Say Goodnight

Album: Life at Best (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song was penned by the country singer-songwriter Katrina Elam (the Rascal Flatts' collaboration with Natasha Bedingfield, "Easy"), Nashville songsmith Melissa Pierce (David Nail's "Red Light") and John Paul White, who is one half of the folk duo The Civil Wars. Frontman Mike Eli admitted to The Boot that the song differs from their usual material. "For me as a singer, it's incredible fun to sing," he said. "The song is something we haven't done before lyrically, and it gives us the opportunity to do something a little different."
  • The song's music video features a robot, and we believe it to be the first science-fiction promo by a Country artist. Bass guitarist Jon Jones told The Boot: "When we saw the first line of the treatment, and saw that it said a robot does this, we were like 'What?' But by the end of the script, we were like, 'This is OK. I get it.' The way it was shot, which makes the robot come to life, is very cool."
  • The song touches on matters of the heart, a topic the band are not comfortable writing about together. "It's kind of a sappy love song, which is tough for the four of us to sit down and write," Jones told CBS Local. "To hear it done really well compelled us to give it a shot. It was a different kind of song for us that we had never really attempted before."

    "We're songwriters and we love to write songs," added Eli, "but a great song is a great song. We heard one of [White's] versions that he had recorded and just loved it."

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