Before it rocked the charts, it nearly died on the cutting room floor.
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Long before country duo Brooks & Dunn turned “Rock My World (Little Country Girl)” into a (nearly) chart-topping hit in 1993, the song sat unfinished in a Nashville studio.
Its fate hung on a half-remembered quote from a Madonna documentary and a month of creative struggle between two frustrated songwriters. Steve O’Brien and Bill LaBounty had no idea their late-night jam session, sparked by a line from Truth or Dare, would produce a rare lead vocal for Kix Brooks—and a song that still brings arenas to their feet three decades later.
Billboard called “Rock My World (Little Country Girl)” a bouncy, fun tune with a fresh and energetic sound, while Country Weekly labeled it “pure fun.”
‘Truth or Dare’
“We want our songs to hit people in a way that feels like they can sing along, feel it, and connect to it,” Brooks told Country Weekly. “‘Rock My World (Little Country Girl)’ is just fun. It’s about that moment when you’re swept away by someone, and it captures that excitement.”
Bill LaBounty and Steve O’Brien wrote “Rock My World (Little Country Girl)” and Brooks & Dunn released it as the fourth single from their Hard Workin’ Man album. It was also their second single to feature Brooks on lead vocals instead of Ronnie Dunn.
O’Brien and LaBounty were digging for song ideas in LaBounty’s studio when LaBounty remembered they had recently seen the documentary about Madonna’s life, Truth or Dare.
“I remember Bill turning around from his keyboard, and he said, ‘Remember what Sandra Bernhard said to Madonna in that movie?’” O’Brien told NSAI’s Bart Herbison. “She said, ‘Has anybody rocked your world recently? Have you met any interesting people or did they do something romantic?’ What if that might be a song idea?”
O’Brien said he picked up a guitar and strummed the E chord – hard. The men had been working together frequently.
Kix Brooks’ Lead Vocal Moment
“I just slammed an E chord and said, ‘But what if we made a country?’” he recalled. “I go, ‘Rock my world little country girl.’ It was his idea, so I just remember picking up the guitar and going, ‘Rock my world, little country girl.’”
The first two verses came together quickly, and they even namechecked Madonna. But then the men hit a creative wall.
“It just sort of popped up, ‘Act like Madonna, but listens to Merle,’” O’Brien said. “Then we hit where it was coming into the chorus, and we knew it was going to go, ‘Rock my world,’ but we didn’t really know where it was going to go after that.”
By this point, it was late in the day, and they made another writing appointment to finish the song the following week.
The writers were friends with Don Cook, who worked at Sony, where Brooks & Dunn were signed. He and Scott Hendricks were producing Brooks & Dunn’s second album. LaBounty played Cook the partially finished “Rock My World (Little Country Girl).” Cook told him he thought Brooks & Dunn‘s second album was finished. However, after they turned it into label head, Tim DuBois, he requested another up-tempo for Brooks to sing. Cook said if they finished writing “Rock My World (Little Country Girl)” and sent it in, they’d “see what happened.”
Brooks & Dunn “Boot Scootin’” Success
The men met twice a week for almost a month, trying to finish it. They tried to imagine themselves as Brooks & Dunn and, given the recent success of “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” asked themselves what the duo might want to say in the song.
“I can’t tell you how many lines for that last verse we wrote, but we couldn’t really just sort of nail it,” he said, explaining the men were out of words that rhymed with Earl. “Bill’s a brilliant writer. We were sitting there, and he turned and said, ‘Sunday she’s all ribbons and curls.”
O’Brien jumped up and said, “Bill, that’s it!”
O’Brien knew that meant the country girl could go out and have a good time, but that she had a great heart and could pull herself together when it mattered.
“Once we had that last line, thanks to Bill, then we were able to finish the song up pretty quickly,” he said.
(Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
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