"White Horse" was a song that I wrote with my friend, Dan Wilson. We were out in Los Angeles, it was about I think probably late 2012, early 2013, and there was a movie called The Lone Ranger that was coming out, and I walked in the room to write with Dan at his house, and he said, "Hey they're looking for songs for this Lone Ranger movie." I said, "Cool. Let's write something. What do you know about it?" He goes, "Well, we don't really know anything." I was like, "Well, let's just make a song that might sound like that." And so, that's kind of where that came from, and we got to talking about how it would be cool to have a kind of rock-driven-western-themed song, and that's kind of where the song came from and we kind of built it around a guitar riff, really.[2]
"White Horse" is a blues rock-inspired country song,[3][4][5] featuring an intro of electric guitar riffs and drumbeats.[5] Lyrically, Stapleton tells his imaginary partner that he needs time to open his heart to her[3] and confesses he is not ready to be the man she desires, so she must wait: "If you want a cowboy on a white horse / Ridin' off into the sunset / If that's the kinda love you wanna wait for / Hold on tight, girl, I ain't there yet".[3][4][5][6][7] However, he also wishes this is not the situation.[3]
