Undivided
by Tim McGraw (featuring Tyler Hubbard)

Album: Here on Earth (Ultimate Edition) (2021)
Charted: 76
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Songfacts®:

  • On November 9, 2020 Tyler Hubbard revealed in an Instagram post he'd been diagnosed with COVID-19. The Florida Georgia Line singer quarantined on his tour bus that he'd parked in the driveway of his family's Nashville home.

    As he was without symptoms, Hubbard took advantage of the enforced two weeks break to pen 10 songs born out of a time of introspection. He sent this inspirational call for unity to his labelmate, Tim McGraw, who agreed to record the tune with him. Released as a single on January 13, 2021, McGraw included the pop-friendly country tune on the deluxe release of Here on Earth.
  • Hubbard co-wrote the heartfelt anthem with Tree Vibez songwriter Chris Loocke while reflecting during his personal quarantine. The FGL member said he was thinking about how he is prone to judge too quickly and the spiritual values his parents raised him with, when he got the idea for an upbeat plea for unity. Inspired by America's turbulent 2020, it finds Hubbard and McGraw singing of how people have the power to bring about the much-needed change in a country wracked by divisions.

    "I knew immediately when I finished it, I had to text it to Tim. He has a way of communicating with the world that is unique in music," said Hubbard. "For him to want to perform with me was an amazing feeling. The song is about coming together, and that's exactly what we did."
  • McGraw was driving home from visiting his daughters in California when he received the song. He had to stop at a gas station in Montana to find the bandwidth to listen to it; when he did, he was drawn to how the words acted as an accountability check.

    "Music gives us hope and brings us together in a way nothing else can. This doesn't mean we don't have work to do. Quite the opposite," he stated. "I loved the positivity of this song and that it called me to check myself and to remember that love is bigger. It's why I knew this song had to be my next single with Tyler as soon as he sent it to me."
  • Hubbard and McGraw collaborated previously on Florida Georgia Line's 2016 track "May We All."
  • McGraw and Hubbard co-produced the banjo and acoustic guitar-driven track alongside FGL's Life Rolls On producer, Corey Crowder, and McGraw's Life On Earth man behind the boards, Byron Gallimore.
  • Speaking with Radio.com's Katie Neal, Tim McGraw recalled listening to the track several times on the drive back to Nashville. When he arrived at his home, he called Hubbard and said he wanted to cut the song immediately "and it needs to be out now."

    "I don't even think the track was finished when we were recording the vocals completely," added Hubbard. "We got together, knocked it out real quick... it was almost too easy."
  • McGraw explained to The Boot that Hubbard and he worked on the song one evening in the studio. They spent the entire evening together, "Working out parts and who was gonna do what and where the harmonies were gonna be."

    McGraw added, "It was a lot of good, creative energy, and we felt like it was a lot of goodwill that was going on when we were laying this song down."
  • McGraw and Hubbard performed this the night of Joe Biden's inauguration as part of a concert special that was broadcast across networks. Their performance was from Nashville.

    The song tied in with Biden's theme of unity at a time when America was starkly divided ideologically and economically.
  • As Tim McGraw listened to this song in his car, he drew a connection to one of his previous tunes.

    "It immediately hit me right in the heart because it's easy to go down a dark path sometimes," McGraw said on the Today show. "What it did for me is it made me look in the mirror and check myself and see, 'Am I losing the light that I have with my music and what inspires me to make music, what inspires me to be involved with my community and teach my girls certain things?'"

    "This song really made me check myself and say, 'Am I living up to what I sang five years ago in 'Humble And Kind'? And this was just an add-on to that to me," he added.

Comments: 1

  • Brenda from Doniphan, MissouriSo true about love from above we need to have understanding and always have the truth about any situation, look a little longer and be real and never pretend you know the truth about anyone keep the truth in all you do keep it up.
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