Doin' What She Likes

Album: Based on a True Story... (2013)
Charted: 35
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Songfacts®:

  • Blake Shelton was attracted to this Phil O'Donnell and Wade Kirby penned song by the song's male protagonist. The country star admitted to Roughstock that he should be more like the guy in devoting time to his wife Miranda Lambert. "But every now and then," the country superstar added, "there's a day where it's like, 'You know what, we're not doing anything tomorrow, so I'm just going to do whatever you want to do tomorrow. I'm gonna be your sidekick,' you know, and she loves that."
  • Wade Kirby and Phil O'Donnell wrote the song in their cabin during a December 2011 hunting trip. It started with a loop that Kirby had built on a new drum machine that had a romantic feel to it. The pair began imagining the cabin as a getaway for a couple, purposely keeping the images loose enough that the storyline could fit a couple at just about any stage of a relationship. "She could be 18 years old, she might be 38 years old, but what woman don't want to hear how good she's looking in them blue jeans," O'Donnell told Billboard magazine. "She could be eating sushi at Sushiyobi or in the line at the buffet at Shoney's. Come on."
  • Shelton noted to Billboard: "It's kind of domestic, and that's pretty much what I am now. There's a lot of elements of that song that are just so true to mine and Miranda [Lambert's] life together. It's about a guy that's just, as long as he's making her happy, then he's happy."

    "The only part of the song that I can't quite figure out, and it's actually my favorite part, is I've never actually smelled a watermelon candle," the singer added. "I've smelled pumpkin spice and some Christmas spirit and all kinds of peppermint. I don't know that I've ever smelled a watermelon candle. Maybe I should make them and sell them in my merch."
  • The song features a unique sound effect created by a wah-wah, a guitar effects pedal that was central to such late '60s and early '70s classics as Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" and Isaac Hayes' "Theme From Shaft." For this song the wah-wah was hooked up to a banjo that John Willis originally played during the demo session. "It just had an odd effect," Kirby told Billboard. "You can kind of tell that it's a banjo, but kind of not. And it doesn't sound like an electric guitar. If it had been an electric, it would have had a little disco vibe to it, but it's still country because it was a banjo."
  • The song's music video finds Shelton attempting to show off his impressive domestic skills, but it all ends in disaster. The clip begins with a phone conversation with Miranda Lambert, offering to make her dinner. The "Automatic" singer was originally asked to star in the visual, but was opening for George Strait the day of the shoot so had to decline.
  • Director Mason Dixon wanted to showcase Shelton's comedic side in the clip by having him burn the house down, but he didn't expect so many fans to believe the inferno was real. "70 percent of that video is fake fire," Dixon explained in a 2017 Songfacts interview. "It was all done in post, especially all the outside stuff. We built a bathroom in the field next to the house we were shooting in for the interior stuff where we actually set it on fire, but when Blake's outside the house, all that's fake, just because we obviously couldn't afford to burn down somebody's house. It's crazy how many people have asked, though, 'So, how did they let you guys set the house on fire?' And I'm like, 'They absolutely did not let us do that.'"

    Dixon planned on using fog machines to cast wisps of smoke over the scene as a subtle hint of the raging inferno to come, but logistical issues interfered with his vision. "That performance was supposed to be much more mysterious, like within the smoke and not revealing what's going on. But it was such a windy day that we could not get the fog machine to do what we wanted it to do."
  • The video left many fans worried over the fate of Shelton's dog, who was never seen again after the blaze. The dog actually belonged to the homeowners and decided to run off and play when it was time to shoot the climax. "He was supposed to be next to Blake but he was way off in the acreage somewhere," Dixon recalled. "We spent I'd say a good 20 minutes trying to find him before we ran out of time and we were like, 'We've got to shoot this, I don't know where he is.' We had an idea of putting a barking dog in the audio mix, just so you could hear it, but that never happened."
  • The video won the CMT Music Award for Male Video of the Year in 2014.

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