Songfacts®:

• The first single from Toby Keith's 35 MPH Town album was written by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally with Bob DiPiero.
  
  Clark and McNally have co-penned a number of hit tunes including the Band Perry's "Better Dig Two" and Miranda Lambert's "Mama's Broken Heart."
  
  DiPiero has written many country #1 hits including Montgomery Gentry's "If You Ever Stop Loving Me" and Tim McGraw's "Southern Voice."
• The song finds Keith encouraging his his fellow American to forget about their differences and unite together over alcohol. He commented with a laugh about the bar stomper: "I just wanted to go kind of retro. It sounds like 'I Love This Bar' and 'American Ride' had a child, and 'Beers Ago' is their drunk uncle."
• Brandy Clark told Rolling Stone Country this isn't a drinking song, but instead celebrates the way a little social lubricant can unite Americans. "We wanted to write it sort of like a modern-day 'Piano Man.' It's like, 'When we're in here drinking, who cares what we are outside of this?,'" she said.
  
  "When we finished the song [in 2012], we said, 'This would we be so great for Toby Keith.' And then he passed on it," Clark added. "Then he came back around to make another record, and the guy at my publishing company pitched it again — after the record was done — and they heard it and said, 'Oh, he's got to go in and do this.'"
• The song's music video was directed by Michael Salomon, who has helmed many of Toby Keith's clips. The visual features animation by Ben Naff, who portrays an animated Keith playing bartender, as well as other images desribed in the song. Naff's other credits include graphics for the TV movies Blake Shelton Live: It's All About Tonight and Zac Brown Band: Uncaged in Vegas.
• This was the only track on 35 MPH Town that Keith didn't write. "The second I heard it I knew I had to cut it because it sounded exactly like what I've made a career of doing," he said. "Very well-written with a nice waltz tempo, it's a drinking song with a good little message: Everyone needs to get along and drink a cold beer."