Up Down

Album: If I Know Me (2017)
Charted: 49
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by Michael Hardy, Brad Clawson, and CJ Solar, this song was recorded by Morgan Wallen along with the duo Florida Georgia Line. It was released as the follow-up to his breakthrough hit "The Way I Talk."
  • Co-writer Michael Hardy is Morgan Wallen's best friend and he fell in love with the demo's subject matter about having a good time. Wallen called up Florida Georgia Line's Tyler Hubbard to seek his and bandmate Brian Kelley's advice about whether he should record his buddy's song. Having toured and written together, Wallen had become close to the FGL pair but he never considered they'd want to add their voices to the tune.

    "He was like, 'Man why don't we just go 'head and hop on there, would you be OK with that?' I said 'Uh, yeah,'" Wallen recalled to Billboard with a laugh. "Kinda in the same light that Luke Bryan did a song with them early in their careers, they said they wanted to pay it forward."
  • The chorus' opening line includes the abbreviation BFE, meaning the middle of nowhere. It originated in the early 1970s as army slang standing for Bumf--k, Egypt, a mythical town that was the epitome of remoteness.

    We're just holdin' it down here in BFE

    Being from Sneedville, Tennessee, Wallen knows all about living in a remote small town and the FGL pair had similar experiences during their upbringing. "I'm proud I'm from Sneedville, and I definitely consider it BFE," Wallen laughed. "I still have a lot of family over there, so no matter where I go in life I'm always gonna remember those times growing up over there and be proud of that. I know Tyler and [Brian] feel the same way."
  • When CJ Solar, Michael Hardy and Brad Clawson penned the song, their intention was a play on words around the notion of various entities that go up and down. It was Hardy, who suggested ending the chorus with "we live it up down here."

    "I feel like we put that little twist on there and every time you hear that hook, it means a little something more just because we brought it to a new place," Solar told Taste of Country. "It's almost a whole lifestyle embodiment of this redneck, good timing guy. We wanted to have a fun song that people would be on a boat drinking beer and want to put this song on."
  • The song topped both Billboard's Country Airplay chart and the Canadian Country Chart. Michael Hardy used his newfound royalty money to buy his dream 2018 truck, paying for the vehicle almost entirely in cash.

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