Sun Don't Let Me Down

Album: Ripcord (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • Keith Urban wrote and co-produced this song with disco legend Nile Rodgers and songwriter busbee. Pitbull contributes a rapped verse, the first time that one of Urban's tunes have featured a rap. Urban explained that the track originally had a musical break which they were just going to let "simmer," but he heard Pitbull on the radio and felt his "swagger" would work perfectly. "I called the guys up and said, 'Should we send this track to him and see what he does with it?' And they said, 'Sure.' So, we sent it. He loved it."

    "The crazy thing was that we gave him no direction at all. We just said, 'Here's your 16 bars, just do something. Anything. It's a blank canvas. Just say what you want to say.' And thankfully, he loved it," Urban added. "I had no idea what to expect when I unwrapped the gift so to speak when he sent it to my house. I was like, 'Okay, what's this gonna be? What did he say?' And he sent back this insane verse and really finished out the song."
  • Urban commented to Rolling Stone that Pitbull "brings a mischievous, sexy swagger to it, in a very different way."
  • Nile Rogers also plays guitar on the track, while Urban plays the banjo. "Nile does his thing, and I do what I do," Urban said, "but I don't want either of those things - I want what we do."
  • The lyrics reference Urban's wife, actress Nicole Kidman, at the end of the first verse. "She's in a movie called To Die For, and in one scene, she's dancing in front of the headlights," Urban explained. "So the lyric goes: 'There in the headlights, dancing like she's in a movie scene. To die for, and she's killing me.'"

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