Songfacts®:

• The quest for fulfillment in life can lead one down a spiritual path of discovery. But in this amusing song, the Brooks & Dunn argue that it really simple: everything in life will get better once you "Put A Girl In It."
• To tie in with the single release of this song, Brooks & Dunn launched a "Put a Girl In It'" contest, asking fans to send in photos of the woman who makes their world a better place. The idea was that the winning photos would shown live on stage on a big screen when the duo played the song in concert.
• The song was written by Rhett Akins, Dallas Davidson and Ben Hayslip, one of Nashville's most successful writing teams. This was one of the first hits to be penned by the trio who are also responsible for Jack Ingram's "Barefoot and Crazy," Joe Nichols' "Gimmie That Girl" and "The Shape I'm In," Blake Shelton's "All About Tonight" and Josh Turner's "All Over Me."
• The three songwriters told The Boot how they came to write this song:
  Akins: Ben and Dallas were supposed to write together, and I was scheduled to write with someone else, but I got canceled on. I called Ben and said, "Hey, do you want to write?" Ben said, "Yeah, but Dallas is going to be about three hours late because he's coming home from Georgia. Why don't you and me go write until Dallas gets here."
  Ben and I started writing a song we'd been working on called "Country Strong" that Blake Shelton ended up recording. While we were waiting on Dallas to get there from Atlanta, we were working on that song. This whole song was about a farmer and a cowboy and talking about people who were "country strong." Ben said, "I think girls are 'country strong,' too, so I think we should put a girl in this song." I said, "Maybe ... I don't know. Let's keep rockin' along the way we're going, and maybe we'll get her in at the end." Ben said, "I'm just telling you right now, we've got to put a girl in it." He said it about two or three times. Finally about the third time he said it, I don't know why, it just clicked in my head. I was like, "That's a whole song in itself!" We started messing around with that idea, and about that time Dallas showed up.
  We scratched the other song because we knew this one was a hit. Dallas grabbed his guitar and started doing this groove. He said, "What's the song about?" I said, "It's about you can have a truck, a house, a boat and all these great things, but it doesn't mean anything until you put a girl in it."
  Davidson: We wrote a verse and the chorus that day.
  Akins: I had to go out of town the next day. Ben calls me and says, "Hey, we wrote a second verse and the bridge." I said, "I don't know about this ..." He was like, "Well, Dallas wants to demo it."
  Davidson: The next day!
  Akins: I said, "I'm out of town ... don't demo it until we all get back together so we can work on it." I called Dallas and told him we can't demo the song yet. The second verse was cool, but I thought we had to work on the bridge some more. Dallas says, "Trust me, it's awesome." [laughs] I said, "No! We don't need to demo it yet!" This was back when I was being way cautious. Dallas taught me to just roll with it. 
  They had told me they weren't going to demo it without me. The next thing I know, Ben and Dallas call me two days later and said it's on hold for Brooks & Dunn. Renee Bell at Sony emailed it to Ronnie Dunn and Ronnie immediately emailed her back saying he loved it. He said he wanted to "Stones it up a little bit," which meant to make it sound a little bit more like the Rolling Stones. I was like, "Y'all demoed the song?!" [laughs]
  Hayslip:To this day, Rhett still doesn't think the song's done! [laughs]
  Akins: I learned a lesson on that!