“I was writing with one of my really good buddies on the bus and he said, ‘Hey, man, could I just run something by you, a song that I think you could do really good with?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, play it,’ and so he played me ‘Gimme Something’ and I said, ‘Man, I love it! I feel like that’s me. I feel like that fits well on this album,’ and the funny thing is is I didn’t know it but the label had actually already put that song on hold for Dustin Lynch, and so I was really bummed out but when it came down to it and we got in the studio Benny Brown at my label called me and he goes, ‘Granger, (imitates him) I want you to have “Gimme Something,’ and I said, ‘Done! I’ll record it today,’ and so we did.”

“’You’re In It’ is a song that Frank Rogers, my producer, he wrote this song right after leaving writing with me and he didn’t actually pitch it to me. He didn’t even think much about it. It ended up in a group of songs that I found from him as we were writing together, and it was a guitar vocal, just a really rough voice memo on an iPhone, a guy and his guitar, and I said, ‘Frank, “You’re In It” – that’s a smash,’ and he’s like, ‘Huh, boy I guess you’re right.’ It’s like it didn’t even occur to him cause he was writing so many songs at a time and now he’s just over the moon about it being track Number Two.”

“Unlike ‘You’re In It,’ ‘Raise Up Your Glass’ was a pitch from Frank Rogers, my producer, and we didn’t have a lot of listening to do on this album. The songs that I didn’t write on this album were pretty much the only ones that we heard, which is a good thing. We didn’t listen to a thousand songs, but Frank said, ‘Man, I want to send you a few songs and see what you think,’ and one of them was ‘Raise Up Your Glass,’ and to me the track three on any album is kind of a sacred spot. It’s an important spot. The first one you’ve got to introduce who you are and what you’re gonna be. The second one you kind of lighten the load and get ‘em going, but the third one it’s time to kind of reel them in and go, ‘Okay, it’s time to talk now,’ and that’s what ‘Raise Up Your Glass’ is for me on this album.”

“’Happens Like That’ was written in Tacoma, Washington, and I was with some really good friends of mine. Tyler Hubbard from Florida Georgia Line was one of them. We were on the Florida Georgia Line tour and we were writing like crazy on this tour and this was just a song that evolved from the very beginning, from the first line it flowed forward with the groove and the line. It was just . . . ‘you order a drink, it goes down smooth, before you can blink it turns into two/ it was just gonna be another night with the boys’ . . . At this point we still didn’t know what the song was about, where it was going, what the hook was, and I love the fact that you could write a song from the very beginning, from scratch, from a clean slate and not know where it’s leading you, and then ‘it happens like that’ becomes the hook, and it’s the first single off this album so just that alone will make it always very special to me.”

“’Still Holds Up,’ the voice you hear at the beginning is my son, Lincoln. He’s three years old. The idea came from the same writing session as ‘Happens Like That.’ We wrote these songs and the next morning we listened back to ‘em cause sometimes you’ve got to do the next morning test. You’ve got to figure out if it still holds up, and that’s what we said. My buddy said, ‘It still holds up,’ and I said, ‘It does, and that’s the new song we need to write,’ and so when we put out the demo and I brought it home, my kids always get to listen to the demos right at the beginning and my son, Lincoln, that was his favorite from the get-go. He wanted to hear it over and over and over and over and over. I decided that since he already knew all the words before anyone else in the world did I was gonna have him lead the song.”

“You can’t be born a good guy. You have to work at it. You have to wake up every morning and decide that you’re gonna be a good person, a good guy, and I know a lot of people like that, and when I hear that song in the final form of what it is now I still think of the people I thought of at the very beginning of that song. I think of my uncles and my friends that are the good guys, and that makes me feel good, and so now that it has taken on the title track and it’s become the talking point of this album I’m just so happy. I’m so happy that that’s what we’re representing now is the good guys.”

“’Everybody Lives’ is a very special song to me on this record. Frank had emailed me and I had very little service on this mountain but it was enough to pull the email in and all he said in the message was, ‘I know we’re not looking for songs right now but I feel like you need to hear this one. I clicked on the song and you know when it starts loading, cause I had bad service. It’s like, okay, I wait, wait, wait, and here I am in this lodge when that song came on and I heard it for the first time and I just . . . It floored me. I lost it, and I said, ‘This is the message. This is the missing message that I’ve needed for this album, that I wanted, that I’ve been trying to write over and over and over and this one did it for me, so I instantly was trying to get Frank with no service saying, ‘Hold the song, hold the song, don’t send it to anyone.’”

“The interesting thing about ‘Stutter’ was we had a good time, it was just a vibe and we were just flowing and we wrote it quickly, and I think most of the guys, we kind of moved on and they kind of forgot about it except me. I knew from the very beginning this was a special song. This was a really fun song, different song for me, and I went ahead and demoed that song ahead of some others that they thought we should have demoed instead, and I think people were a little surprised that, ‘You’re gonna go with “Stutter” instead of . . . We have some really solid songs,’ and I said, ‘Yes, we do, but those other songs sound like everything else I’ve done so far. “Stutter doesn’t,’ and so I recorded it and when I recorded it and brought them the master they freaked out. It’s still one of my favorite tracks.”

“We were in Vancouver, Canada, and one of my good writing buddies, it was his birthday and we went and got a cake and we were on the bus and we were blowing out the candles on the cake and I said, ‘Man, we gotta write you a birthday song today,’ and everyone kind of thought that was a joke, like ‘What could you possible write in a birthday song,’ and I said, ‘No, seriously, I want to write a birthday song and it had been kind of kicking around in my head that we should write a song with the idea of you’re never too old to die young, which means you could always live life because it’s how we feel, not the age, not the candles on the cake as we say in the song, and so we did. We wrote that song and I’m so glad it was Andy’s birthday that day that inspired the song.”

“One of my good friends and I, we wrote ‘Love Ain’t Blind,’ and the way that song came about was we was on the road with me and he came to the show. This is what I love about bringing writers to shows. After the show he said, ‘Man, I watched the whole thing, I love your show, and I saw one moment that I don’t think is part of your show, and I see this love you have for your wife and you’re such a family man and you have love songs, but you don’t have that like you and a guitar and you’re looking at her and it’s very intimate,’ and he goes, ‘What if that idea is love ain’t blind cause I see you,’ and so right there after the show at midnight or whatever we started and we finished it that next morning.”

“We wrote that song in one day and this was Frank’s idea. He said, ‘I want to write a song called “4 Wheel Drive” and of course eyes roll back in my head. I’m like, ‘What? Frank, why would we write a song called “4 Wheel Drive”? Haven’t we already said that before,’ and he goes, “No, 4 wheel drive like that’s the house, like that’s the driveway . . . 4 wheel drive. I want to have a house at the end of a 4 wheel drive,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m listening,’ and so I pull out my guitar and started playing that riff, the groove that’s in the beginning and that became the moment, and then I got my wife to come on and do the ‘oohs’ at the very end.”

“This is a co-write that I had completely remote. I was never in the same room with these guys at the same time. They kind of had the roots (laughs) of this song and they sent it straight to me and I said, ‘Man, I love it,’ and I went in and so I wrote the second verse alone away from them, and they had written the first verse and so I went into the first verse and kind of dissected it and changed the things to my taste of what it would be, and then I got into the chorus, and they had written the chorus and I swapped around a bunch of lines and made it more of who I was and I just carved it into a Granger song and then I wrote the second verse and then I sang it and mailed it back and it was all done remote. It’s funny that since that day we still have not been in the same room, all of us together, since we recorded ‘Reppin’ My Roots.’ It’s pretty interesting.”

“He said, ‘I was in New York a few weeks ago and I was looking out the window of my hotel room in New York and I saw the taxis and the cars and the lights and everybody scurrying around and I just thought, “Look at this fast food world dying for a home cooked meal.”’ I was like, ‘Frank, that’s genius! I love that! I love it,’ but it was a message that I wanted to say because it’s a world where we’re just stuck in our phones and we’re stuck in the electronics and we’ve lost connection and ‘Home Cooked Meal’ needs to be a message. It’s a moment and it needs to be the last thing I say on this album so it’s not gonna be on the radio, but I’m so proud of it and I’m so glad that it’s the last thought that you’re gonna hear from me on this album.”