Songfacts®:

• This guitar-heavy rocker finds Gilbert kicking off the weekend. He told iHeartRadio:
  
  "Some days are longer than others… and some nights aren't nearly long enough, 'The Weekend' is about making that weekend go on and on, and getting every little bit [of] good time out of it. You're gonna give it up all week long, so make every Friday night, every Saturday, every bit you can, matter."
• Gilbert explained the song's impetus: "When we hit the road this winter on the Blackout Tour, we were rolling through the Midwest, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and you see how hard people work – and how much they need to let it go when they get to Friday!
  
  All those people coming out to the shows and rocking hard; they meant business. I wanted to write a song that matched that intensity to kick back even harder than you work. That's where 'The Weekend' comes from: all those people who came out and threw it down with us."
• Gilbert penned "The Weekend" over the phone with Nashville songwriter Andrew DeRoberts, without ever meeting him face to face.
• The song's music video was directed by Shane Drake and features Gilbert, his band, his wife Amber and a beloved vintage car.
  
  "This isn't that far off [from the truth]," Gilbert admitted of the clip's storyline. "I'm not a great mechanic … and I do love that old [Mercury] Cougar and my wife. To mix it all up like this, and kinda make it about what every guy wants and get frustrated about? Well, that's pretty much here."
• Georgia schoolteacher Amber Gilbert is not used to co-starring in music videos. "She was entertained by the idea, I think, at first," Gilbert recalled to Nash Country Daily, "and then when we got closer to the time and the director, Shane Drake, actually had some conversations with her, and she figured out we were serious about it, she kind of [went], 'Are you sure?'
  
  "But she did wonderful," he added. "Shane says she was a natural."