Songfacts®:

• Sugarland is the country music duo of Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles. Singling out this track as one of her favorites on the album, Nettles told us: "I love the song 'Tonight' on the record. That is definitely the power ballad of the record. That song was inspired. We wanted to write a song – do you remember the movie Say Anything? And you remember Lloyd Dobbler and he's holding up the boombox outside of Ione Skye's bedroom and it's playing 'In Your Eyes'? And we thought, we want a song that Lloyd Dobbler would play in front of her window now. What would that song be? Or if John Hughes were alive to make a movie now, what song would be on that soundtrack?
  
  And so we ended up working on 'Tonight' and writing 'Tonight.' It was just so fun, even as a singer to perform that song, because it's in a different part of my range, it allows people to hear a different part of my voice, and it definitely for me was fun to pull on some of my influences, like Chrissie Hynde or even Robert Smith from the Cure, with that sort of '80s sound. I loved it, and I love that song for it. I think it's really great." (Check out our full interview with Jennifer Nettles.)
• Better Than Ezra frontman Kevin Griffin co-wrote the song with the Sugarland duo. The rocker was also one of the writers of the first single from The Incredible Machine, "Stuck Like Glue."
• Kristian Bush told The Boot:"We were inspired in writing this song by the emotional longing we heard in the soundtracks of iconic 80's movies like The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Say Anything. The feeling of being so in love that you would trade everything for just one day with that someone."
• The tune is a fans' favorite when the duo play it live. "This song is an event every night we play it," said Bush to The Boot. "When Jennifer gets to the first big 'Always' and holds it forever, and the band finally kicks in, and the electric guitars rumble to life under her note, it really turns the room into a stadium. I love how the audience start to cheer and scream, and how that energy carries us and the song to a new place. It makes a man want to play guitar!"
• The song's music video was filmed at the historic Woolworth mansion on New York City's Upper East Side.