To The Guys That Date My Girls

Album: Country Again Side A (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • Thomas Rhett is the father to three girls, Willa Gray, Ada James and Lennon Love. This song finds him addressing his daughters' future suitors.
  • Rhett co-wrote the song with his own father, Nashville songwriter Rhett Akins, along with Josh Thompson and Will Bundy, before a 2019 tour stop in Birmingham, Alabama. Though Thomas Rhett's girls were all still quite young when they penned the song, the singer had been sitting on the song idea for a while.

    He told Billboard the concept came from a conversation with one of his Nashville buddies. "He's got a daughter, I've got three of them - and we were just talking about what that moment would be like when somebody does come over to the house to pick them up to take them out," Rhett said. "You think you have 100 years before that happens, but it's going to come sooner than you think."

    "It's weird writing a letter to someone you've never met before," Rhett continued. "'Hey, this might be a date for you, but this is my whole world right here, so treat her right. Treat her with respect.'"
  • Rhett explained during a roundtable interview with media the song "is a letter to the guys who are gonna show up on my doorstep one day and be like, 'Hey, Mr. Aikens, I'm here to take your daughter on a date.'"

    The singer added he'd thought about how he would approach his daughters' dating. "Am I going to be a super-stern dad? Am I going to be the dad that invites him in for coffee? What kind of conversation is that gonna be like? And so we kind of just sat down and wrote out a list of things that I wanted these guys to know."
  • Rhett played the song in concert the night after they wrote it, and the reaction of the Birmingham crowd was immediate. "I was just watching grown men hugging their daughters, crying, hearing the song that they just heard for the first time," he recalled.

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