Own It

Album: So Far (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • This was the first single from Bailey Bryan, who was 18 when it dropped in 2017. The song is about embracing your shortcomings because they're part of who you are. Bryan cops to having no sense of direction, no skill for flirting, and no talent for dance, but that's OK, she's going to "own it."
  • Bryan was 16 when she wrote this song on one of her many trips from her home in Sequim, Washington to Nashville, where she was launching her music career. When she was 17, she moved to Nashville with her parents and finished high school online. Once Bailey was graduated and settled, they returned to Sequim.
  • If you hear a Taylor Swift influence in this bouncy pop-country tune, that's because Swift was Bryan's role model. Knowing that Swift arrived in the Music City as a teenager, Bryan followed suit. Musically, "Own It" is very similar to early Taylor Swift.

    Over the next few years, Bryan's music got more emotional and introspective, what she called a "sensitive bad bitch" ethos. "At the time my taste was changing so rapidly that nothing felt like me in the moment," she said of "Own It" on the Songfacts Podcast. "I don't go back and listen to it, I don't want to hear it. It's something my friends like to play to give me a hard time if we are drinking at my house. It's mainly the vocals. I don't recognize that voice."
  • Bryan wrote this song with Dennis Matkosky and Casey Brown. Matkosky has been writing hits since the '80s, with "Mirror, Mirror" by Diana Ross and "Maniac" by Michael Sembello among his credits.

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