LAWD have mercy…
I never knew how badly I needed to hear Kip Moore sing “Good Girl” until today.
He wrote the track alongside friends and frequent collaborators Dan Couch and Westin Davis, but it never made one of his own albums. Instead, it was cut by Tracy Lawrence for his 2013 Headlights, Taillights and Radios album.
But, randomly clicking around on the internet, I stumbled across an absolute gem of a video on YouTube of what sounds like a demo version of Kip singing it. As a blogger, I’m more than happy to tell you the internet usually sucks and is often a downright, horrible place, but this kind of stuff makes it worth scrolling through all the bullshit everyday.
Something about hearing Kip sing it just struck me the first time I heard it, and since I cannot stop replaying the video wishing I could actually add it to my streaming playlist, I thought y’all needed to hear it, too.
I love Tracy Lawrence, but I’ll be honest, Kip almost makes it sound like a completely different song, but that’s often the case as it more than likely has a much deeper meaning for him as the songwriter.
I mean, the details in the storytelling are classic Kip. Nostalgically looking back on a long lost love with lyrics that are reminiscent of “Drive Me Crazy,” or his fan-favorite, “Crazy One More Time,” both from Kip’s 2012 debut studio album Up All Night. Kip’s debut album was released a year prior to Tracy officially recording this song in 2013.
Tracy said he had wanted to include a power ballad on the tracklist, and “Good Girl” was a perfect fit:
“I just thought the melody was so good, I thought it was a very powerful arrangement on the way the demo was put together.
And we evolved it, we took it to a new place on the master. I love finding things like that, that already have the nuts and bolts, but they leave you the room to take ’em to another place.
A lot of the women that have heard me play this on the road, friends of mine that have, this song moves ’em. I think this has a little bit of single potential to it.”
Though Tracy never ended up releasing it as a single, I have to say, I feel the exact same way. This is one of the best unreleased songs Kip has in the arsenal… and there’s a lot of them.
Check out the opening verse and tell me it shouldn’t have been on Up All Night. With Kip’s gravely vocals and conviction when he sings, it just makes ya feel some type of way:
“She was a true as a verse in King James Bible,
And just as pretty as a sparrow’s song
She was tender as the pedals on a fresh picked flower
And honest as a summer day is long
What a good girl…
She wore innocence around like a new born child
Softest smile you’ve ever seen
All her friends tried to tell her I was too damn wild
I still don’t know what she saw in me
What a good girl”
I know it’s been months since he asked about underground songs fans wanted to hear on his upcoming album (that still has yet to be officially announced in terms of a title or release date), but is it too late to throw this one on the tracklist?
I mean, come on, y’all…
This is GOLD.
Tracy’s album version:
