Water

Album: American Saturday Night (2009)
Charted: 42
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Songfacts®:

  • Paisley told Billboard magazine that whilst his previous album, 5th Gear, "was looking back to high school, on this one I look back to who I became from a little boy on." He added that this song, "deals with a love affair with water that began with an inflatable pool and grew to bigger bodies of water, and eventually all the things that you can do around water that you can't get away with anywhere else. My songs are certainly influenced by how I see the world through other sets of eyes as well as my own."
  • When writing this song, Paisley received some advice from his wife, Kimberly Williams Paisley, in changing a line to make it more relatable. "Take, 'go and grab someone you want to see in a bathing suit,' and the original line was 'grab someone who looks good in a bathing suit.' And that was a good example of listen to your spouse when you're a songwriter," Paisley told The Boot. "She said, 'I like everything but that line. None of us, there isn't a woman alive that thinks she looks good in a bathing suit.' I said, 'That's a good point.' And she said, 'So say it another way.' So we changed it to 'someone you want to see in a bathing suit.'"
  • Paisley gathered with friends, family and industry executives at Nashville's Watermark Restaurant to celebrate his 38th birthday and the success of this song, Paisley and his co-writers, Kelley Lovelace and Chris DuBois, were presented with plaques to commemorate the singer's 15th chart-topper."I always say this song was about location, location, location," said Kelley, who is Brad's neighbor. "['Water'] was Brad's idea, and I was close by. That is how it started, and I'm just thankful."

    Paisley interjected explaining how he presented the song idea to Kelley: "You thought I was a little nuts. I said, 'It's called 'Water.'' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'It's about water!' He was like, 'Umm, yeah. You can drink it; it tastes good."
  • A month or so after the single hit the charts, Middle Tennessee was hit by some destructive flooding. Paisley spoke at Watermark Restaurant about the new meaning the tune took on after the devastation the flood created. "You look back at the year, and 2010 will be the year of water," he noted. "To think that we released a song [called 'Water'], and then a month later, everything I tour with was under water. We had named the tour the H2O tour before all of this happened. Being able to turn it into a positive over the year for me has been great, and I wouldn't change a thing now. At the time, I thought, 'Oh my God, that song needs to be called 'Money From Heaven,' because somehow Mother Nature was listening. It's really a privilege to be a part of this year."

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