Come Over

Album: Welcome to the Fishbowl (2012)
Charted: 23
  • songfacts ®
  • Artistfacts ®
  • Lyrics
  • The second single and opening track from Kenny Chesney's Welcome to the Fishbowl album was written by Sam Hunt, Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. It was sent to Country radio on May 14, 2012.
  • Chesney explained the song's meaning: "'Come Over'" is about two people who are as broken as their relationship is, when they realize deep down that their time together has probably ran its course, but they aren't really ready to emotionally or physically move on to something else," he said. "They keep going back to each other because it's familiar. It's about emotionally feeling wanted in a moment, but it feels impossible to let anybody else fill that void. It's a really sexy song with lyrics that are incredibly universal."
  • The song's video was filmed it off the coast of Florida and directed by Chesney's longtime collaborator Shaun Silva. "'Come Over' is the most intimate journey I've captured of Kenny in the 10 years we've been making music videos together," said the director. "It's clear within the first five seconds of this video that Kenny is committed to his character in the video and was more than willing to open up to the vulnerabilities associated with this tortured love story. The music video was finished in black-and-white, delivering a strikingly timeless and cinematic result."

    According to Chesney, this is a "classy booty call song," and the video has the same concept. He explained to CMT News: "We've all been in those situations when we know we're not going to [continue to] be with that person we have been with for a while. The relationship is over, done, run its course. But you aren't really ready to move onto somebody else emotionally, mentally or physically. So what do we do? We 'come over.' (Holds hand up to ear), 'I know you hate me and I hate you too ... but come over! We don't have to fix each other, so come over.' We know we're screwed up. So we took that situation and made the video. It's a very sexy video."

    Chesney owns the the 86-foot Riva Domino speedboat that features in the video.
  • When the three songwriters first got together they didn't really have the song title or its concept in mind. However, Osborne explained to Taste of Country that Hunt, "sort of had that phrasing on the verse," so the trio "started jammin' on that." They, "talked about how it would be cool to have a song that kind of repeats the same chord progression throughout the whole song," he continued, "but change the melodies around it. So we started messing around with that verse, and we still didn't quite know what the hook was. It felt like the idea was these two people weren't together, but couldn't be apart."

    When the trio got to the chorus, they fell onto the "I told you I wouldn't call. I told you I wouldn't care" lyric, which they felt would be a cool opening line. "It was very rare that we wrote that long without having a title," said Osborne. "We got near the end of the chorus, and I think Shane said, 'What if it was just like a simple title like 'Come Over,' about these two people who know each other well, and finally the guy says to come over? But what if we said it a bunch of times like he was pleading with her?' Then we felt like we had something."

    Osborne concluded that the song, "just organically fell out." He added: "A lot of times you have an idea or you have a concept or a melody or some place that you start. All we really had was Sam's phrasing of the verse, but we loved the vibe of it. We just thought, 'Let's play with it for a while.'"
  • The song took 11 weeks to climb to the top of the Country chart, giving Chesney his 24th #1 hit.
  • Speaking with Billboard magazine, Sam Hunt recalled. "When I bought a guitar after graduating high school, one of his (Chesney's) songs was the first song I learned to play. It was a song called 'What I Needed to Do' and it was extra-special because I still have that same guitar and worked on 'Come Over' on that same guitar."
  • This was the first big hit that Sam Hunt contributed towards. At the time he was experimenting with ways to mix more modern beats and tones with the narrative and wordplay that define the best country music. Some of the other songwriters were sceptical, but when Chesney recorded this tune and it topped the country chart, he sensed that he was on to something. Hunt told Billboard: "When we wrote that song a lot of people told us that it wasn't a country song or that it couldn't work in country music and to have somebody as big as Kenny Chesney endorse that style and get it out there to people, that was huge as far as moving forward with that sound that I was working on."
Please sign in or register to post comments.


Be the first to comment...



Keith Reid of Procol HarumSongwriter Interviews


Gene Simmons of KissSongwriter Interviews


Susanna Hoffs - "Eternal Flame"They're Playing My Song




Michael W. SmithSongwriter Interviews
