Tyler Childers’ Eatin’ Big Time Lyrics Meaning: A Grit-Soaked Celebration of Success and Survival

Tyler Childers doesn’t walk into a new era, he stomps through the door with blood on his boots and butter on the skillet. 

Eatin’ Big Time, the first track on Snipe Hunter, sets off with the velocity of a man who’s not just looking back on how far he’s come, but dressing the memory for supper.

Released on 25 July 2025 and produced by Rick Rubin, the song opens with a hunting scene so vividly grotesque it could’ve been sketched in venison grease.

Childers shoots a deer a rich man had in his sights, carves it “right down to the bone,” and prepares the meat in cast iron, all while platinum records overflow behind him.

It’s class commentary soaked in country fried bravado: he’s “eatin’ big time,” not just literally but metaphorically off the spoils of hard-won success.

“Keep my time on my Weiss” – A flex with blue-collar roots. Childers’ Nashville-made Weiss watch (a manual-wind piece requiring daily attention) holds just 40 hours of power like his career, it demands constant rewinding.

Each takes 60+ hours to hand-assemble, a nod to the song’s central tension: luxury earned, not given.

“Fried in Wagner casted butter” – Wagner skillets are Appalachian heirlooms.

Childers’ references to them across songs symbolise both domestic comfort and regional pride.

It’s not about arriving. It’s about what it takes to stay full.

From the first bar, the sound comes with a strut: slinky guitar riffs, swampy bass lines, and the unmistakable drag of Childers’ drawl, dirt-streaked and diamond-clear.

The rhythm pulses like a slow march through thick brush, grounded by the swagger Rubin has long brought to rugged Americana.

This marks Childers’ first full-album collaboration with Rick Rubin, who previously mixed 2023’s Rustin’ in the Rain.

The track itself bends country into psychedelic punk, a far cry from the bro-country still dominating country radio, which largely ignored Childers until 2025.

“The ‘broken robot’ steel guitar on Eatin’ Big Time mirrors Childers’ own friction with Nashville – mechanised industry vs. his ‘sludge river stomp,’” Rubin told GQ.

“I pushed him to see structure differently… It’s about trying every route, even the wrong ones.”

On first listen, it’s a flex. He namechecks a thousand-dollar Weiss watch (“ya goddamn right I’m flexing”), but quickly cuts the brag with a reminder that keeping it all going is a battle: “It’s fought for like a bitch and it’s a bitch to keep it goin’.”

That line isn’t just attitude – it’s weariness hard-earned. The Weiss watch, made in Nashville and known for its 40-hour manual-wind design, mirrors the grind he’s describing: no shortcuts, just constant winding.

A symbol of both status and exhaustion, of constantly resetting what success even means.

Then there’s the surreal intimacy of “I’m her surfboard in the kitchen,” a line that trips listeners up as much as it delights them.

It’s not just cheek, though fans have flagged it as a playful Beyoncé reference – it also turns domestic space into spiritual grounding.

Senora May, who inspired songs like Lady May and All Your’n, hovers over this lyric like a quiet co-writer. She’s the constant in a life full of movement.

And even the hunting imagery up top – “shot it from a blind” – feels more loaded than literal.

The man in the mansion aiming at the feeder becomes a stand-in for the industry: rich, static, trying to control the game.

Childers takes the shot from his own hideout and gets the feast anyway. Still rural, still unbought.

But this isn’t just a country twist on a pop metaphor. It’s Childers’ own feast-day liturgy: if you’re lucky enough to make it out of the holler with your soul and your people intact, don’t whisper grace – shout it from the porch.

The accompanying video, directed by Gus Black, leans full-tilt into dreamlike absurdity.

One standout moment features Childers seated at a banquet table, decked in velvet and pearls, surrounded by dinner guests who feel half-gospel choir, half-vaudeville.

There’s camp, drag, gender fluidity, and layered satire – everyone’s dressed like they’re either mocking the Southern aristocracy or running it.

The visuals crack open the lyrics and ask a subtler question: what if the real hunger isn’t for food or fame, but for freedom?

Childers has always stood at the edge of country and something else: spiritual drifter, Appalachian prophet, and now, it seems, reluctant insider.

His last albums from the faith-traversing Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? to the Presley-infused Rustin’ in the Rain – have stretched country into new directions.

But Eatin’ Big Time folds it all together with something grittier. “It’s observations from a traveling hillbilly,” Childers told GQ, “huntin’ our sounds and trying new things to find it, and hunting our path.”

That hunt has paid off. The song racked up over 92,000 YouTube views in 24 hours, with fans dissecting metaphors and Easter eggs as if decoding scripture.

And yes, the “surfboard” lyric has already spiralled into multiple interpretations both cheeky and sincere.

What makes Eatin’ Big Time a standout in the Snipe Hunter lineup is its ability to carry both hunger and humour, survival and satisfaction.

It’s a class war cooked low and slow, the kind of track that lets you admire the trophies while remembering how many traps you had to disarm just to reach the table. He’s not romanticising struggle, he’s plating it.

So when he sings, “Eatin’ big time, ain’t she pretty? / Just rollin’ in the shade,” it lands not as a boast but as a sigh of satisfaction.

A reminder that you can get rich without forgetting how to skin a deer, and that comfort, when it comes, should be enjoyed with the same intensity you once gave to the chase.

With Snipe Hunter selling out stadiums, Childers has proven you can “eat big time” without moving to Nashville. But as he told GQ, “It’s a bitch to keep it goin’.”

If the industry won’t feed him, will he like the deer in the song become the feast?

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Full Lyrics to Eatin’ Big Time by Tyler Childers

Intro
(One, two)
(Ah-one, two, three, four)

Verse 1
I wasn’t braced and kissed my face with the scope of my rifle
I had shot it from a blind, as in you’d be blind not to see
That there’s a man in the doorway of a motherfuckin’ mansion
Aiming at the feeder where you’d sat to take a feast

Verse 2
That’s what I said, that’s what I did
And it did not cut one corner
As I carved that fat-neck-mother right down to the bone
I let him hang for several days
And then I cut off hide and scriffin’
I cut it thin, then throw it in a tupperware to soak

Chorus
I fried some pieces while I worked
It tasted like I’d made it
Fried in Wagner casted butter in a quiet country place
With albums gold and platinum overflowin’ to the ceiling
Eatin’ big time is a feelin’ with the friends that I have made

Verse 3
Keep my time on my Weiss
Ya goddamn right, I’m flexin’
‘Cause a thousand-dollar watch is fine enough flex for me
Have you ever got to hold and blow a thousand fucking dollars?
It runs for forty hours and then it winds itself to sleep

Chorus
It’s fought for like a bitch and it’s a bitch to keep it goin’
When they ain’t nobody knowin’ any prayer you’ve ever sang
See me now, I’m on the sow and I’m ridin’ to your city
Eatin’ big time, ain’t she pretty, ain’t she witty, ain’t she great?

Bridge
Ain’t she great, ain’t she grand?
In my world, she’s irreplaceable
I’m her surfboard in the kitchen
My blessings come in waves
She’s my rebirth, she’s my lemonade
My gravy and my biscuits
Mama, I’ve been out there hunting
I’ma need you to make a plate

Chorus
She pets my head and whispers
“You poor thing, you must be famished
I just knew that this would happen, I got all the fixin’s made”
I’ll get tick-full ‘fore I ever pull myself off of this table
Eatin’ big time, ain’t she pretty? Just rollin’ in the shade
Eatin’ big time in the holler, ain’t it lovely, ain’t it great?