Songfacts®:

• "Sweet Dreams" is a breakup ballad with a Texas twang and a heavy dose of regret. Koe Wetzel sings of a relationship gone wrong and takes responsibility for its demise. Even in sleep, the memories of the lost love torment the singer, making it hard to find "sweet dreams."
• Wetzel co-wrote "Sweet Dreams" with his guitarist Josh Serrato (he came up with the guitar lick), pop songwriter Amy Allen, X Ambassadors vocalist Sam Harris, and producer Gabe Simon.
  
  "I had an R&B type song in mind, like something off Usher's Confessions album, with a badass drumbeat and a really cool melody. I had written in my notes a few weeks earlier: 'Sweet Dreams,'" Wetzel said.
  
  "When we got to the Sonic Ranch in El Paso, we tried it. We stepped back to look at the song and got really excited about the way it came out."
• "Sweet Dreams" debuted at #47 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, marking Wetzel's first entry on the prestigious list. Previously, three of his songs - "Creeps," "Cabo" and "Damn Near Normal" - bubbled under but didn't quite reach the Hot 100.
• Wetzel and his crew were in the studio writing a different song, which was going nowhere. So, they took a step back, tossed around some ideas for a new direction, and that's when the magic happened.
  
  Wetzel had a note he'd scribbled down a couple of weeks earlier: "It's hard to have sweet dreams when I'm such a nightmare." That line became the spark. They also had a killer guitar lick they'd cooked up on the road. With those ingredients in hand, the song practically wrote itself. It flowed out of them, quick and easy.
  
  "We wanted a bit of an R&B vibe," Wetzel told Billboard.
  
  They considered using programmed drums for that signature beatpad sound, but Wetzel had another idea: "I thought it would be cool to set up a smaller drum kit, tighten up the snare, and give it that pad feel."
  
  That switch, he said, really set the mood for the track and solidified that R&B influence.
• The song isn't about one specific girl. "It was just kind of multiple relationships," said Wetzel to Billboard, "and then bouncing it off people who had had similar problems with relationships and then making it all come together."