I See You

Album: Crash My Party (2013)
Charted: 41
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Bryan unexcited by the beautiful females wanting to hook up with him as he is unable to escape the memory of a girl who has dumped him.
  • Bryan penned the song with Luke Laird (Little Big Town's "Pontoon") and Ashley Gorley (Carrie Underwood's "Good Girl"). It was one of two tracks on the standard edition of Crash My Party that the singer co-wrote, the other one being the autobiographical "Dirt Road Diary."

    "Well I sat down with Ashley Gorley and Luke Laird," Bryan recalled. "Luke had the guitar lick going [already]. We wrote two songs that day and I've cut both of them. 'I See You,' I just loved it from the day we wrote it and demoed it."
  • This was released as the sixth single from Crash My Party. Bryan considered this as his lead release from the album but eventually plumped for the title track. He explained: "'I See You' and 'Crash My Party' were the two that we were going back and forth with on what should be the [first] single, and we chose 'Crash My Party,' and I do believe that 'I See You' is a huge single. It has everything of that emotion of it's got that youthful lyric, kind of almost a hip-hop lyric and then that big ole chorus that really kind of jumps off the speakers at you."

    "And then that 'jumping up and down with the band,' that's so melodic and hooky and catchy," Bryan continued. "And then the one thing that stands out is that big guitar riff."
  • The lyrics came together based around a guitar lick that Luke Laird already had. "That's kinda the signature lick that you still hear on the radio," Gorley told Taste of Country. "It started with that, and I had a title in my song book - I have a spreadsheet of ideas that I keep, and I had 'I See You,' and we just started talking about it."

    "That song was probably written in an hour to an hour-and-a-half, so it was a faster-paced write, with everybody just trying to top each others' lines," Gorley added. "We all did a little bit. Luke [Bryan] started it with my favorite part of the song, that post-chorus, that 'Jumping up there with the band,' and that took it to another level. It was very freeform, just yelling out lines and trying to capture and write down the best ones."
  • The song was Bryan's ninth Country chart-topper and the country star's fourth #1 taken from his Crash My Party set.

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