Don't Die Young, Don't Get Old

Album: The Breaker (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • The ladies of Little Big Town, Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman, wrote this song with the women who wrote their hit song "Girl Crush" - Lori McKenna, Hillary Lindsey and Liz Rose. The song came about after Fairchild's bandmate husband, Jimi Westbrook, lost his sister Joyce to cancer in December 2015. Fairchild returned to Nashville, where she got together with the other four women to write the song. Talking with them about losing her in-law was therapeutic.
  • It was Lori McKenna who had the title for this song. "That's what we would say to each other on Panama Beach during spring break," Fairchild told Entertainment Weekly.
  • The writing session that produced this song took place shortly after Joyce's funeral. Lori McKenna recalled to Radio.com.

    "I don't think we started til 8:00 at night, and that had been such an emotional summer because of Jimi's sister. We didn't know if the writing session was going to happen. We thought 'There's no way that she's going to want to write a song after this.'"

    "But sometimes, as a songwriter, that's exactly what you need, and we had wine and we cried, and she told us about her life." And that conversation led to the song."

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