Billy Currington Celebrates ‘It Don’t Hurt Like It Used To’ with Co-Writers
"...the song literally fell out of the sky like God just wanted the song to come out," said co-writer Cary Barlowe.
It was a rainy, cold day in Nashville on Tuesday, Dec. 6, but inside South, a bar and restaurant on Demonbreun St., friends, family and music industry insiders gathered to celebrate Billy Currington’s 11th No.1 song as an artist. The song of honor was his latest smash, “It Don’t Hurt Like It Used To,” the third single from his Summer Forever album.
The redemptive track was one that almost didn’t happen, had Currington not stopped by to say hey to co-writer Shy Carter, who was just wrapping a songwriting session with songwriter Cary Barlowe. The three weren’t scheduled to write together that day, but fate decided to intervene.
“For me personally, I think one of the things that people aren’t necessarily aware of is we weren’t scheduled to write a song that day,” said Barlowe. “And that to me, is probably one of the coolest things because normally when I write with an artist, they’re like ‘oh hey man, see you on Wednesday at 10am’ at my house or my studio or bus, wherever we’re writing and this just kind of felt like this natural organic thing. I mean, me and Shy wrote a song that morning with another writer and he just was like ‘hey Billy’s going to stop by and say what’s up.’ And I was like okay cool man, I know him a little bit, I’ll just say hey, and next thing you know, we’re picking up the guitars, we’re singing and it’s like the song literally fell out of the sky like God just wanted the song to come out.”
While the plan that day was never too write a song, Currington couldn’t have been more thrilled to celebrate its success and savor the fact that he had a hand in writing it.
“[It’s] way more special,” he explained.” Just because you’re there at the birth of the song and everything that happened during the writing session, all the great memories and how this line came about. All the guitar riffs came about and all these so-called secrets that we kind of know that we get to share later on. It’s like your baby, how they always say. It really is.”
Shortly after the celebration, the Georgia made his way back to his home state of Georgia to celebrate the holiday season before hitting the road and promoting his follow-up single “Do I Make You Wanna.”
