It Ain't Over

Album: Dropout Boogie (2022)
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Songfacts®:

  • This slow-burning blues rocker finds Dan Auerbach reflecting on the merits of splashing out cash on a love interest. He compares "breaking the bank" to win the apple of your eye to gambling. Though it's a "real long shot" and likely to break your heart, Auerbach urges the listener when smitten by someone to "lay your money down." Don't be discouraged when you feel like you're "playing a losing game," he adds, because dreams do come true. "It ain't over" until it's over and people do occasionally hit the jackpot and find true love.
  • Black Keys recorded "It Ain't Over" at Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. They released the song as the second single from Dropout Boogie on April 27, 2022.
  • Black Keys co-wrote the track with Reigning Sound frontman Greg Cartwright. Auerbach previously worked with Cartwright when he played guitar on Strychnine Dandelion, the 2010 debut album by another of Cartwright's projects, The Parting Gifts. He also co-wrote Dropout Boogie's first single, "Wild Child."
  • "It Ain't Over" opens with an electronic keyboard called an Optigan, which gives the song a deep groove. The strange instrument fascinated both Auerbach and his bandmate Patrick Carney: "That song started around a little loop from that toy organ," Carney told Uncut magazine. "Dan had a chorus, and Greg helped with the verses. It was one of the first songs we did - a hard one to cut - but we had to put it aside when we got inspired by some other stuff that we'd started playing around with."

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