Songfacts®:

• This rollicking, tongue-in-cheek cut about a dumped guy is centered around a stolen beer.
  
  That was a cold one
  I never will get back
  If she had to leave
  Did she have to leave me
  One beer short of a twelve pack
  
  The song's title references both a drink and a deed as we learn of the narrator's memory of his ex taking a beer from his 12 pack out of a cooler when she left him.
• Jeff Hyde and Lynn Hutton helped Church pen the song. Jeff Hyde has been a multi-instrumentalist in Church's band for many years. Lynn Hutton also helped write Florida Georgia Line's "Here's to the Good Times."
• Eric Church: "It's light-hearted, and I feel like when you hear '(The) Outsiders' and 'A Man Who Was Gonna Die Young' [from the album], it can come across as, 'This guy's taking himself really seriously.'"
  
  "And I think you need 'Cold One' to kind of have a chuckle and go, 'Oh, it's okay. This is music. We're having a good time. Let's laugh.' It's not so focused on the art part that you lose having a good time, and that's what that song to me sets up is it's fun."
• The song's music video was directed by Church's frequent collaborator Peter Zavadil and shot at a beer warehouse and bar near Nashville. The clip features the singer along with his band members Jeff Cease, Lee Hendricks, Jeff Hyde, Driver Williams and Craig Wright in both performance and acting roles.