I love learning about how country music songs came to be. Sometimes the genesis of a song is fascinating. It may arise from the songwriter's personal experience or their reaction to something in the news. Whatever the origin happens to be, there may be a tale to be told about it that can deepen your appreciation of the singer, the songwriter, and the song itself. For example, "Country Girl (Shake It For Me)" by Luke Bryan evidently came from listening to hip hop. That's right, hip hop. If you are already scratching your head, here's more about that.
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'Country Girl' Was A Pivotal Song In Luke Bryan's Career
It Catapulted Him To Fame
Per The Boot, this was a big hit for Bryan. "It's Bryan's best-selling single to date, and one of the best-selling songs by a male country artist of all time." That is quite an achievement. The song dropped in 2011 and landed at number 4 "on both Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart and the Mediabase country chart. It spent three weeks in that position." As of 2019, 'Country Girl' had gone 6x platinum. That is a big-time success story.
How The Song Came To Be Written
Bryan And His Pal Were Just Joking Around
Per Songfacts via The Boot, Bryan explained how "Country Girl" was written. It was almost a fluke. "What's interesting is, I wrote it with my buddy Dallas Davidson, who I wrote 'Rain Is a Good Thing' with. Me and Dallas, heck, we always listen to crazy music, and we were on iTunes one day listening to some hip-hop songs. We said, 'We need to talk about getting some Country girls to shake it a little bit.' We just laughed about it. And then we started working on it, and we wrote it."
He added, "I'll never forget, I played a private party one time, and it was a pool party for some young kids who had some money. Their parents wanted Luke Bryan to surprise them, and the time I got done playing, they put on dance music and rap and the pool party was just rocking! I was like, 'I've gotta try to write some music that maybe some kids like that will want to rock at their pool party or play at a honky tonk.' I told that to Dallas, and we went on that. We didn't have a title. If you had told us the title, 'Country Girl Shake it For Me,' we'd have said that's too cheesy."
Uh, no, it wasn't! The song helped put Luke Bryan on the map. He went with his gut feeling and he was right on the money.
