Power of Positive Drinkin'

Album: Buy Me a Boat (2015)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Chris Janson singing of a man who heads to a bar whenever misfortune strikes him. "Long story short, I used to drink a whole bunch," Janson told Radio.com of the song's inspiration. "I've drank more beer than most people have in a lifetime."
  • The recording includes something that is generally seen in hip-hop rather than country music: turntable scratching. "We were laying it down, and I came into the control room, and I said, 'It's missing something, it's missing something,'" Janson recalled. "So just got onto the little Technics thing in there that's hooked into the computer and the whole deal and just made a [scratching sound effect] and just put it on there."
  • The song title is a play on words on the phrase 'power of positive thinking.' The term originated from the title of a book of the same name by minister and author Norman Vincent Peale (1898 –1993), who was a progenitor of "positive thinking."
  • Chris Janson wrote the song with Mark Irwin, who also co-penned Tim McGraw's "Highway Don't Care" and Blake Shelton's "Neon Light."
  • Janson told the story of the song to The Boot:

    "It was Mark's title, and that title is everything in that song. As soon as he threw it out, it was like, 'Okay, we're definitely going to write that. The question is, how do we write it? How do we make it interesting and keep it interesting?'

    Structurally, that song is pretty weird: It's got a post-chorus. We wrote the first verse, and then we wrote a little pre-chorus section, and then we wrote a chorus section, and then we wrote a post-chorus section. We never wrote another verse; we just repeated the pre-chorus section, the chorus, and then the post-chorus. That's all mind-numbing to people who are going to hear that or read that, because they don't even know what that means, but to me, it was pretty cool the way that song came together."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Jason Newsted (ex-Metallica)

Jason Newsted (ex-Metallica)Songwriter Interviews

The former Metallica bassist talks about his first time writing a song with James Hetfield, and how a hand-me-down iPad has changed his songwriting.

Divided Souls: Musical Alter Egos

Divided Souls: Musical Alter EgosSong Writing

Long before Eminem, Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj created alternate personas, David Bowie, Bono, Joni Mitchell and even Hank Williams took on characters.

Graham Nash

Graham NashSongwriter Interviews

Graham Nash tells the stories behind some of his famous songs and photos, and is asked about "yacht rock" for the first time.

Marvin Gaye

Marvin GayeFact or Fiction

Did Marvin try out with the Detroit Lions? Did he fake crazy to get out of military service? And what about the cross-dressing?

Oliver Leiber

Oliver LeiberSongwriter Interviews

Oliver Leiber talks about writing and producing hits for Paula Abdul, and explains his complicated relationship with his father, the songwriter Jerry Leiber.

Protest Songs

Protest SongsMusic Quiz

How well do you know your protest songs (including the one that went to #1)?