Hurricane

Asheville, North Carolina, singer Luke Combs sings on this story song about an ex lover who he couldn't get out of his mind. One day he was quietly nursing a drink at a bar when a certain girl rolled in. You roll in with your hair in the wind Baby, without warning I was doing alright But just your sight had my heart storming The moon went hiding, stars quit shining Rain was dropping, thunder n' lightning You wrecked my whole world when you came And hit me like a hurricane

The song was written in December 2014, just three months after Combs moved to Nashville. Taylor Phillips, also from North Carolina, agreed to write with the new kid in town. Phillips' fellow songwriter Thomas Archer agreed to join them, once he found Combs' music online and immediately fell in love with his voice.

The genesis of the song started with a descending riff that Archer played on acoustic guitar. "Luke said 'What was that?' and I played it again," recalled Archer to Billboard magazine "That's when he started flipping through his idea book and had 'Hurricane.'" The trio then set out to write the song, inspired by a story about a friend of one them who was struggling with a recent breakup. "It was one of those Nashville things," said Combs. "Everybody goes out to the same bars, and he didn't feel like he could go out to the bar because he didn't want to run into her." Combs, Philips and Archer finished a verse and a chorus that day. During a second writing session, they penned a second verse and the bridge. They also changed the hook from "eye of a hurricane" to "hit me like a hurricane," which went better. "'Eye of a hurricane' doesn't make any sense because that's the calm part of the storm," said Combs. "It's kind of counter-productive to where we were going with the title. When I go back and listen to it, I'm like, 'What were we thinking when we wrote that?"