One of Luke Bryan’s Biggest Hits, “Play It Again”, Was Almost Named Something Wildly Different

By 2014, Luke Bryan was quite used to having a No. 1 single at radio. He already had big hits like “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)”, “I Don’t Want This Night To End”, “Crash My Party”, and others. But in 2014, the Georgia native released “Play It Again“. A multi-platinum hit, “Play It Again” topped the charts for nine nonconsecutive weeks in 2014. It also became a crossover hit for Bryan.

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“Play It Again” is on Bryan’s Crash My Party record. The song is written by Ashley Gorley and Dallas Davidson. The infectious tune says, “She was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is my song / I’ve been listening to the radio all night long / Sittin’ ’round, waiting for it to come on, and here it is’ / She was like, ‘Come here boy, I wanna dance’ / Before I said a word she was taking my hand / Spinning me around ’til it faded out / And she gave me a kiss / And she said, ‘Play it again, play it again, play it again’ /And I said, ‘Play it again, play it again, play it again.’”

“That song was written kind of backwards,” Davidson recalls (via Parade). “And I don’t think we said the title first and then wrote to it. We wrote it, and then the title popped out. So we started with the verse and then worked our way to writing a chorus. And then when we got to ‘Oh my God, this is my song,’ that kind of became a hook: ‘This is my song.’ I think we were going to call it, ‘This is my song.’ But then Ashley started singing, ‘Play it again, play it again, play it again,’ and that became the title.”

What Luke Bryan Says About “Play It Again”

Neither Davidson nor Gorley was a stranger to having country hits by 2014, including hits by Bryan. But after writing it, it took more than two years for Bryan to agree to record the song. Still, it’s one he now says is one of his favorites.

 “From the day we put Crash My Party out, ‘Play It Again’ was getting downloaded more than any non-single,” Bryan says (via Songfacts). “And when we play it live on the road, it goes over bigger than most of my prior No. 1s. It’s a fun little story. It’s a great song, because it does have a story about a relationship. But I think the reaction that the girl has – ‘Oh my God, this is my song’ – that’s such a real reaction. And that’s what makes the song work.”

“Play It Again” undoubtedly helped Bryan score a CMA Awards nomination for Album of the Year in 2014, with Crash My Party.

Photo by Kevin Winter/Billboard Awards 2014/Getty Images for DCP