Songfacts®:

• This Shane Minor and David Lee Murphy tune is a track from American Country music recording artist Kenny Chesney's fourteenth album, Hemingway's Whiskey. He told Billboard magazine this cry against the rat race is a reminder to him to slow down: Said Chesney: "That song is what I try to live by. When I heard 'Live A Little (Love A Lot),' that's pretty much the definitive sound we create out on the road. If there's a predictable song on the record, for me, this might be it. And I don't think that's a negative, either. I think this song is going to be awesome in concert. I think it defines me-- anybody out there that gives to anything - a lot. I work really hard, I give everything to this, I've given my life to this. But so does the guy that's a CEO for some company. I'm addicted to Deadliest Catch. Those guys, they don't have a life; that's what they do. They can relate to that, 'I've got to get off this boat and live a little.' That's why I think that song matters."
• Murphy told The Boot the story of how he and Minor penned this light-hearted sing-along during the end of the 2010 summer at his farm outside Nashville. "Shane and I were just sitting around, and he said, 'Hey, I've got this idea for a song called 'Live a Little, Love a Lot.' And I thought, 'Man, that's got such a great ring-- live a little, love a lot!' So we just started writing and jamming on the guitar.
  We wrote the chorus that morning, and then we went to lunch. We went to Sonic, out there in Franklin, and we took a back road home, back to my old farmhouse... We were singing that chorus we'd written all the way back. It was end of summer and we had our windows down, just singing at top of our lungs: 'live a little, have some fun!' We couldn't quit singing that chorus, we were having so much fun.We didn't write this song in one day, it took us two or three days. We had fun with it, took our time. It's a fun, upbeat song about stepping back and taking time to have some fun, live a little... and smell the roses."
• Murphy told The Boot how Chesney came to cut this tune: "After we wrote it, we thought, 'Man, Kenny would kill this!' So we demo-ed it, and my manager, Doug Casmus, took it over and played it for (Kenny's producer) Buddy (Cannon). And Buddy was like, 'Man I want this right now for Kenny.' So Kenny heard it and put it on hold.Then one night after that, Kenny snuck into a bar in Nashville and put on a show, just packed this bar. One of those surprise performances that nobody knew until the night of the show. It was really cool. Anyway, he had called me before to tell me to come down there ... this was after he'd cut the song, but I hadn't even talked to him about it yet. When I got on his bus, he said, 'Man... you're gonna love this song. I think it's a hit.' And when he told me he'd cut 'Live a Little,' I was really stoked. I was tickled to death when I heard the record. I crank it up every time I hear it I just love it."
• The song was Kenny Chesney's 20th #1 on Billboard's Country Songs. His debut chart-topper was "She's Got It All," on the week of Aug. 30, 1997.