Songfacts®:

• Little Big Town begin this song by singing: "Babe, I don't wanna talk right now." It develops into a yearning ballad where they explain what they need is physical intimacy, not conversation.
  
  Stay a little longer please
  I sleep a little deeper when you're next to me
  
  Jimi Westbrook of LBT explained to Apple Music: "Being married or in a relationship is tough, and I think that you feel that isolation of two people in a moment when things aren't going great, but that underlying love that's there is still running. I love the sparseness of that."
  
• Written by Hillary Reynolds, Michael Jade and Trevor Jarvis, "Next to You" slowly builds until it reaches its soaring, chaotic outro.
• The first song recorded for Nightfall, lyrically and sonically "Next To You" sets the scene for the rest of the record. "It really starts where we were at, painting the picture where we wanted to start," Phillip Sweet told The Boot. "We loved the way it felt, what it said, how it sounded and what it built. It was so dynamic. And that really started the whole process."
• Little Big Town performed the song live during the ACM Presents: Our Country special on April 5, 2020. The show replaced the ACM Awards, postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. With Little Big Town all self-isolating in their own homes, the director split the screen four ways to show each member performing the song.