Walker Hayes is “Fancy Like That,” crossing over to the pop chart and changing the menu at Applebee’s

Robert Chavers

Before this summer, the most you’d probably heard about Walker Hayes was with his 2017 top-ten hit, “You Broke Up with Me.” But now, he’s “Fancy Like That.”

If you’ve missed it, “Fancy” is the rap-influenced, country-flavored earworm that extols the virtues of a girl who “wanna dip me like them fries in her Frosty” at Wendy’s, and get the “Bourbon Street steak with the Oreo shake” from “Applebee’s on a date night.”

And it was all fueled by a video Walker made with his 15-year-old daughter.

Lela and I did the dance on Sunday afternoon,” Walker explains. “She said, ‘Hey Dad, “Fancy Like” doesn’t have a dance. We need to do one.'”

“We kinda created it together,” he continues. “She made up most of the moves. I made sure most of the moves could be done, even if you weren’t a great dancer — like me.”

“We popped it off in two takes… And the rest is history,” he reveals. “We pretty much knew hours later, we had accidentally done something — odd.”

Since then, at least one of the restaurants Walker name-dropped has come calling. 

“Within days, people began to predict ‘song of the summer,’ how viral it would go, things like that,” he tells ABC Audio. “I don’t necessarily say I believed ’em, but here we are.”

“There’s an Applebee’s commercial,” he points out. “The Oreo shake is back on the menu thanks to the power of a song.”

“And millions of people have done this dance,” he marvels. “And the song continues to climb all charts, all genres. It’s mind-blowing. It’s absolutely mind-blowing.”  

Sure enough, “Fancy Like” has already spent six weeks atop Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs ranking, while sitting at #12 on the pop-oriented Hot 100 as well.

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