Some Beach

If you say the quasi-swear "son of a bitch" quickly and slur it a little, it comes out as the G-rated "Some Beach." The song was written by Rory Feek and Paul Overstreet, and it was an unexpected hit for Shelton, going to #1 on the Country chart. Rory Feek, who is the husband/guitarist half of the duo Joey + Rory, told Songfacts in a 2010 interview: "That song came from me and Paul Overstreet sitting having coffee one day, and Paul had just come off the road with Kenny Chesney, years ago. And Kenny was about to record a beach album, and Paul was going to try and write something for Kenny. So we were talking about beach song ideas. And one of us said the phrase 'some beach,' and we just started giggling like schoolboys. Started singing, 'driving down the interstate.' We wrote a bunch of that sitting at Starbucks, actually outside drinking a cup of coffee, singing into my cell phone so we wouldn't forget it. Then we drove to his house and went out and jumped on the boat, and we wrote the rest of it out there on the boat. Paul had a really bad toothache he was fighting at the time, so that's how that last bridge went in there. But same thing, that song sat around for a good while before anybody ever recorded it. You didn't know if you had a great song or the world's worst song in the world, you couldn't tell for a long time. But when it came out, it sure was a blessing."

According to Rory, this song turned out to be a great fit for Shelton. He told us: "It's one of the first songs that I think Blake had where his personality started showing up."

The song opens with Shelton cruising down the interstate and singing Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville." Buffett is known for his breezy repertoire about laid-back life in the tropics, which is the ideal locale for Shelton when everyday life gets him down. In 2015, Shelton included the 1977 hit on his list of favorite summer anthems for Amazon Music.