Songfacts®:

• Louisiana born country music and Cajun singer-songwriter Hunter Hayes began his musical career at the age of four, making appearances at both local performances and on national television. At the age of six he appeared in the movie The Apostle alongside Robert Duvall, who gave Hunter his first guitar. In 2010, whilst still a teenager he signed to Atlantic Records Nashville and co-wrote "Play" for Rascal Flatts' Nothing Like This album. This is his first single from his debut album, on which Hunter played every instrument and wrote or co-wrote every track.
• Hunter told the story of the song in an interview with The Boot: "I got to write with a couple of guys, one of which I'd never written with before, by the name of Mike Busbee. I was also writing with Gordie Sampson, who was one of the co-writers I write with, and he's from Canada. He comes in with this idea called 'Storm Warning.' A lot of times we come up with ideas we can write around and try to figure out what we can relate to. On this day, I don't know why, I took 'Storm Warning,' and went from weather to love in a heartbeat. As a 19-year-old, I figured out that it made me feel like the girl I was interested in at the time was not bad news, but not necessarily good for me. I wanted to spend time with her, I wanted to get to know her, but at the back of my mind I knew that it was probably going to end soon and it wasn't going to end well. There were red flags all over, but I just ignored them. That's what I related to, for whatever reason, and we ended up writing that exact thing."