The Older I Get

Album: Where Have You Gone (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • This Adam Wright, Hailey Whitters and Sarah Turner penned cut finds Alan Jackson singing about reaching his late 50s.

    "This song reflects a lot of how I feel these days," the country star said. "It's a good song; I really liked it, but the message was a little different when I first heard it. I thought maybe it could be a little more positive about being older and wiser and more content, so they rewrote a few things, and this is how it ended up."
  • The single was released on October 20, 2017, three days after Jackson's 59th birthday. It was his first studio recording of a new song since 2015.
  • In a Songfacts interview with this song's co-writer Hailey Whitters, she talked about how it came together. "I have a sister that's 11 years younger than me and it's fun to watch her grow up because in a way I feel like I am seeing myself grow up," she said. "I just started thinking about time and age, and how we evolve as we get older. My mom probably looks at me and thinks the same thought.

    So I just started thinking about things that happen the older we get, and I know for my sister right now it's friends and things like that, and for me, it was starting to change a little bit as I was turning 30.

    I was talking to Adam Wright and Sarah Allison Turner, my co-writers, about that, and we just started writing all these verses. Adam's wall in his room is a chalkboard, so we just wrote I think 15, 20 verses to that song. It was really anything from 'the hangovers are worse' to deeper things like 'the more I pray,' and we just started cherry-picking the ones that we felt put the song together.

    Adam sent it to Alan, and Alan hit us back and said, 'I really love this, can you change the first verses to something a little deeper.' Because we started kind of light and then eased into the more profound things, but he wanted to go all the way from the get-go. So we went back and pulled out some of those other verses that were a little bit deeper and he recorded it.

    It's a huge compliment. Alan Jackson is my favorite songwriter of all time, and he's written so many of those songs of his that I love, so I knew that he was coming at it from a writer's perspective as well, so it was pretty cool to have him care enough to really want it to be perfect and to come back with that critique."

Comments: 2

  • John from Decatur, IndianaThis song is spot on.
  • Debbie from Ponte Vedra Beach, FloridaThis is a beautiful, heartfelt and meaningful song. I am soon to be 69 & the song is right up my alley! Thanks Alan Jackson! Be well & continue to age handsomely!
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