BEHIND THE SONG: "Sunshine"

Mississippi native Steve Azar has found his way back to the country charts with his sexy single “Sunshine” which he co-wrote with Jason Young. Steve tells Songfacts.com that many people think that he wrote the song about his wife, but he reveals that’s not quite the case. In fact, it was more of a mood he was in while on the road that inspired the tune. Steve explains, “It’s very dark in my area in the back of the tour bus. And I have jazz music going, I have the Food Network going, watch a little ESPN. It’s very cold, and I get inspired back there. So a lot of times at sound check, I’ll go out and just start writing a song, not really paying attention to it. I was in this mood, and I wasn’t thinking about anything. Sort of where you’re just out of your mind a little bit and you’re not really focused on anything.” That’s when the opening line of the song hit him and it grew from there.

Soon afterward, Steve began playing “Sunshine” during his set while he was on tour with Bob Seger. And the song pretty much stayed in its same form aside from adding a drum pattern when Steve went into the studio to cut it for his Slide On Over Here project, which is available now. He shares with The Boot, “The room would get dead silent when we would play it. It was sort of hypnotic.”

Besides the powerful spellbinding mood it invokes, “Sunshine” is also reliable to fans on a number of levels. Steve says, “The ‘finally got it right’ [line] has meant so many types of relationships. It’s not just about a couple; it’s about a father and a daughter. It’s about best friends. It’s about long relationships or relationships that may be around the corner or that are brand new. The journey represents the struggle to know it’s there or to find it.” Hearing the feedback from fans has been rewarding to Steve as well. He explains to Songfacts.com, “It’s giving people hope that don’t have it, and we’re hearing that. Event the people who have been married 30 years, the stories are more like, ‘Oh my God, it made me fall in love all over again!’ So, we’re getting these stories, and when you write something, you don’t think about all that. Then you start getting feedback and going, ‘Well, this is great that it affects so many people.’”

Nikita Palmer for Citadel Digital © 2010

Check out more BEHIND THE SONG