Girls' Night Out

Album: Why Not Me (1984)
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Songfacts®:

  • In The Judds' third #1 Country hit, the mother-daughter duo knows they don't need a man to have a good time. For their girls' night out, they plan on hitting up the country bars and dancing the night away.

    "There are a lot of women who don't have a date on Friday night," Wynonna explained in the Billboard Book Of #1 Country Hits. "I've been there. So what do you do? You get together with your girlfriends. You sit and talk about how ornery and trouble-making men are, and you forget about your troubles and you go out and you have a ball.

    I guarantee you it's inspired a lot of women 'cause they'll come to the concerts and hold up signs saying, 'We're having a girls' night out.'"
  • Ironically, "Girls' Night Out" was written on a guys' night in. The Judds' producer, Brent Maher, wrote the tune with Jeffrey Bullock, his fishing buddy who was trying to make it as a songwriter in Nashville. The pair was getting ready to go out to dinner with their wives when Maher came up with the melody.

    "I picked up my guitar, and there was a rhythm pattern, and this melody just fell out," Maher recalled in the Billboard Book Of #1 Country Hits. "Jeff and his wife, Tina, kind of started dancin' around the room." At Tina's urging, the men ditched the dinner date and continued to work on the song.

    "I think I started writin' the verses first, and the choruses just sort of blurped out," Maher continued. "I wrote it just to be a little ditty, and it turned out to be a much bigger record than what I ever thought it would be. Actually, when I turned the record in, I never thought that would be a single. I just thought it was a really good-feel kind of a deal, but it turned out to be, in the early part of The Judds' career, a real anthem for them, especially at concerts. When they went into 'Girls' Night Out,' the place would go crazy."
  • Following "Why Not Me," this was the second single from The Judds' full-length debut. In February 1985, four months after its release, the album reached #1 on the Country Albums chart.

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