“You can call me every name, you can blame it all on me. You can say I’m an S.O.B. Hell, I might be…”
– Riley Green’s “POS Like Me”
Riley Green‘s song “POS Like Me” hasn’t been formally released yet, but its lyrics offer a few suggestions for things the famously mustachioed country artist can be called.
In reality, his own name — or at least the one he goes by — is yet another name that isn’t exactly his.
“So, I was on your Wikipedia page earlier,” started Katie Neal, of Katie & Company, as she interviewed Riley Green.
Riley replied, “Oh, God…”
Prefacing her purpose for looking him up, Katie said she was “just making sure she was up to date on everything.”
Wittily, he said, “Tell me something about myself.”
Katie then bluntly stated, “Your first name is Johnathan.”
This is true, and it has a unique spelling, too, but how did the name Riley rise above Johnathan?
Asked if anyone ever calls him Johnathan, he simply replied, “No, nobody’s ever called me Johnathan.”
Katie then asked, “So, why is it Johnathan Riley Green? Who are you named after? Why did they decide to go by middle name?”
Responding, Riley explained:
“I don’y know. I know that I go by the name Riley because my great-grandaddy, Paul, who I didn’t know, got a little dementia, and he started calling my dad Riley. My dad’s name is Kevon… My parents were like, ‘Yep, we’re going to name our first son Riley.'”
Reiterating his distance from his first name, Riley said of the name Johnathan, “I don’t even think I would turn if I heard it.”
Watch the interaction, and more of the interview, here:
Revisit Riley Green’s social media demo performance of “POS Like Me,” here: