Happens Like That

Album: When the Good Guys Win (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • The writing of this laid-back hopeful song happened organically in November 2016 while Granger Smith was on tour with Florida Georgia Line. Smith had several friends out on the road with him, including songwriters Jordan Schmidt, Justin Wilson, and Andy Albert.

    The song started from scratch during a bus writing session. As the four writers watched fans file into a show in Tacoma, Washington, they started strumming guitars and humming melodies. "It started with the first line, 'You order a drink, it goes down smooth. Before you can blink, it turns into two,'" Smith recalled to Taste of Country of starting the lyrics.
  • FGL's Tyler Hubbard didn't have writers out with him at the time. Hubbard loves to write, so he asked Smith to text him if he and his collaborators got a song going so that he could join in. Smith recalled to CMT News:

    "At lunch we started a new song, and I texted him and said, 'We're on to something.' And he opened my bus door 30 seconds later, and we wrote the song right there on the bus."
  • Smith recalled Hubbard's contribution:

    "Instantly he sits down, he puts on his reading glasses, types some lyrics out on his phone and starts studying the way that we're saying things, suggesting if we rephrased a couple of things, change a syllable here, and it started becoming a better song," he said. "The way that he can look at a piece, turn two lines around, switch a word out, maybe change a phrase … I think that's what he's bringing to the table."
  • The subject of the song came straight from the songwriter's personal lives. "[It] came from the idea that as soon as you sort of stop looking and are content with being single, that's when the love of your life walks into your life," Smith told Billboard magazine. "That narrative unfolded as all of us had lived it. It's when we least expect it - it happens like that."
  • The TK McKamy-directed visual follows a couple from their initial meeting through marriage and having kids. "This has been the most extensive music video I've done, and we've done a lot of them," Granger said. "We shot the video in a massive cornfield and a silo and it gives the video this mysterious tone. TK had a vision that the imagery would be kind of like a memory and these lightning strikes make time pass through these stages of life."

    Both Granger's wife Amber and his youngest son, River feature in the clip. With River's cameo, all three of the singer's kids have made guest appearances in his videos.
  • Tyler Hubbard, Jordan Schmidt, Justin Wilson and Andy Albert wrote the song in just a couple hours. Smith recalled to Taste of Country:

    "It was a good group of guys, just having some fun. We just had some guitars in the front of my bus, and that's the way I remember songwriting starting, which is why it was special to me.

    This is a song we all contributed to equally. It happened so quickly, and it happened so naturally. We didn't overthink anything. But, I look back — I don't remember going through a big problem with any of the lines. Somebody would say something, and another person would say something, and the song was done."

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