The One That Got Away

Album: Barefoot Blue Jean Night (2011)
Charted: 51
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Songfacts®:

  • This country rocker was penned by Jake Owen with 2012 ACM Songwriter of the Year Dallas Davidson and Jimmy Ritchey, the producer of Owen's first two albums. The nostalgic summertime song was released as the third single from Barefoot Blue Jean Night on May 21, 2012.
  • Owen grew up in Vero Beach, Florida and he refers to his hometown's main drag when he sings, "Well she kissed my lips. Down on Ocean Drive." Davidson told Taste of Country how Owen recalled to him and Ritchey that every summer girls would flock to Vero Beach. They would hook up with the local guys, before returning home at the end of the season. "It's about falling in love and having a summer love and never seeing them again," Davidson explained. "Jake lived it. We all had summer flings, and Jake especially because he literally was a local. All the girls would come in and fall in love with a local. Then they leave and are never to be seen again."
  • The song was inspired by one particular real life summer relationship. "It's a true song for me," explained Owen. "It's the one on the record that I wrote, just about my hometown and the way that girls and their families would come to town during the summer and then they'd leave three months later, go back up North, start school. They would always leave, and there's this one girl in particular, I just remember I never saw her again."
  • The song's music video was the fourth Owen clip in a row to be directed by Mason Dixon. The singer told Billboard magazine: "I've created a relationship with him like Kenny Chesney has with Shaun Silva. I'll go to dinner with him, and say this is my vision for the song. I wanted to go back home for a Florida vibe, and bring that summertime feel."
  • The video follows a summer romance between two teenagers, one of whom grows up to be Owen at the end. Dixon told Songfacts: "When he drives up to the house we see him with the friendship bracelet that he's held onto this whole time, and he chucks it into the ocean, that's when it comes together and you realize that he was thinking about his youth growing up in Florida."

    Dixon shot the flashback scenes on film and used digital cameras for the present-day scenes, "So you're really seeing the difference in aesthetic."

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