Story Behind the Song: Unlikely inspiration behind 'Rock My World (Little Country Girl)'
The song that would become a smash hit for country duo Brooks & Dunn in 1993 almost didn't get written.
Songwriters Steve O'Brien and Bill LaBounty wrote part of the song and tried several times (unsuccessfully) to finish it. O'Brien sat down with Nashville Songwriters Association International Executive Director Bart Herbison to share the Story Behind the Song "Rock My World (Little Country Girl.)"
The unlikely inspiration for the song? Madonna.
'Has anybody rocked your world recently?'
O'Brien and LaBounty were together in LaBounty's studio to write a song. LaBounty remembered they had recently seen the movie "Truth or Dare" which was a documentary about Madonna's life at the time. LaBounty asked O'Brien if he remembered a line by actress Sandra Bernhard in the film. Bernhard asks Madonna, "Has anybody rocked your world recently?"
That was all it took. O'Brien picked up a guitar, strummed an "E" chord and said, "What if we made it country and say 'rock my world little country girl?'"
O'Brien says the first two verses wrote themselves. They even included Madonna in the lyric, "Acts like Madonna but she listens to Merle."
"After we hit the chorus, we didn't really know where it was going to go after that," O'Brien shares. "It was late in the day, so we made an appointment to take another look at it and finish the song."
'Hard Workin Man' was finished, but needed one more up-tempo song
In the meantime, the part of the song that had been written made it to the ears of Don Cook, who had just finished producing Brooks & Dunn's "Hard Workin Man" album with Scott Hendricks.
Cook listened to the song and told O'Brien and LaBounty that although the Brooks & Dunn record was finished, Arista Records label head Tim DuBois had said they could possibly use another up-tempo song for Brooks to sing.
O'Brien remembers DuBois saying that if they could finish the song and send it to them, they'd see what they could do. "Boot Scootin' Boogie" was a massive hit at the time, so the pressure was on for the writers to live up to the string of No. 1 songs that had come from the duo's previous album, "Brand New Man."
"We killed ourselves," O'Brien said. "We worked so hard. We worked off and on for the better part of a month getting together once or twice a week. We just had a really hard time finishing it. We were trying to come up with something that would be along the lines of what Brooks & Dunn would do."
Finally, as the two writers searched for the right rhyme, LaBounty suggested "Sunday she's all ribbons and curls."
"I remember I jumped up and said, 'Bill! That's it.' She can go out and have a good time, but she's really a good girl and that just pulls it all together. Once we had that last line, thanks to Bill, we were able to finish the song up pretty quickly."
Brooks & Dunn loved the song and wanted to record it
After getting the demo recorded and sending it FedEx to the hotel in Phoenix where Brooks & Dunn were playing, LaBounty called O'Brien and said he had just gotten off the phone where Brooks & Dunn had sung their song to him. They loved the song and wanted to record it.
And they did. It made the album, but the song that almost wasn't ever finished, almost didn't become a single off the duo's album, either. The label had released three other singles before "Rock My World" and many albums don't get a fourth. Some were concerned the song was "too rockin'" for country radio. The song at the time was only the second one with Brooks on lead vocal instead of Dunn.
Despite all the odds against the song, the record label decided to make a video for it, which propelled the song to peak at No. 2 on the charts.
Still a crowd favorite in the Brooks & Dunn live show, "Rock My World" continues to bring audiences to their feet some 30 years after it was recorded.
"That's another thing that I feel so fortunate about, because it was basically 30 years ago and how many acts are still viable, selling out arenas? We are just very, very, very fortunate," O'Brien said.
About the series
In partnership with Nashville Songwriters Association International, the "Story Behind the Song" video interview series features Nashville-connected songwriters discussing one of their compositions. For full video interviews with all our subjects, visit www.tennessean.com/music.