Darius Rucker: The Song He Wrote With Ed Sheeran

Darius Rucker's new album Carolyn's Boy features a song by Rucker and Ed Sheeran. Darius told us that the song "Sara" is about someone he knew long ago.

Rucker explained, "Ed and I met when he came over with Taylor (Swift) the first time like fourteen years ago, and we talked about writing for a while. We just talked about it, and then finally, one day, I just said, 'Forget it, I'm just gonna come to England and write with you.'"

Darius continued, "We went there and were writing, and he asked me on the first song for the first love I had, and I told him it was my fifth-grade girlfriend, Sara. Then he asked me a lot more stuff about it, and we sat down at the end of the day to write the song."

Rucker noted, "That song for me is so special. It was his idea, and the best part of it is that there's so many love songs and there's so many breakup songs, but there is not that many friendship songs. That song I just love. It says I don't want to be anything but your friend. I want to see my friend I haven't seen in a long time. And I know she doesn't know about it (the song) at all. I haven't talked to her in fifty years or something."

We talked with Rucker a few weeks back, and he told us about his new album, named for his late mother.

He discussed his mother, a nurse, who died in 1992. "She was my biggest supporter. She was always in my corner, you know, back when I was a real young kid trying to get in the rock and roll and country and being told that wasn't the music I was supposed to be listening to; she was my biggest supporter; 'Let him listen to what he wants to listen to.' I remember when I told her I was dropping out of college to play in Hootie, and I thought she was going to kill me. I really thought she was going to kill me. And she didn't. She said, 'If that's what you need to do…' She always believed that I was going to make it probably a lot more than I did."