Billy Currington isn’t afraid to admit it – he didn’t think his new Number One single “It Don’t Hurt Like It Used To” ever had a chance of being a hit. In fact, he even left the song, which tops Billboard’s Country Airplay chart this week, behind when he exited the recording session.
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“Maybe because it was written so fast and the way it came about, I didn’t even ask for a copy of the song when we recorded it in the office,” Currington says. “I didn’t hear that song for weeks and weeks after.”
Before taking the stage at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas last weekend, the surfer-esque country singer nonetheless told Rolling Stone Country that “It Don’t Hurt Like It Used To,” off his latest album Summer Forever, is perhaps his most special song, since he had a hand in writing it.
“When you’re the actual writer of the song and they’re your lyrics and your melody and people are connecting more than ever, something goes on inside like, ‘Wow, I should get some of those songs off the shelf and put them on my record and try to connect more that way,” he says.
To Currington, it’s like having a child.
“It’s definitely more your baby,” he says. “You’re more protective of it and what happens to it and always kind of watching what’s going on with it.”
Since the release of “It Don’t Hurt Like It Used To,” Currington says people have been approaching him with stories of how the song got them through an awful breakup. Naturally, the question remains: What was happening in his life when he wrote it?
“Nothing was going on, to be honest, because it was one of those songs that seemed like someone else above in the sky wrote it,” he says. “I just picked up a guitar and started strumming a chord and these lyrics started coming out. Before you know it, we had all chimed in and created a song within a couple of hours and there was no title. Everything you hear lyrically fell out like it is.”