Songfacts®:

• In an interview with The Boot the comment was made that American Ride shows a softer side to Keith. He responded: "As I get older, that stuff comes out more. It started when I wrote (2001 single) 'You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This.' That's a three-and-a-half minute song about a five-second kiss. If you want to talk about that five seconds as good as you can talk about it, it's going to take three-and-a-half minutes to tell it... I try to think of those little thoughts in 'Tender as I Wanna Be' – this guy's pretty bold, he doesn't give in very easy and he's saying, 'I know you need me to be that way, I'm just not. But, when we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, then that's plenty tender enough for me. I don't know if it is for you, but by God, it is for me.' The secret recipe for learning how to write those kind of songs is to put down a bunch of stuff in the lyric that you would never actually say to the female. So, there's no way a guy like me in real life is going to be that tender. You wish you could be but there is a wall there."