Living

Album: The Mountain (2018)
Charted: 51
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Dierks Bentley reminding himself and the listener not to look past all the good things in their lives, but to grab all the happiness while they can.

    This mornin' I got up at 6:01
    I walked out and saw the rising sun
    And I drank it in like whiskey
    I saw a tree I've seen a thousand times
    A bird on a branch and I watched it fly away in the wind
    And it hit me
    It's a beautiful world sometimes I don't see so clear
  • Bentley debuted the song during a concert in Las Vegas on December 17, 2017. He told the audience:
    "When you live on the road, there's very few days you're living. Most of your time you crash in the hotel room. It's dark, it's lonesome, you're hungover. You're tired. You're missing stuff. We try to live every day. No matter what we do, we try to do something that makes us feel like we're living. That's how this song came about."
  • The idea for the introspective song came to Bentley from being on the road and realizing how little "living" he and his band and crew were actually doing out there. The singer explained:

    "Whole days would go by where you never leave the bus and all you would see is the back parking lot of the arena. Going to Walgreens was a big deal! That is when the idea was born that there is a true difference between being alive and actually 'living.'"

    Bentley brought the song idea out to Colorado where he was doing a songwriting retreat and wrote it with Ross Copperman, Ashley Gorley and Jon Nite. The song they came up with is about experiencing the beauty in everyday moments.

    "It's not about skydiving or bull riding. It's about just, it could be just watching your kid play hockey and being focused on that and not watching your iPhone," Bentley explained. "It could be just appreciating that it's sunny outside and taking a moment to recognize that."
  • The catalyst for the song was a running joke when Bentley was on tour. Fiddler Dan Hochhalter and guitarist Ben Helson had ventured away from the tour bus to find a Walgreens one day, and when they returned, Bentley poked fun at their trip. "It kind of became a joke," he recalled to Billboard, "like, 'Wow, you guys really did some living today. Did you get a toothbrush? Tell us all about Walgreens!'"
  • Directed by longtime Dierks Bentley collaborator Wes Edwards, the song's music clip features the video debut of the singer's five-year-old son, Knox. We see the pair have a fun-packed day that includes karate, go-carts, going out for ice cream and a waterpark.

    "Knox is at that age where he can still find the biggest joy in the smallest things," said Bentley. "That childlike appreciation for life is the spirit I wanted to bring to this video to remind us of difference between just being alive and actually 'living.'"
  • Dierks Bentley admitted to The Boot that he wasn't really in the mood to film a video during the first day's shoot. The singer explained that he'd returned home on a Saturday night after three weeks on the road and the filming started the following morning. "There were, like, 30 people in my house," he recalled. "I was so tired, and a little grumpy. I remember at one point hiding in my closet with the door closed."

    It was Knox who carried his daddy. "He kinda pulled me through that first day," Bentley said. "And I had a better attitude the second day."

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