Songfacts®:

• The first single from Jason Aldean's seventh studio album is about the rush he gets from performing and listening to fans singing along to every word. "Being on stage is why I do what I do; it's all I've ever wanted to do," Aldean said. ["Lights Come On"] is about throwing the biggest party, from the floor to the top of the rafters, for all those people who spent their paycheck to come see us."
• The song is an ode to Aldean's day job. "The phrase, 'when the lights come on' to me, it's time to go to work," he explained. "You have a lot of people out here who spent money to buy a ticket to see our show. It's our job to go out every night and make sure they have a great time and forget whatever cares they've got going on and to let loose for a little while."
• The video goes behind the scenes during Jason Aldean's Six String Circus Tour. It also serves as a celebration of the party atmosphere the singer creates with his shows. "I used to think it was cool to go and sell out a little night club somewhere or a little theater that we were playing," Aldean says at the clip's start. "Now, every night to play an arena or amphitheater or stadium and this many people are here to watch your show and sing your songs back to you, it exceeds anything I've ever dreamed up."
• Aldean explained the visual's concept. "That's what I really wanted to capture with this video…that moment we step on stage and give it everything we have," he said. "I want the fans to forget their cares and let loose for a few hours. They're the ones who have allowed us to stay around this long. They're still here supporting us, and that is why we do what we do every night."
• When Jason Aldean originally came across this tune he was eager to record it, but there was one problem. "We had already recorded a song called 'Lights Go Out' for the album," he recalled to ABC Radio. "And then at the last minute, we got this song called 'Lights Come On,' and we're like 'Well, this has to make the record too,' and obviously, it ended up being our first single. So we felt pretty strongly about that, but we already had the other one recorded, so we were like, 'OK, well this is gonna be really… weird on the album.'"
  
  "We figured, what was a cool way to try and you know, tie it in? And it was by kicking the album off with 'Lights Come On' and ending the album with 'Lights Go Out.' We tried to make it clever," Aldean added laughing, "but it was not, you know, an intentional thing in the beginning that we went out and tried to find those songs. They just kinda fell in our lap."
• The song was written by Florida Georgia Line's Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard, along with songwriters Jordan Schmidt, Jimmy Robbins and brothers Brad and Brett Warren. Brad Warren explained to The Boot that the sextet didn't originally have Jason Aldean in mind when they started out on the tune.
  
  "We were trying to write a show-opener for Florida Georgia Line. That was the point of the day: They were looking for a show-opener. So, Brett has the title, and we had talked about it the day before a little bit, and kind of got something working. The song started sounding great, and we were all like, 'Wow, this is turning into a great track. This is really something. This is good'" And somewhere in the middle, BK said, 'This would be great for Jason Aldean.' I said, 'Oh no. This is for you.'"
  
  He added: "That never works out. When you're writing with one big artist and they say it would be good for another big artist, certainly that's not going to work out. So we figured that we wasted our day, but we had good fellowship. And then, two days later — that was a Friday, and Monday, Jason Aldean cut it."