Songfacts®:

• "The Day Before You" was written by Matthew West, who at the time was a rising star in the world of Christian music, but far from established. West wrote the song for his wife as a wedding present. It's a very sweet song about how he was ready to give up on love, but then everything changed when she came along.
  
  West's publisher brought the song to Rascal Flatts' producer, who loved it and wanted the band to record it. This put West in a weird spot because it meant Rascal Flatts lead singer Gary LeVox would be the vessel for his very personal song. He explained in a 2011 Songfacts interview: "My wife, I thought maybe she wouldn't like some other guy singing this love song I wrote for her, but she told me I should let them do it because they're going to sell a bunch of records and I could buy her a couch or something. [Laughing] I was very grateful. They sold a lot of that record and it definitely helped me to provide for my family, because Christian music isn't a genre where you're going to make a whole lot of money. So sometimes it's nice to be able to pay the bills."
  
  West adds that he did buy the couch, since that's what his wife wanted.
• The Feels Like Today album, the third from Rascal Flatts, went on to sell over 5 million copies in America, making this track a very lucrative one for its writer, Matthew West. All of the other songs on the album were written by teams of Nashville-based writers.
  
  When the band called it quits in 2020, lead singer Gary LeVox started making Christian music, putting him on West's turf.