Songfacts®:

• "In My Daughter's Eyes" feels like it's always been around, an evergreen ballad that parents still quote on Instagram captions and use at recitals, weddings, and every tear-jerking moment in between. But before it was a Martina McBride staple, it was just a handwritten gift from songwriter James T. Slater to his brother.
• The song is one of the rare solo-written hits in a town built on co-writes. Slater penned the whole thing while living in Zurich, long before he unpacked a single suitcase on Music Row.
  
  "I remember getting that title, and I read an article about Faith Hill, who had three daughters," he recalled to Songwriting magazine. "Martina McBride had three daughters at the time, and Garth Brooks had three daughters. My brother had just had a daughter and I thought, 'Man, I'm gonna write a gift to him.'
  
  I was on the tube in London, and I remember everybody was looking down, but there was poetry on the underground. I remember seeing a poem up there, and I'm looking up and it says something about, 'hand around my finger,' and I thought, 'Boy, that's an interesting idea.' So if you listen to the bridge its, 'And when she wraps her hand around my finger...' So I took that, my brain did. I came back and worked about three weeks on the song, then moved to Nashville."
• When Slater landed in Nashville in 2002, someone told him Garth Brooks could often be found at the local Pancake Pantry, so Slater showed up with a CD in his pocket. Garth appeared, listened later, loved the song... and then promptly stepped away from music to raise his own daughters.
• Before Martina McBride ever heard it, the first real demo came from then-unknown singer Gretchen Wilson, who earned $75 for the session. She walked into the studio mid-argument, mascara running, and knocked the vocal out in two takes. Then she burst into tears hearing it back. Slater remembers that moment as the first time he realized he might have written something special.
• McBride, who had two daughters at the time, heard the demo and wanted it for her 2003 album Martina. The song became her 18th Top 10 hit, landing at #4 on the country chart, crossing over to Adult Contemporary (#3) and reaching # 39 on the Billboard Hot 100. "In My Daughter's Eyes" won Slater both BMI Country and BMI Pop Awards, cementing him as a Nashville writer to watch, even if Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" ended up beating McBride at the 2005 Grammys.
• "In My Daughter's Eyes" opened plenty of doors for Slater. Within weeks of moving to Nashville, he had a hit cut, a publishing deal, and writers lining up to have him in the room. Today, his resumé includes songs penned for the likes of Rascal Flatts ("Unstoppable"), Tim McGraw ("Lookin' for That Girl"), Keith Urban ("God Whispered Your Name") and even Sabrina Carpenter ("Christmas the Whole Year Round"), along with his own release "Key West Address."