Old Dominion has a Top 25 single, with “Making Good Time.” The song is from their latest Barbara album, out last August. Keep reading to find everything to know about the feel-good tune.

Who Wrote Old Dominion’s “Making Good Time”

Band members Matthew Ramsey, Trevor Rosen, and Brad Tursi wrote “Making Good Time” with Ross Ellis and Ross Copperman.

What Inspired “Making Good Time” by Old Dominion

Rosen had the guitar lick for “Making Good Time,” with the rest of the writers quickly latching onto the sound. Ramsey looked to “Same Old Lang Syne” by Dan Fogelberg as inspiration for the lyrics.

“I think about that song obsessively,” Ramsey tells Billboard. “It’s the simple vignettes like, ‘We bought a six-pack at the liquor store / And we drank it in her car.’ Those are just real intimate moments that are just like, ‘Holy sh–. How do you get that granular?’ And we try to do that a lot.”

Of all of the songs on Barbara, a bit of a creative shift for Old Dominion, “Making Good Time” is the only one Ramsey felt confident enough to include on the record. He admits tracking the first songs in the studio was a challenge for him.

“That was a difficult session for me personally,” Ramsey recounts. “I wasn’t sure about any of the songs, except for ‘Making Good Time.’ We had maybe four or five songs that we wanted to knock out, and we honestly missed on two of them. We just abandoned them. And for whatever reason, it didn’t feel great, except that song might have been one of the last ones of the of the session, and we finally kind of fell into a groove.”

Old Dominion Reveals How “Making Good Time” Became a Fan Favorite

Old Dominion by now has plenty of hits, including “Hotel Key,” “I Was On a Boat That Day,” and more. But even Old Dominion recognizes there is something special about the fan reaction to “Making Good Time.”

“People love this song,” Rosen says. “We love this song. It has the classic elements of Old Dominion. It sounds fresh, but it has that ‘Snapback’ throwback pop chorus. And people love it. When people are telling you they want to hear a song, don’t ignore the obvious.”

The Lyrics Of “Making Good Time” by Old Dominion

It seems like yesterday
I could barely hear your name over the band playing
Leaning on my Chevrolet
Your hair in braids, holding my hand, saying
“I don’t normally do this
But there’s something ’bout you and the vibe and the music”
It was love it or lose it
Yeah, I wanted you so damn bad, it was stupid

We were seventeen, we were making moves
Burning gasoline, I was on fire for you

When you’re drinking too much, do you think about us?
Do you re-drive every mile?
Just trying to get out of this slow downtown
‘Cause it never really was our style
Never gonna give up
Never gonna let dust settle down on a dashboard night
Maybe we were going all the way
Baby, we were going nowhere either way

You were by my side
And we were making good time

Photo Credit: Dove Shore