Songfacts®:

• It's often very stressful for a father when his daughter begins dating, and that's the subject of this song. Fathers have found different ways to handle this, and can be very persuasive in convincing the young man dating his daughter that it's in his best interest to behave. In this song, the narrator recalls a speech given to him when he was a teenager by his girlfriend's father. The speech was intended to ensure the narrator treated his girl with respect, and the father made it clear that he would be waiting for them to come home, and probably still cleaning his gun. Many years later he finds himself giving the same speech to his daughter's boyfriend.
• This was the fourth release from If You're Going Through Hell to top the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. The first three #1 hits from the album were "If You're Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows)," "Watching You" and "These Are My People." This was the first time in seven years an artist had pulled four chart-toppers from the same album. The previous performer to achieve this was Atkins' label mate Tim McGraw who pulled four straight #1s from his 2001 Set This Circus Down CD.
• This was written by the Nashville songwriters Casey Beathard and Marla Cannon-Goodman.
• Atkins told CMT News that this song "is like a funny joke that is true." He explained: "That could have been really just a dumb redneck kind of song, but the songwriters - Casey Beathard and Marla Cannon - took a very intelligent approach to that idea. You know, dad's out there joking - 'I'll be cleaning my gun when my daughter goes out there on her date.' They took the intelligent approach about it, with the speeches that you go through - the speeches that we really all should remember, but we don't. They're all very important things, but yet when it comes to your little girl, you're going to remember that speech. My audience, I think, is intelligent rednecks."