Don't It

Album: Summer Forever (2014)
Charted: 44
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Songfacts®:

  • The debut single off Billy Currington's sixth studio album finds the singer trying to get it on with a girl:

    Baby, don't say no so quick
    This ain't about me trying to see how far that I can get


    The song was written by by Jaren Johnston (Tim McGraw's "Southern Girl," Keith Urban's "You Gonna Fly"), Ashley Gorley (Carrie Underwood's "Good Girl," Luke Bryan's "Crash My Party") and Ross Copperman (Kenny Chesney's "Pirate Flag," Justin Moore's "Point At You").
  • The song shouldn't be confused with "Don't," the similarly titled lead single from Currington's Little Bit Of Everything album.
  • The song is in part a country version of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers 1977 cut "Breakdown." "I wrote it with Ashley Gorley and Ross Copperman," Jaren Johnston told Taste of Country. "We write together a lot, the three of us, and we literally went in there - I think Ross had a little bit of the track going when we walked in, and I picked up a guitar and started playing that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers thing."

    The song's lyrics developed organically from there. "We all just started freestylin' over it, and it just came out ," Johnston recalled. "I don't even remember how we came across the title, 'Don't It.' It was one of those things where nobody had that title. We just kept going, and it led into that."

    However, there was one line where the trio disagreed. "I remember when we got into it - one of the lines in the chorus, I said, 'Come on, baby, bring on it,' instead of bring it on, kind of a play on words," Johnston remembered laughing. "And Ashley loved it, so we put it in there. Ross kept questioning it, like, 'Man, is that gonna make sense? Are people gonna get that?' And I was like, 'Dude, that's the coolest line in the song, just trust me.' And now that's the one that everybody talks about, so it's a trip."
  • Billy Currington was one of the first artists the song was pitched to by the songwriters' publishers. "I didn't even know that he was cutting," Johnston said. "That was one of those where you put it in the publisher's hands and see where they see it fitting. I think originally I was like, 'This would be cool for Dierks [Bentley],' but he wasn't cutting yet."
  • Currington's recording is very similar to Johnston and Copperman's original demo. "It's exactly the same," said Johnston. "I'm pretty sure that's me doing the 'Hey, hey, hey.' I think they used that from the demo on the track. I think so. It's real similar. [Producer] Dann Huff did a great job."
  • Currington knew the song would be a hit as soon as he heard it. "That song sounds like a smash, and I'm so thankful that the songwriters sent it to me," he said. "Dann Huff worked really hard to get that groove set back in the pocket like it is."

    "It wasn't something that came in a few minutes of recording," Currington added. "We worked on it, and he got that magical feel to it, and I think that's one of the main reasons it's doing so well, 'cause it's a shuffle, and it's hard to get those kind of songs right and get the right tempo and everything about that. And Dann did that."

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