Chris Young is enjoying one of the biggest hits of his career, with “I Didn’t Come Here To Leave.” The song, the title track of his latest album, is written by Young, along with Dallas Davidson and Kyle Fishman.
“What’s happening in the song is a big ol’ party,” Young tells Audacy. “This song got written, it’s almost better to explain how we came up with the idea. The night before we wrote this, this song sounds like we wrote it at 9:00 PM. We wrote it at 9:00 in the morning, because Dallas Davidson and I were hanging out. We hadn’t run into each other in a long time. He was working with Kyle Fishman a lot at that point, and they had a write at 11:00 the next day. I did not know any of this while we’re hanging out. I was just waiting for traffic to die down.”
Young recalls Davidson asking him if he wanted one more beer. Young replied that he would have one more if Davidson had one more, to which Davidson replied, “I didn’t come here to leave.”
“I was like, ‘Please tell me you haven’t already written that.'” The next morning, they quickly wrote what is already poised to be one of Young’s biggest hits of his career.
What Chris Young Says About Writing “I Didn’t Come Here To Leave”
Young has written plenty of his own hits in the last 20 years. Still, he admits there is something special about how “I Didn’t Come Here To Leave” came to be, which was written in under an hour.
“It was just one of those serendipitous [things],” Young reflects. “If I hadn’t been hanging out with [Davidson], hadn’t been, ‘Hey dude, let’s catch up. I’m going to sit in here and wait on traffic.’ If all those things don’t fall in place, that song never gets written. Or it gets written by somebody else, somewhere down the road, that thinks of that idea. It’s just a fun song, talking about hanging with your friends. It’s perfect for summer, so obviously, the timing couldn’t have worked out better for me. I’m just really excited for people to get out there and start listening to it more than they already have.”
The Deluxe Version of ‘I Didn’t Come Here To Leave’
Young just released a deluxe version of I Didn’t Come Here To Leave, an album that was first released in October. The deluxe version has three new songs, including “One Of Us,” a duet with Shaylen.
“‘One of Us’ kind of came across in a completely organic way,” Young explains. “I know that gets said a lot, when you’re talking about how a duet occurs. But we wrote this song, and one of the co-writers on there with me, Ty Graham, who is a good friend. Great writer, great artist. He goes, ‘I know exactly who you need to send this to.’ I sent it to [Shaylen]. I’m like, ‘I don’t know if she’s going to like this or not.’ And it’s just the demo; we just got it done.”
“I was like, ‘This is a hit. That’s cool,’” Shaylen continues. “Also, me singing alongside [Young], if it was just that, and it was only ever just the demo that lived on my phone, that was the coolest day of my life.”
The deluxe version of I Didn’t Come Here To Leave also includes “Wedding Band” and “If You’re Lucky,” the latter a collaboration with Breland.
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Photo Credit: Jeff Johnson