Behind the Hits: Old Dominion Reveals the Stories Behind Their Hit Songs
This week on Backstage Country, Kelly Ford asked Old Dominion, the show’s co-hosts for the week of October 7-11, the stories behind some of their songs.
“Coming Home”
This song was co-written with the band’s friend and producer, Shane McAnally. As bassist Geoff Sprung puts it, “It’s like a universal feeling of coming home. I think everyone can relate. And I think Trevor [Rosen] had a great, guitar part, and we built the song off of that, and then it just snowballed from there.”
“One Man Band”
Singer Matthew Ramsey shared that someone said the phrase “one man band” to him, and for whatever reason it “struck” him. “I remember I kind of nudged [guitarist] Brad [Tursi]. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have to write this song.’ It’s like a love song. And I could kind of see it, you know, forming in my head. And we were backstage right before we went on stage that night, we were huddled around a phone writing that song as our intro was playing!”
The band managed to put down most of the idea before going on stage. As it was time to hit the stage, Matthew recalls, “We’re like, hang on one second. We got down the general idea, then went out and played the show and then came back to it probably a week or two later.” Talk about striking while the iron is hot!
“Make It Sweet”
Trevor said that they wrote “Make It Sweet” from scratch. “It was cool to start a song with no idea in the studio.” He admitted that this creative process was expensive. Fortunately, it paid off since “Make It Sweet” peaked at No.1 on Canada Country and US Country Airplay.
“Break Up with Him”
Ford asked Brad the story behind the song “Break Up with Him.” According to him, they started writing the song at a picnic. They started jamming and suddenly, Trevor and Matthew started writing the lyrics. They continued while on the bus. “Everyone else was sleeping in the back, everyone else was sleeping, and they had the idea of having it be a one-way phone conversation.”
“No Such Thing as a Broken Heart”
The song came together while Old Dominion was on tour with their friend Jesse Frasure. According to Matthew, none of them had any ideas that day, but a shooting at a club in Florida made them to be a little introspective.
“We’re sort of just talking it through and talking about how crazy things are in the world and what are you supposed to tell your kids, what’s going to happen, and we just started from the top of that song. We didn’t know where it was going. We just started kind of getting things off of our chests, really.”
He revealed it was Trevor who hit the nail on the head. “It wasn’t until we got halfway through the song and Trevor said, you know, ‘We got to love.’ Like, there’s no such thing as a broken heart. And we all stopped and went, ‘That’s the whole song.’ And then we knew where to take it.”
“Written in the Sand”
Trevor shared the story behind “Written in the Sand,” admitting it might be his favorite Old Dominion song, for now. “Matthew had that idea for written in the stars. It was funny. Brad and I had written a song where we had [the lyric] ‘Is our love just written in the sand?’” He thought the song he wrote with Brad was cool but thought of cutting it, then came Matthew, he was like, ‘I have this idea called stars of the sand: what if we compare [the idea with] are we written in the stars? Are we written in the sand? And it’s like, okay, that. That’s a really cool idea.”
Old Dominion will share more personal anecdotes and behind-the-scenes insights into their songs this week at Backstage Country. Hear the untold tales that make their songs relatable.