White Flag

Album: Stories To Tell (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • The success of Barnes' What We Want, What We Get, especially Blake Shelton's cover of his God Gave Me You track led the Nashville-based singer-songwriter to concentrate more on hooks on his fifth release, Stories To Tell That is epitomized by this song, which was released as the second single from the set. He explained to Alternative Addiction: "That song, one of the really big reasons that I hired John Fields to produce the album was because I wanted to candy-coat this record with hooks. That's something I love about modern-day pop music. You can throw everything but the kitchen sink, maybe even the kitchen sink. What we did here, anything that we could have that will get you to continue to listen, we're going to do."

    "I've always stayed away from that," he added, "because I wanted my music to have an integrity that didn't feel like I was trying to overwhelm people. But I thought it would be fun to do one record where I kind of slide the chips over- really go 'let's put every hook that I can sing, play, or we can think of in a song.' That song is the epitome of that. It's the litmus paper test of every little thing we could think of, we did. It's kind of fun because I've never let myself do that. This record is kind of that record for me."

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