An Ode to Imperfect Love: How John Prine and Iris DeMent Turned Flaws into Forever
There are love songs that promise moonlight and roses. And then there are love songs that talk about sniffing underwear, watching convict movies, and telling bad jokes over cheap beer. Somehow, against all odds, the latter became one of the most enduring romantic anthems of the modern Americana era.
When “In Spite of Ourselves” was released in 1999, it didn’t arrive with bombast or radio-dominating ambition. Instead, it slipped into the world with a wink and a grin—like a couple who’ve been married long enough to know each other’s worst habits and love each other anyway. For longtime fans of John Prine, it felt like a homecoming. For everyone else, it was an introduction to one of the most quietly brilliant love songs ever written.
A Comeback Written in Courage
The story behind the song is as powerful as the song itself. In the late 1990s, John Prine was recovering from a harrowing battle with throat cancer. For a singer whose voice carried the texture of gravel roads and late-night bars, the illness threatened more than his health—it threatened his instrument, his identity, his lifeblood.
During that fragile period, actor and filmmaker Billy Bob Thornton approached Prine with a request: write a song for the closing credits of his film Daddy and Them. What could have been a small soundtrack contribution instead became something far more meaningful. “In Spite of Ourselves” was the first original song Prine completed after his cancer recovery—a creative rebirth wrapped in humor and humility.
Rather than writing a solemn ballad about survival, Prine did what he always did best: he wrote about real people. Messy people. People who argue, laugh, embarrass each other—and still end up sitting side by side at the end of the day.
The Album That Celebrated Country’s Golden Heart
The song became the title track of his 1999 album In Spite of Ourselves, released on his independent label, Oh Boy Records. The record was largely a collection of classic country duets, featuring an extraordinary lineup of female vocalists including Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris.
Though Prine was never a chart-chasing superstar, the album performed admirably, reaching No. 21 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. But numbers hardly tell the real story. Its true success was cultural. The title track became a sleeper classic—passed from jukeboxes to wedding receptions, from front porches to festival stages.
And at the center of it all was the chemistry between Prine and Iris DeMent.
A Duet Built on Teasing Truth
“In Spite of Ourselves” unfolds like a conversation between two people who have stopped pretending. Prine sings from the perspective of a self-described “wacked-out weirdo,” a man with questionable taste and an even more questionable sense of humor. DeMent counters with affectionate exasperation, admitting she once caught him “sniffin’ my undies.”
In another songwriter’s hands, those lines might have felt crude or forced. In Prine’s world, they feel lived-in. Honest. Almost sweet.
The brilliance of the song lies in its balance. It never mocks its characters. It celebrates them. Each quirk is presented not as a flaw to fix, but as a trait to cherish. These are two people who know each other too well to maintain illusions—and who have chosen each other anyway.
Then comes the chorus:
“In spite of ourselves
We’ll end up a-sittin’ on a rainbow
Against all odds
Honey, we’re the big door prize.”
It’s playful, yes—but