River of Love

Album: Troubadour (2008)
Charted: 59
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Songfacts®:

  • This Caribbean/country/R&B hybrid uses a river as a metaphor for love. It finds Strait trying to lure a lady into his boat with the promise of a romantic ride.
  • The three songwriters who penned this, Shawn Camp, Billy Burnette and Dennis Morgan, also sing harmony vocals on the track.
  • Strait performed this live at the 2008 CMA Awards.
  • This was Strait's 44th #1 on the Hot Country Songs chart.
  • The songwriting session that produced this tune originated with a melody that Dennis Morgan had in his head. Shawn Camp and Billy Burnette both had ukuleles with them, which they used to build around the melody. As the trio played around with the song, it started to fall together. Morgan recalled to The Boot: "Harland Howard used to say, 'Write them with three chords and the truth,' but we beat him on this one - we only used two chords, and it might not be the truth!"

    "Shawn started singing some of the lyrics, and it just came out," he added. "I think he had that opening line: "Hey, baby, won't you take a little ride" … I don't think we were thinking about so much as how to craft it, we were just having a ball writing it."

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