BEHIND THE SONG: "Tell Me"

For Jake Owen’s latest single “Tell Me,” he tapped into a page out of his own life when he co-wrote the tune with Jimmy Ritchey and Don Poythress. Jake tells Songfacts.com, “I was dating this one girl, she was what I thought was great. But she didn’t have the same intentions I did. And that seems to be the way it goes most of the time: one person’s got intentions and the other one doesn’t.”

Owen reveals that all of his friends warned him that the relationship probably wouldn’t last, but he chose to ignore their advice to break up with her. But, in the end, Jake wishes he had taken their wise words to heart. He explains, “I wished at the end of it, after I got my heart broken…I felt like the whole time I was essentially looking down the barrel of this loaded gun that somebody should have just taken out of my hands and said, ‘No.’ But then again, I should have taken myself out of it. So it’s kind of one of those reflective songs.”

Despite the message of the lyrics, “Tell Me” is an up-tempo ditty. Owen says, “I can’t write everything dark and dreary, and I love the tempo to that song, and the way it feels.” Jake loves the tune some much that he chose it to be the first track on his current album Easy Does It. He shares, “I love the way it kicks off the record with the intro. It was a big deal to me to create some sort of a feeling and, when you go to a show you have this kind of pre-show intro, and when someone puts the album in their disc player or their MP3, they can kind of get an experience when they’re listening.”

Image courtesy of Sony Music Nashville

Nikita Palmer for Citadel Digital © 2010

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