Ernest’s brand-new record, Flower Shops (The Album), dropped Friday (March 11), and it features a special acoustic rendition of the Morgan Wallen-assisted title track.

With only an acoustic guitar backing them, the stripped-down cut puts both Ernest and Wallen's tear-jerking vocal delivery front and center.

“Mister, I'll take your roses / If you cut off the thorns, she can't take no more / I'll buy violets and daisies to hide all the crazy, it's gonna take all you've got / Aw, it's a bad day for love, but a good day for flower shops,” the Big Loud Records labelmates sing plaintively chorus.

Speaking with Billboard in a recent interview, Ernest reveals that the melancholy tune was actually inspired by George Jones’ 1970 classic, “A Good Year for the Roses.”

“I had a George Jones playlist going, and I had just been on a sad song kick for a while,” the singer recollects. “Just listening to the lyrics to that song again, I thought, ‘We should write a song with a crazy title like that, like "Good Day for Flower Shops" or something.’”

That’s when a light bulb went off for Ernest and Ben Burgess. Without wasting any time, the two wrote part of “Flower Shops” on their way to a writing session with Mark Holman.

“We came up with the idea of a guy who has run out of apologies and all he can do is buy every flower in sight. The song was kind of written by the time we got to Mark’s place. We added a melody and it just wrote itself. We probably spent more time recording the demo than we spent writing the song,” adds Ernest.

Flower Shops (The Album) is Ernest’s sophomore effort. Also featuring the earlier released songs “What It’s Come To,” “Some Other Bar” and “Feet Wanna Run,” it follows his 2019 debut record, Locals Only.

Earlier in January, the singer made his Grand Ole Opry debut with Morgan Wallen showing up to surprise the crowd on their performance of “Flower Shops.”

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