Some songs are so good, they remain a favorite of both the artist and their fans years later. These three country songs came out in 2012, but still sound great today, 13 years later.
Videos by American Songwriter
“Blown Away” by Carrie Underwood
Carrie Underwood includes “Blown Away” as the title track of her fourth studio album. Written by Chris Tompkins and Josh Kear, the two wrote it with Underwood in mind, after having a big hit with her on “Before He Cheats“.
When Tompkins and Kear began writing “Blown Away”, they weren’t sure they were writing for Underwood until they included the line, “Not enough rain in Oklahoma“. From that point on, it was Underwood’s song, at least in the writers’ minds.
“We knew if we stuck with that lyric, it was Carrie’s song or maybe no one would ever record it,” Kear tells CBS News. “We loved the lines, and our goal had been to create something for Carrie in the first place.”
“Fly Over States” by Jason Aldean
Jason Aldean had a No. 1 song with “Fly Over States”. Written by Neil Thrasher and Michael Dulaney, the song is on Aldean’s iconic My Kinda Party album.
“Fly Over States” says, “Just a bunch of square cornfields and wheat farms / Man, it all looks the same / Miles and miles of backroads and highways / Connecting little towns with funny names / Who’d want to live down there in the middle of nowhere? / They’ve never drove through Indiana / Met the man who plowed that earth, planted that seed / Busted his ass for you and me / Or caught a harvest moon in Kansas / They’d understand why God made those flyover states.”
“I grew up in Georgia, on the outskirts of Macon, surrounded by a lot of farmland,” Aldean explains (via Songfacts). “That’s what I know. For any artist, if you can sing about things you’ve experienced, then you can convey that message to your fans.”
“Pontoon” by Little Big Town”
Natalie Hemby, Luke Laird, and Barry Dean wrote “Pontoon“, which remains one of Little Big Town’s biggest hits. Included on Tornado, the group’s fifth studio album, “Pontoon” is a feel-good summer track. After a decade of releasing singles, “Pontoon” became Little Big Town’s first No. 1 hit.
Ironically, the three writers and Little Big Town have Miranda Lambert to thank for the song.
“Natalie and I had written a song that Miranda recorded called ‘Fine Tune’,” Laird tells The Tennessean. “It was on her last album, and it’s still one of my favorite songs the two of us have written. Somebody had overheard ‘Fine Tune’ playing in an office at the publishing company or something, and another person came and asked Natalie, ‘What was that song of yours? ‘Pontoon’ or something?”
Photo by: Lloyd Bishop/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
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