James Wesley, ‘Didn’t I’ – Lyrics Uncovered
'Didn't I,' the powerful new single from Broken Bow Records' newcomer James Wesley, is turning heads at country radio with his deep voice and artistic lyrics. Written by Ben Glover, Randy Montana and Kyle Jacobs, the song was originally being written for Montana's album.
"[Songwriters] tend to sit around and either write something that is sort of good, something that is great, or maybe it's one of those songs that just is," Glover tells Taste of Country. "The day we wrote 'Didn't I,' I did feel like it was an easier day. The melodies were coming quickly. I tend to write from a pop perspective, so I tend to go for melodies first. We sang the chorus melody, and sometimes the marriage between melody and lyrics just happen. One of us spit out [the hook], so we kind of started with that."
"Didn’t I wrap my arms around you / Stare in your eyes and swear I loved you / Didn’t I baby didn’t I / Give you everything you always wanted / Love you like crazy let’s be honest / Didn’t I baby didn’t I," they wrote in the chorus.
"It felt good to us," says Glover. "Sometimes that happens, and sometimes it doesn't.
From there, Montana came up with a series of lines that shaped the remainder of the song:
"If regrets were like raindrops / There’d be a river running through this house / If our love was like a circus / I’d be the sad-faced clown / Walking with my head down / Wondering where you are now," Wesley sings in the song's opening verse.
"We knew once we wrote those first four lines that we could build something really cool off it," says Glover. "It was so different. There are so many breakup songs or songs saying I felt this or I felt that, but we wrote this metaphoric thing. Real hard-core metaphors don't always work in songs. It seems like people want straight ahead 'Hey, this is it.' Anything poetic tends to scare people away. People really responded to it. They loved it. It was one of those things that was encouraging to us as writers."