Songfacts®:

• Sometimes a relationship seems too good to be true. You know in your heart it won't pan out but intend to enjoy the ride while it lasts. During this playful song, Michael Ray is well aware that his dream girl will be ditching him soon, but he intends to have fun anyway.
  
  She's decorating my car
  Soon she'll be breaking my heart
  She's too wild horses to be all mine
  I'll be her beast of burden on borrowed time
  
  "Some relationships aren't meant to last, however that doesn't mean they are any less significant," said Ray. "'One That Got Away' takes what would normally be a sad experience and flips it to embrace those moments. I think this song really celebrates one of the best parts of growing up - taking that risk on a relationship and opening yourself up to something that could be really great."
• Co-written by Jesse Frasure and Josh Osborne with two members of Old Dominion, Matthew Ramsey and Trevor Rosen, the song puts a positive spin on a relationship that might not ultimately work out. "Sometimes you get in that moment and you're like, 'This person might be out of my league a little bit, but for whatever reason they're into me, so I'm just gonna roll with it,'" Ray explained to ABC Radio. "It might backfire and they might break my heart, but it's gonna be one hell of a story in the end."
• Ray sees the uptempo tune as one that is great for the warmer weather. "One of the things that I like to do when I listen to music in the summertime is to take the roof off my Jeep and just cruise somewhere," he said. "And this song just gave me that feel of one of the songs you can crank up before you head to the show. It puts you in that mood to create the rest of the night."
• Asked by Billboard if the lyrics brings anyone specifically to mind from his past, Michael Ray replied with a chuckle:
  
  "This song is definitely one of those that I have lived. I thought of someone where I kind of saw it coming, but I agreed to be a part of the ride. But, I think that everything in your life sets you up for where you need to be, and it's all about the journey."
• The video takes Michael Ray on a spontaneous jaunt around South Beach. The singer stepped outside his comfort zone while filming the clip, which includes a group of locals cast by the director joining in on his night out on the town.
  
  "We wanted to treat Miami as its own character in this video," Ray said, "because we felt that this city really had a personality and an energy of its own - reminiscent of the energy I feel on stage night-after-night, city-after-city when we play this song live."
• Michael Ray must have wondered why Old Dominion didn't cut "One That Got Away," but Josh Osborne explained that this doesn't mean it isn't a great song. He told The Boot it was simply because the track didn't fit properly on Old Dominion's 2019 self-titled album.
  
  Osborne added that Ray was put off by it being a secondhand song; he went with his instinct and said, "Oh, wow, that's a hit song. I could do this, and my voice would sound cool on this."