A Little More Summertime

Album: They Don't Know (2016)
Charted: 52
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by Jerry Flowers, Tony Martin and Wendell Mobley, this song finds Aldean mourning a summer love lost: "'A Little More Summertime' really hit me the first time I heard it," Aldean said. "It's always been about the vibe of a song for me. So when that chorus hits and the song takes off, I knew it had to be on this album."
  • This was one of the first songs Aldean and his producer Michael Knox found for They Don't Know. "There was just something really cool melodically about it; it was a little different than some of the things we've had in the past," the singer told reporters. "The thing that really grabbed me was the U2 guitar stuff going on right before the chorus. You know, that was kinda the vibe I gave [the band] when we went in to cut the song; I was like, 'If there's a vibe we're going after, it's U2. Just think about that when you're playing it.' It was just really cool."
  • Wendell Mobley provided the vocals on the demo, which set a high standard for Aldean to follow. "He sang the daylights out of the demo, and it was one of those that you listen to and you go, 'Man, I hope my version sounds as good as the demo because his was really good,'" Aldean recalled.
  • The video is set on the beach and a nearby theme park in Santa Cruz, California. The female role in the video is played by Aldean's wife, former American Idol contestant Brittany Kerr.
  • Jerry Flowers and Tony Martin started the song off, before bringing in Wendell Mobley later. It took them a year to complete it to their satisfaction. Martin recalled to The Boot:

    "Jerry and I spent a whole day [on it]. And I think eventually he had to go on the road with Keith [Urban] or whatever. And I had just said the line, "A little more summertime - I had a little more summertime."
    And even though it never was kind of anything, it sat around, probably even before I brought it up to Wendell one day. We couldn't come up with anything. I said, "I just remember this thing with Jerry: 'If I had a little more summertime.'"

    Wendell Mobley continued: "[Flowers and Martin] had it kind of started already, and then we worked on it a little bit. By the time it was over, we worked on it - I can remember working on it one May, and then the next May getting it out again. It was old-school writing. It's like, "Hey, what about that idea we were working on?" We just kept working on it and working on it.

    "I promise you, there are more parts to this song that didn't make it in the song than [there are parts that] actually made it. What we started with, we didn't use. The only thing that made it through actually was the title. We were still cutting stuff off when we were demoing it."
  • Jason Aldean's wife, Brittany, helped persuade her husband to cut the song. "I was actually headed to my house in Florida, in my Jeep; I'm driving through this little beach town, and I'm listening to this song," the singer recalled. "I had a CD of songs I was listening to for the new album, and I'm driving through this little beach town as the song comes on, and it was almost like something out of a movie. My wife was sitting next to me, and she fell in love with the song. That was pretty much it. I had to cut it."

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