Jake Owen talks about the songs on his album American Love.

  “American Love”
“’American Love’ is a song that just has a funky flair to it, it’s got a funky feel with a lyric that is very relatable to anybody that’s ever been in young love. I think young love is very synonymous with American love, that young love feeling that as you even grow older you always try to remember, and I think that song  just really portrays that feeling rather well.”

  “After Midnight”
“’After Midnight’ is almost like a follow up to “American Love,” which is why it’s the second track on the album because American Love says in the first line of the song ‘I picked her up about seven for the football game’ whereas ‘After Midnight’ is kind of continuing the story that I’m keeping her out till after midnight, and she’s sneaking outside of her house while her daddy thinks she’s still in bed, and once again it’s a song about young love, and the freedom that sometimes that comes along with, and honestly the devious sort of things that go along with young love, so that’s what ‘After Midnight’ is all about.”

  “Where I Am”
“’Where I Am’ is a song that I think once again goes along with that young love feeling or any love in general where you have someone you might be fallen for, but yet there’s this person that’s kind of your comfort zone, the person you keep going back to, and I love this song because it’s coming from a male’s perspective telling this female ‘look I know you’ve got something going on but you know that anytime you need me I’m here for you so just come back when you need to lay your head on my shoulder sort of thing,’ and that song really reminds me of ‘Alone with You’ that I’ve recorded before so definitely one of my favorites on the record.”

  “Everybody Dies Young”
“’Everybody Dies Young’ is not a song about dying, it’s a song about living, it’s a song about giving everything you’ve got to life, and loving it and being in the moment. There’s a line in the song that says ‘You only get one life, you got to live it, you only get one heart so you got to give it’ and it says ‘it aint’ about the amount the amount of years were here, it’s about the amount of love’ and I think once again love shows it’s face, it’s a very great track to help represent what this album is all about.”

  “VW Van”
“’VW Van’ is a song that, the purpose of that song to just kind of pay homage to not only the way that the album looks with the VW Van on the front of it but I have a VW van, 1966, and I drove it from Nashville to Key West, and it’s a very big part of this album, and that song a friend of mine sent it to me and I thought, this is so perfect for the record. So we did it and it turned out really funky and cool, and it’s specifically placed in the album at that point, it’s kind of like the turn a corner after those first few songs to the funky side, and that’s where ‘VW Van’ is.”

  “Good Company”
“’Good Company’ follows ‘VW Van,’ I think both songs are kind of brother-sister combos where they have a funky flair to them, there’s some horns on ‘Good Company,’ also a song I produced with Lukas (Bracewell) and the guys in the band. We recorded that song in backstage dressing room Puyallup Washington, and it’s probably my favorite song on the record just because it represents the way I like to feel and the kinds of people I like to be around.”

  “LAX”
“LAX is definitely my favorite song on the record. It is a song I wrote, which I’m sort of partial to, but the idea of writing songs with play on words and taking a title and twisting it, I love telling someone the title and then them hearing it go ‘wow that was really pretty interesting the way you did that,’ and I’m really proud of that song, one of the best songs I’ve ever written.”

  “If He Ain’t Gonna Love You”
“’If He Ain’t Gonna Love You’ is a song that’s got a lot of funk to it, a lot of R&B flair, and compounding my vocal with the amazing Chris Stapleton singing backgrounds is something that I’m just really proud of, and it sounds great and I’m sure that it will be a single at some point, and a song that hopefully will be one more that will do rather well for me.”

  “When You Love Someone”
“’When You Love Someone’ is the only love song, love song per say on my album that kind of talks about the feeling of missing love or being heartbroken, and I think a lot of people expected me to make a record of heartbreak after going through a divorce, but this is the only song I want to put on there, and it’s because I do feel like I’ve understood what it’s like when you love someone, when you love someone you don’t do certain things. When you really love someone, you love them and you take care of them, and I think I’ve done things in my life where I thought I’ve loved someone and not loved them the way I should have and vice versa, and I think this is a song that just truly gives when you love someone a true meaning as to what kind of things you do, and its very broke down, just a piano and my vocal and Hilary Lindsey singing background and it’s a really pretty kind of poignant song for the record.”

  “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”
“’You Ain’t Going Nowhere’ is also a song that I felt was appropriate to follow ‘When You Love Someone’ because it’s a memory of someone. It’s the fact that when you create memories of someone and they’re great and beautiful it’s really hard to forget them, and no matter where you go those memories keep popping up of that person. It’s got a really interesting melodic structure to the first melody and the way the words are sung, and definitely a song that I felt like just complimented ‘When You Love Someone.’”

  “American Country Love Song”
“’American Country Love Song’ is really the song that I think represents the album the best, which is why it was the first single. It just kind of shows and represents all the instances that happen in this beautiful country and all the beautiful great people that are in it whether it be the two young kids, or two tickets to a concert, or getting a Daytona airbrush T-shirt, or whether its people lying on the beach looking at the stars, or cowboys or quarterbacks or cheerleaders it’s kind of a song that talks to everybody in this country no matter where you are saying that we all have a song that kind of brings us back to feeling young and American and free, and when I think of those kind of songs I think of ‘Jack and Dianne’ or even Kenney Chesney’s ‘Two Bottles of Wine and a Dixie Cup’ and ‘How Forever Feels,’ those kind of songs, and that’s what this song is to me, it’s a song like Brooks and Dunn’s ‘Only in America’ that just explains the feeling that we all have living in this beautiful country.”