You Should Be Here

Album: You Should Be Here (2015)
Charted: 31
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by Cole Swindell with Ashley Gorley (Carrie Underwood's "Good Girl," Luke Bryan's "Crash My Party") this song is about the singer's late father, who passed away over the 2013 Labor Day weekend, when Cole was out on his radio tour. "I wrote it outside of a football stadium, believe it or not," he told Radio.com. "I lost my dad two years ago in a freak accident, and when Ashley Gorley, one of my favorite writers, brought up this title, he had to have known that's what I wanted to write."

    "I thought about my dad," Swindell continued. "Just all the things that I get to do. It ain't even for the folks that maybe haven't lost somebody, maybe you just miss somebody. Maybe you have family in another state, or there's those moments in life that we all get to share, and it's like if that one person was here, man, they'd freak out, they would love it."
  • Swindell told The Boot that he considers this to be by far his favorite song that he's written, to date. "I think that's why I moved to Nashville, is to write a song like this," he said. "Just growing up, loving '90s country music, there were songs that touched me. There were fun ones, but there were also the ones I could relate to, and I think this is going to be that song when people get to hear it."
  • The Michael Monaco directed music video opens with real footage of Cole Swindell calling his father in July of 2013 - just two months before the elder Swindell died - to tell him that he had signed his record deal. Throughout the rest of the clip, shots of career milestones that his dad is no longer around to witness are mixed with Swindell returning to his hometown of Glennville, Georgia and visiting his father's grave for the first time since the funeral.

    Swindell told reporters about the shots of him by his father's grave. "Once you see your last name in stone, I think it was finally. We didn't know if that was even going to be in the video; the cameras were way off. They gave me my time out there, but they used some of that clip, because it was so real. There's no second takes on that one. But I think it made the video more powerful … If seeing my tears or seeing me get upset helps anybody else, then that's what I'm here for."
  • This was Swindell's second #1 on the Country chart, following his 2014 debut single, "Chillin' It," which led for two weeks.
  • Cole Swindell performed the track for a Shazam Session. He was the first country artist to be featured on the popular series.
  • Cole Swindell recounted in a letter, which was published on The Huffington Post that he has had a huge response from fans who have been helped by the song.

    "Although I don't like the circumstances of why I had to write the song, I know for a fact if my dad knew leaving this world a little early would inspire a song that would help so many, he would've had no problem with it," Swindell wrote. "That's the kind of guy he was. That's the kind of guy I want to be. Every night I sing that song I know he's there, best seat in the house no doubt."
  • Ashley Gorley and Cole Swindell penned the song on the back of the tour bus just before a concert. Gorley recalled to The Boot:

    "It really came from a text that my daughter and I were exchanging when I was taking a picture of the concert, saying 'You should be here,' because she loves music, so a totally different context - 'You should be here. You should see this.'" And then thinking about that when I got back on the bus with Cole, and him going into a thing about his dad. It was a really cool flip. It was a really cool 'God thing' that happened with that song; that was a special co-write."

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