Barefoot and Buckwild

Album: single release only (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • Lauren Alaina penned this standalone single with songwriter/producer Chris DeStefano (Scotty McCreery's "Better Than This," Carrie Underwood's "Good Girl") and Texan singer-songwriter Jon Nite (Dierks Bentley's "Tip It On Back," Thompson Square's "Glass"). It was Alaina's second songwriting credit after co-penning "Funny Thing About Love" on her debut album. The 2011 American Idol runner-up premiered the song live when she returned to the show on May 9, 2013.
  • The song's writer Jon Nite told Roughstock the story of the song. "Lauren, Chris Destefano and I wrote this at Chris' studio near Music Row," he recalled. "Sometimes songs just come out of thin air, and this really did. I remember the three of us talking about life over the course of a few hours before we had anything on a song. Lauren was telling us about the whirlwind of her finishing up school, making a new record, her boyfriend and catching us up on everything. Chris started playing this incredible riff on the mandolin or guitar while we were talking. It was so cool that we just followed it till we found the words that felt like the music.

    "I grew up in Amarillo, TX, and part of life was always fields and trucks," Nite added. "I took my wife on our first date back in Texas to a farm road off Soncy with a bunch of our friends, and we circled up and turned on the radios and hung out in between the fields. Lauren was talking about the same kind of nights with rivers and big trucks, and all the things you do growing up here in Tennessee. It just flowed out like it was meant to.

    "It ended up being a full day morning till night of working on the lyrics and track till we had it, but it felt really fast," he continued. "We were all just hanging and talking and enjoying the process of writing. Lauren's mom joined us for lunch in the middle of the write, and we told her what we had started was already cool half way through. I remember, when the track was finished and Lauren was singing the vocal, thinking to myself that I had never heard a voice that powerful without mics or speakers or anything. She has a true instrument and gift, and it blew me away. The song turned out to be the picture of the best parts of our summer nights, and I'm thankful Chris and Lauren asked me to join them to write that day."

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