Cool Again (feat. Nelly)

When Kane Brown originally wrote and recorded this summery, feel-good tune he had the topic of old flames on his mind. "'Cool Again' at first was a song, it was about a breakup," the singer explained to Radio.com. "It was about you just wanted to be with the girl or with the boy that you had last summer, and everything was fine, and now it's not." However, when the 2020 coronavirus epidemic came along, the lyrics took on an entirely different meaning. Released on April 24, 2020, amid the COVID-19 lockdown, the song echoed a desire to return to something simpler. "In today's terms, it's a whole new song for me," Brown revealed when he dropped the song, "because it's like you just want to be cool, you just want everything to go back to how it was, other than this quarantine." "You know, like the summer that you used to have," he added. "Being able to hang out with your friends. The whole song's changed for me."

Brown penned the song with his regular co-writers, Josh Hoge and Matt McGinn. The fourth songwriter, Lindsay Rimes, also co-penned his hit song "Heaven." Kane Brown told Apple Music that it was about 20 degrees outside when the four crafted the song on a writing retreat. "At the time, the song was about missing the warm weather," he said. "But then it became so much more. It made us think about summer and all the amazing memories that get created between May and September. We were really wanting to go back to that. I think that's something people can really relate to from their own lives, especially right now."

Speaking during a Radio.com FANDEMIC Instagram Live, Brown explained how "Cool Again" started off as a breakup song before taking on a whole new meaning in the COVID-19 era. "The song took a whole other turn once I keep listening to it while we're quarantined," he said. "Everyone keeps saying 'you know it's not about Katelyn' because we're happily married and everything, and I just say 'no it's about my girl corona.'"