Songfacts®:

• "The Good Ones" is a love song that celebrates the men worth holding onto. Cade Foehner, Gabby Barrett's husband and fellow American Idol alum, served as inspiration for the tune.
• Zach Kale, Emily Landis and Jim McCormick helped Barrett write the song. The singer recalled to The Boot that prior to their session she'd be thinking back to when she and Foehner were dating during American Idol. When her family asked how her boyfriend was doing she'd reply, "Oh, he's good. He's a good one. He's a keeper."
  
  Other girls also said the same thing, and Barrett heard "a good one" said several times. So they set out to write a song that is a tribute to finding a man who is "a good one" all the time.
• Gabby Barrett's breakthrough song "I Hope" is a vengeful anthem about a woman wanting her ex to feel the same pain he caused her. The songstress wanted to follow it up with a tune that's a complete change of message.
  
  Barrett told her co-writers: "I need to write a song for the good ones." She explained she didn't want to continually "give people this false hope of just saying all relationships stink and you can't ever trust anybody, because that's definitely not the case."
• Zach Kale helped Gabby Barrett and Jon Nite write Barrett's song "I Hope," and Jim McCormick co-penned Jason Aldean's country #1 "Take a Little Ride." For Emily Landis, who signed a publishing deal with BMG Nashville in 2019, this was her first placement with a major artist.
• The song climbed to #1 on the Country chart, becoming Barrett's second consecutive chart topper following "I Hope."