Blake Shelton, ‘Over’ – Lyrics Uncovered
The lyrics to Blake Shelton's new single 'Over' have been twisted and turned many times throughout the past several years. Songwriters Paul Jenkins and David Elliott Johnson first spoke of the song's concept at least a decade ago, but now the song is finally getting its chance in the spotlight.
"This song kind of came out of a traditional Nashville co-writing session," Jenkins tells Taste of Country. "This has probably been 10 or 12 years ago. I can’t remember exactly, but it’s been a long, long time ago. David Elliott Johnson, my co-writer, and myself, we were going to start a rock band. He was a drummer and I played guitar, and we were going to sing and start up this rock band. This is one of the songs that we wrote for the album."
"If I could / I would dare / Feed your dreams / And starve your fears / If I could / Light the world / We could sit / And watch it burn / We could fall asleep inside the glow," they wrote in the opening lyrics of the song.
"It’s kind of got a loss of a loved one or a loss of a lover type of an idea intertwined through it," notes Jenkins. "We tried to leave it where you can apply whatever story that you want to it, and it’s still as poignant."
"So tell me what I gotta do to win you over / You’ll never have to wonder if you need another / You’ll never have to wonder if I understand / And every time you reach for me you’ll find a hand out / Ohhh," they wrote in the 'Over' chorus.
"We recorded three songs [for our album], and by the time we’d finished those three songs, Dave’s father passed away," Jenkins recalls. "So he went back to Florida. I finished the record with a guitar player friend of mine and toured two or three years. This song has been all over the world and back [laughs]. Fast forward a few more years, I started writing songs for artists here in the country music scene. A good friend of mine, Jason Sellers, said if you just let me put a vocal on ['Over'], we can pitch it around and get it cut. I tweaked around the track a little bit and he put his vocal on it. He took it to one place – Blake Shelton’s people – and they loved it."
"It is amazing ... it’s like never give up on a song," Jenkins continues. "It’s a personal song. It’s not like we were writing this song for another artist. We were really writing it for us. It’s cool to see it have a whole other life. It’s awesome."