Best Thing Since Backroads

Album: single release only (2021)
Charted: 72
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Jake Owen pays a country compliment to his lover. He declares the simple pleasure of cruising two-lane highways falls well short of being with her. Nothing can beat the euphoria of dirt road drives with the windows down and his girl beside him.
  • Ben Johnson, Geoff Warburton, Hunter Phelps and Jordan Minton wrote "Best Thing Since Backroads." Ben Johnson and Hunter Phelps previously teamed up to co-pen Hardy's "Give Heaven Some Hell" and Dylan Scott's "New Truck." Jordan Minton's past credits include Niko Moon's "Good Time" and Kane Brown's "Leave You Alone." Canadian songwriter Geoff Warburton started his career writing for Shawn Mendes. "Best Thing Since Backroads" is his first country single as a writer.
  • Joey Moi's production keeps to a traditional country arrangement in the verses before ramping it up to country-rock on the chorus.
  • The four songwriters wrote "Best Thing Since Backroads" at Round Hill studio in Nashville. "Jordan threw out the title idea, and we just took off with it. It was a quick write," Phelps told Billboard. "Ben got this vibe with a real country, four-on-the-floor, old Waylon [Jennings] and Alabama-style thing. We had the song in probably two hours and a couple of hours later we had the vocal cut and the song [demo] sitting in our text messages."

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