Justin Moore has his family to thank for his new single, “Why We Drink.”
“[It’s] inspired by my mom,” Justin tells Access, before realizing how that might sound. “I should probably explain, so she doesn’t just see that headline,” he quickly adds, laughing.
The country crooner (whose fifth studio album, “Late Nights and Longnecks,” drops July 26) says he got the idea during a family night out to dinner where the drinks kept flowing.
“I ordered a drink, and then I ordered three, four more,” he recalled. And my mom goes, ‘Why do you drink so much?’ And I go, ‘Hell, I don’t know why I drink so much!’ I like drinking. If my team wins, I drink to celebrate. If my team loses, I drink ’cause I’m bummed out. If a certain song comes on, I drink. So I had this idea to write a song called ‘Why We Drink.’ So, in a roundabout way, my mom gave me the idea.”
When he eventually put the idea to paper, the lyrics pretty much wrote themselves. The result is an upbeat melody with tons of twang – the perfect summertime country song.
“It’s a fun tune,” Justin says. “It’s one we’ve been playing live over the last five, six months that the audience sings along with right away … It’s a song that you’ll play riding around on a boat in the lake” – with a drink in your hand, of course.
Listen to Access’ exclusive premiere of “Why We Drink” below.
“Why We Drink” is one of many great songs featured on “Late Nights and Longnecks,” which Justin is calling his best record to date.
“I had more fun making this album more than any I’ve made, which I think is saying something,” We wrote the whole thing at my beach house in Florida, which was fun. A lot of late nights and longnecks actually went into the writing of it.”
Learn about the backstories behind three of Justin’s other songs off the album below.
“That’s My Boy”
“My wife and I have three daughters who are 9, 7 and 5, and two years ago had a little boy,” Justin tells Access. “Obviously, it was special for us. We love our girls –and obviously love him as much as we love him. But it was neat for us to have the opportunity to have a little boy. I had this idea to write this song, ‘That’s My Boy,’ and being able to play that every night has been a lot of fun. People have reacted really well to it. It’s something that he’ll have long after I’m gone and know that I wrote it for him.”
“The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home”
“‘The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home,’ which is our current single, means a lot to me.’ he says. “It’s been really, really special to hear stories over the past six, seven months, or whatever it’s been out, from people how it’s affected them personally in a positive way.”
“Something we learned, golly, like eight years ago, with this song ‘If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away’ … is it’s fun to have No. 1 songs. It’s good for your career. Label throws you a party. Your parents tell you how important you are because of it. But I learned with that song how powerful country music is and how it can actually impact people’s lives in a positive way. And I’ve always looked for another song that had that potential. And I had the idea to write this song and we wrote it, I felt pretty confident that it had the same opportunity to make that same type of impact. And you know, [even though] it’s become a big hit on the radio, and you can see it out there making that type of impact, which makes me even prouder than having another hit, so to speak.
“Someday I Gotta Quit”
“I do relate to a song on this album called ‘Someday I Gotta Quit,’” Justin says. “The idea hit me to write the song when somebody asked me one day … I chew tobacco, and they said, ‘Do you still chew?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I know. It’s terrible. That old baseball habit. Someday I gotta quit.’ And that hit me as an idea.”
“It’s a fictional story of a guy that’s dealing with some vices, and I think, regardless of what they are, we all have them. Regardless of how extreme they are, we all have vices that we wish, ‘I should probably do a little better at this.’ So I probably relate to that one a little bit. I probably drink a little too much. And I probably chew a little too much tobacco. But I’m a lot better than I used to be.”