Songfacts®:

• Shelby Earl revealed to us in our interview that this is one of the first songs that she ever wrote. Earl added it was inspired by a long-distance relationship that she was in: "'Pacific Love' is one of the first songs I ever wrote…At the time it was written, I was emerging from a very painful, but also very passionate relationship with someone from another country. I loved him. I knew he loved me too in many ways, but he couldn't give me what I needed and eventually he broke my heart. When the song came to me I was at the point in my grieving where I was fed up with the hurt and thought; 'enough is enough. I am just going to decide to believe that he loved me and that I mattered to him so I can finally release this and move on.' I had to claim my own value in order to pick myself up 'by my bootstraps' - so to speak. This song has been an important companion and healer for me. But even now when I play it I feel very deeply – for that person and for the fact that human relationships can be so broken, even when people care about one another deeply."
• "Pacific Love" features on Shelby Earl's debut album, Burn the Boats, which was released in November 2011. Shelby Earl told us how she went about penning the album's lyrics: "I spend serious time on my lyrics. Not because it's hard to come up with the concepts, but because I want to be sure I'm communicating EXACTLY what I mean to in every word. The inspiration for most of my songs comes personal experience. Often times a lyric will come when I've taken a step back to ponder an experience or situation in my life and I've thought 'this is totally wild, there's got to be a song in this.' While that is how I come to song ideas most often, there are certainly times where I'm less of a calm observer and there's more crisis or catharsis in my writing process. There are a couple of songs on the album that were written when I was in the thick of it. They are words I had to sing in order to work through the hurt or the fear or the loss I was up against at the time."