"Iowa Stubborn" is a song by Mereith Willson from his 1957 musical The Music Man. The first sung number in the show (it is preceded by the innovative spoken “Rock Island”), it is a relaxed “soft-shoe” (or schottishe) sung by the citizens of River City, Iowa. Its lyrics convey their polite, reserved and stoic demeanor, as well as their special "chip on the shoulder attitude [they've] never been without that [they] recall". For example: