Story Behind the Song: Katie Pruitt, ‘Loving Her’

Katie Pruitt's "Loving Her" is a joyful, cathartic anthem of love for her girlfriend, even though some people may object to a same-sex relationship. The singer was inspired to write the song after a conversation with her dad, who struggled to accept Pruitt after she came out to him as gay.

Read on to learn the story behind the song, told in the artist's own words.

I feel like this is one of those songs I've been trying to write my whole life. I've been trying to say a certain thing in a certain way, without coming across as upset or angry, because it's really hard to talk about that and not be, you know, angry about it.

I was talking to my dad about -- I had just started dating my current girlfriend, and at the time it was fairly new. We had maybe been dating for a few months. I came out to him about a year before that, but I kind of waited to talk to him about it, like, you know, "I'm seriously dating a girl now."

That was just sort of a hard conversation, and I was very frustrated, because I was like, "I don't get why this is hard for you. I'm the same me. I'm the same person. I'm dating someone I love, who is a good person -- so why does this matter?"

As an older father who was raised in the south, as someone who wasn't exposed to any of that, he was just like, "I don't understand it." Me and my dad have a really good way of not understanding each other and arguing with each other, but we always hang up the phone and say, "Alright, I love you, bye." Even if we're mad at each other, or frustrated, we never leave the conversation and walk away fuming. But I still was obviously very upset.

So when he was like, "I don't understand it," I was like, "Why? What's there to understand?"

And I just wrote down the line, which is actually at the end of the song, "People don't like what they don't understand." And then the next line I wrote after that was, "If loving her's a sin, I don't want to go to heaven."

And then I was like, "Okay, I know exactly where this song's going, and I know exactly what the song's about." I just rode that wave, still completely thinking about my dad, what I would want to say to him. [My parents] are very religious, and I respect that. I'm not insanely religious, but I feel like if I were, I don't think that God would really care if I was gay. I don't think that's the kind of God that I think exists. So I was kind of challenging that specific aspect of his faith, and their faith.

Just like, "Why is this holding you back from loving and accepting your daughter? That's what God would want, right?" So that took me through the whole song, honestly.

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