasn’t their intention for the song to be a political anthem, just a personal one.
“Technically, it’s non-partisan, I guess,” Wade said. “But it doesn’t take much research to see where we are and how we live. I think some of them just saw white people and a banjo and thought ‘one of us.’ But they were mistaken.”
It’s all been seriously serendipitous timing.
The original live version of the song has been available for months on the couple’s debut album, recorded live the Blue Door, but they’d also already cut the officially studio version as well. It was intended to drop later as a single in the summer, but they decided to move the release up to April 10th in order to ride the wave of new interest.
Of course, you really can’t wrangle that kind of attention, so the couple is trying to manage their hopes and expectations.
“Just to be able to get that little bit of extra push, we’re grateful for it,” Wade said. “And then, hopefully, out of those thousands and thousands of reactions on that one song, if we got a thousand or two new followers that started really tracking us, that would be tight.”
As a couple of well-experienced indie artists, each with over a decade’s worth of ground-level grinding, they’ve learned that reality has a way of keeping them grounded, no matter how viral they go.
“Like two days after we almost hit two million views on that reel, we played our gig at a horse track in Illinois,” Wade said. “By the time we started and plugged in, it was just us and the bartender.”
“That’s true,” Lynch added. “It was like the world’s way of saying ‘hey, stay humble.’”
“A**hole”by Rachel & Griffin is streaming now from 2025’s “Live! at the Blue Door,” and the new studio-recorded version drops April 10th.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp is the owner and Editor in Chief of Oklahoma City Free Press. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly two decades and served as Arts & Entertainment Editor before purchasing the company from founder Brett Dickerson in 2026.
He is also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
