To be honest, I think I could probably write a new article every week about a song of Kip Moore’s that I find to be extremely underrated.
From “Blonde”, to “I’ve Been Around”, to “Everything But You”, I’m not kidding when I say I could go on and on.
But today, we’re gonna talk about one of my favorite’s from his 2015 sophomore album, Wild Ones… a nostalgic little track called “That Was Us”.
He co-wrote it with Westin Davis (and Dan Couch) after a rough night not being able to sleep on the bus driving through Montana:
“I’m from a small little town in south Georgia. And the guy I wrote it with, Westin Davis, he’s from north Florida. I couldn’t sleep, like a lot of nights on the bus.”
So he went out to the lounge area on the bus and started pickin’ on the guitar, humming melodies and messing around with the lyrics.
And sometimes, the right song just falls into place without too much overthinking or editing:
“[Westin] stuck his head through the door, he was listenin’ at four in the morning. He stuck his head out and he says ‘Me and Teddy used to burn that old Chevy all the way up to Mary Lee’s’.
And that’s what he said. And I thought about immediately, we both, I had a girl that ran with our pack. And we watched after her like she was our sister, and he had the same thing, so we kinda wrote about that thing.
We poured some whiskey at four in the morning and started writing this song.”
It seems to me like the some of the best songs are often written that way…
Though they only released two singles with this particular album, in that of “I’m to Blame,” and “Running For You,” “That Was Us” remains a fan-favorite to this day for the nostalgia and honesty in the storytelling of what it’s like to grow up and be a teenager in a small town. Of course, it’s all captured in a way that is uniquely Kip.
He’s finally out on the road for his How High tour after months of being at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, and seemingly has a new album on the way soon, too.
Even though new music from him is always exciting to me no matter what it is, sometimes, you just can’t beat an old tried-and-true track like this one.
If you’ve never heard the song before, give it a listen… I promise you won’t be disappointed:
The studio version:
