Thinking 'Bout You (feat. Lauren Alaina)

Dustin Lynch co-wrote this nostalgic "what-if" duet with Andy Albert, Hunter Phelps, and Will Weatherly, constructing it as a call-and-response-style phone call between two exes. As the pair hadn't heard from each other for a while, they start by catching up on family news before reminiscing about some of the good times they had together. The two agree how good it is to chat again, as they'd both been "thinking 'bout" each other.

Dustin Lynch recorded "Thinking 'Bout You" with his friend and former tour mate, Lauren Alaina, for his fourth album, Tullahoma. It's the first true duet he recorded for one of his records. "I'd never had a legit collab on an album," the singer said. "And we wrote 'Thinking 'Bout You' with that in mind. I just wanted to have that moment. It was kind of the time in my career to do a collab, share a song and a stage with someone."

When Lynch's label selected the song as the fifth single from Tullahoma, they encountered a problem. Alaina had recently released her Jon Pardi collaboration "Getting Over Him" as a single, and her label didn't want her to have two male-female duets at radio at the same time. After talking it over with Lynch, Alaina agreed to a compromise: he would re-record "Thinking 'Bout You" with a new female vocalist. Lynch and his team reached out to the country music community for submissions from up-and-coming female artists. They received a folder of numbered MP3s and listened, then voted on their favorites. They ultimately chose the Canadian singer and actress MacKenzie Porter, who'd opened for the likes of Blake Shelton and Kenny Chesney. "She was brilliant at bringing her uniqueness to this song, but also keeping it familiar for fans of the original," said Lynch of Porter's contribution to the new interpretation. "Keeping it familiar, but adding her own flair to it. Really, we got to cheat a little bit, because we had the parts that we liked that were already out there and working. And then we got to add to it. So I think we made it even a better version."