Songfacts®:

• Urban penned this summer song with singer-songwriter Richard Marx, who recorded a succession of hits in the late '80s and early '90s including "Right Here Waiting" and "Hazard." Following his solo success, Marx emerged as a songwriter to the stars, with hits for 'N Sync, Luther Vandross and Josh Groban. When we spoke with Marx in 2012, he told us, "I'm just writing songs that I like. It doesn't matter if it's something that's really personal, that's something I need to purge, or if I'm sitting in a room with Keith Urban and we're just having fun writing a song together."
• Urban told The Boot: "I like to have at least one good summer song on a record. I love radio songs, and there are certain songs that I write specifically trying to hear them on the radio or just in the car. That's the place I usually have in mind when I write. I still love hearing music in a car more than anywhere."
• Urban wrote on his blog concerning this collaboration with Richard Marx: "We hadn't written a lot in the last year or two. I really loved writing with him. We wrote 'Better Life' on the last record and 'Everybody' on the last album as well. I just really wanted to write with him again. He came to Nashville and we did a typical sort of drum machine and little loop groove. I like the drive and the edgier sort of thing."
• It proved to be an Indian summer for Urban as the song reached #1 on the Hot Country Songs chart for the week of October 22, 2011.
• This was Richard Marx's third country #1. Prior to Marx's breakthrough as an artist, he penned Kenny Rogers' 1985 topper "Crazy." Twenty years later he co-wrote Urban's #1 "Better Life."
• Urban and Marx penned the song at a rehearsal studio at the Nashville branch of Studio Instrument Rentals. It was written just after the devastating Nashville floods of May 2010 in which Urban lost all his guitars. As a consequence he had to borrow one from someone at the rental company for their writing session.