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Album: Fighter (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • This ballad is a collaboration with songwriter Lori McKenna. The song was inspired by David Nail's hometown (and Sheryl Crow's) of Kennett, Missouri. He explained to Rolling Stone that he arrived at a writing session with Lori McKenna and Barry Dean nervous about an upcoming concert back home. "I didn't have the goal of writing a song about my hometown, about my life, but with the anxiousness of that show being a few days away, it was very much on my mind," Nail recalled. "I told myself a long time ago that I wanted to limit the reflective songs and songs about my childhood and how I was raised. But I've always been a sucker for them and I feel like this was the first one that I had written that really captures the feelings that I feel when I go back and those early relationships that I had. It set the tone for it to be a personal record."
  • Dean shared during an album listening session how Nail laid the formation of the song out for them during their writing session. "You came in and were incredibly brave about it all and we were into it all," the songwriter recalled. "The whole experience of going home and you want to go home and you love everybody there but there's also a strange feeling where, 'Will it take me back if I've changed? Is it still the way I can relate to it?' It was really personal for us to get to be a part of it."
  • The song explores the love/hate relationship so many have with the town they grew up in. When Nail was growing up in Kennett, he was surrounded by doubters. "There was always part of me that always felt that there were some people that I don't wanna say didn't believe I couldn't do it, but they definitely thought that the route I was going was not the smartest," he said. "That caused me to wonder if where I grew up and how I grew up was kind of holding me back."

    Now having moved to Nashville and enjoyed some success, Nail finds himself leaning on the community that raised him. "Every major moment in my life, both good and bad, I've always kind of leaned on where I grew up, and how I grew up," he added.

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