What I'm Leaving For

Album: Ocean (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • All three Lady A band members are married with children. Here, they reflect on the difficulties of keeping family together as touring musicians.
  • None of the band members wrote the song (it was penned by Laura Veltz, Sam Ellis and Micah Premnath), but on hearing the demo they immediately latched onto the poignant lyrics about missing out on family life while out on the road. "It's so hard stepping away from your family the way we do, and that song is such a great, beautiful way of articulating what we're out here doing this for – our families, and those that we love and the fans that love us, too," Haywood reflected in a press release. "This song is a beautiful picture of that push and pull of our journey."
  • The song's music video shares a compilation of home movies featuring Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood's children and spouses. The clip ends with the three band members returning home, where they are lovingly greeted by their families.
  • Hillary Scott, whose mom Linda Davis worked with Reba McEntire for many years, now finds herself with children of her own. She told ABC Radio she and her bandmates all readily identified with the song's message.

    "For us, it was very specific in and about us leaving our families and wanting our children to watch us chase the dream that we know we're meant to to chase, and that they can do the same thing."
  • Lady A released this song to country radio on February 18, 2020 as the third official single from Oceans. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic began a month later, their label pulled it from the radio. The lyrical content about leaving family to go out on the road had become irrelevant when everyone was at home quarantining.

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