It's All Good

Album: It's All Good (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • This easygoing nod to keeping an upbeat outlook is the title cut of American Country music artist Joe Nichols' seventh studio album. The song was written by Nashville songwriter Gary Burr, whose credits also include Clay Aiken's Hot 100 chart-topper "This Is The Night" and country singer-songwriter Georgia Middleman, who co-wrote Keith Urban's hit "I'm In."

    Burr and Middleman became much more than songwriting partners on April 7, 2012 when they got married. They also became bandmates when they formed Blue Sky Riders with Kenny Loggins.
  • In our interview with Georgia Middleman, she said that the song idea came to her after the title phrase entered the vernacular. "I knew people who would always say, 'It's all good! It's all good!,' Georgia explained. "So I was like, Oh, that would be a good song. Might be a country song."
  • Nichols told Billboard magazine that he was pleased with the 1980s sound of this cut. "It's retro Country. It feels like something of a throwback - not so much in an obvious way, but it feels classic," he said.
  • After overcoming alcohol addiction and substance abuse, Nichols felt optimistic about his future when recording It's All Good. He explained the album title reflects his new positive outlook. "It's All Good as a title has got a deeply personal meaning to me," he said. "I've been through the ups and downs of life and I'm better at knowing what to hold onto. There was a lot of pain and suffering on my earlier albums. Sometimes it was in balance and sometimes there was an unhealthy amount. This one has a lot of love on it. It's got more of a fun and uplifting feel than any record in the past."
  • You can't copyright a title, so there are many songs called "It's All Good" floating around out there, notably by Bob Dylan, but also by Devo, Toby Keith and Will Smith.

    Georgia Middleman, who wrote the Nichols version, told us, "That's the hard part of writing a colloquial phrase in the business, because you know other people are going to write it, too, so you just hope you write it better than anybody else and you hope it gets through and gets on a record."
  • Not long after the album It's All Good was released, Nichols left his record label, tweeting: "I'd like to thank Show Dog Universal for doing the right thing. I'M FREE!!!"

    Nichols earned his freedom, but he lost any promotional support for the album, and this song was never released as a single. The album came out shortly after Nichols' label, Universal South, merged with Show Dog Music (Toby Keith's label) to form Show Dog-Universal Music, a union that clearly didn't suit Nichols.

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