Songfacts®:

• This is the title track and lead single from American Idol season 8 finalist Danny Gokey. Written by veteran Music Row writers Marv Green and Kent Blazy, the track's sentiments about looking back at past mistakes but realizing the best days lie ahead, are particular poignant as Gokey's wife died shortly before the artist's audition for the show.
• During an interview with Washington, D.C.-area radio station WMZQ, Gokey discussed the connection he shares with Kent Blazy. He said: "I recorded this song months ago and gave it to radio, and I just found recently that the writer... he lost his wife last year in January. And this is the first song that he wrote after his wife passed away. Can you believe it? He said he was ready to start writing again after the tragedy. He said, 'I was walking through the park, and I heard someone walk past, and he said, 'My best days are ahead of me.' And [Kent] said, 'That's what started the song idea.' This song is my anthem."
• After he lost his wife, Blazy nearly stopped writing altogether. He told The Tennessean: "I was here at the house by myself day after day and night after night. I started just writing songs about what I was feeling and all these songs came out."
  Blazy found the process therapeutic and at the end of it, was ready to start writing with co-writers again. He called Marv Green and this cut was the first song that they wrote together. "It's making a statement of what I choose my future to be," said Blazy. "That song honored her because of how she gave me more faith. After she died, I looked at my life like the Big Bang theory. What I had up until then was an amazing life, but it's not my life anymore so I have to reinvent myself, and I can be anything I want to be."
• Other songs Blaze has co-written include Garth Brooks' first country #1 "If Tomorrow Never Comes" and "Gettin' You Home (The Black Dress Song)" by Chris Young.