Spread The Love

Album: Life on a Rock (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • This straight-up reggae track finds Kenny collaborating with The Wailers and their singer Elan. Having previously collaborated with Bob Marley's former backing group in 2008 on his hit single "Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven," Kenny told Billboard magazine they approached him this time around. "They called and asked if I would write the lyrics to a track they did a few years ago," he said, adding that he felt a lot of responsibility to get it right.
  • Chesney explained the background to the song to Billboard magazine: "If you watch enough TV, you know that our whole world has a blanket of negativity over it, just the nature of how we live right now," he said. "A lot of the Wailers' music, if you really listen to it, is very spiritual in nature, and all about love. And that's where we took the lyric. It's all about that emotion and how we want to try to find a little light somewhere. As much negativity as there is in the world, to write a simple lyric about how we can spread the love a little more and see what happens. As cliché as it sounds, that's where this song started and how it ended up on my record, and the fact that it did fit in the middle of all these songs that I was writing at the time, didn't even know it was gonna be a record, it's funny how it all comes about."
  • The song's universal message is reflected in the fact that it was recorded in Jamaica, Chesney's vocal was laid down in Tennessee, the background vocals were recorded in London, and the record was mixed at Buffett's studio in Key West.
  • All of the proceeds from the downloaded single sales of this song were donated to the Spread the Love Fund, which Kenny set up to pay for post-acute care for victims of traumatic injuries from the Boston Marathon bombings.

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