Songfacts®:

• Will Jennings and Joe Sample wrote this and several other songs on the album for King. Sample played keyboards in The Crusaders and released several solo albums. Jennings is a lyricist who started his songwriting career in the early '70s and has since worked with Steve Winwood, Roy Orbison, Jimmy Buffett, Eric Clapton and many others. Says Jennings: "Every song is the first song. When we were writing for B.B., you wrote something that B.B. would sing. We wrote two albums and half of another album from 1977 to about the mid-'80s for B.B. You just sort of become him, or become whoever you're trying to write for if you're writing that way. It's writing scripts, directives, really, personas, I guess. You try to keep it soulful, tell the truth and tell a story."
• In our interview with Will Jennings, the songwriter explained: "'Same Old Story' is about the ins and outs and ups and downs of life in general."