This song is about all those little secrets you keep inside. The dirty little secret for The All-American Rejects songwriters Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler at this time was that they were both in happy, long-term relationships with their girlfriends. This meant that Ritter (the lyricist), had to concoct some histrionics. In a 2012 Songfacts interview with Nick Wheeler, he said, "We come from a small town, and until now we've both had steady relationships. So, you know, sometimes there's not enough drama or turmoil to write about, so he simply writes stories. And that's where the lyrics come from."
The video shows postcards sent to the website Postsecret.com. The site encourages people to mail in clever, anonymous postcards containing a secret. The best of the bunch are posted on the site, with some captivating results. The All-American Rejects made a charitable donation in exchange for use of the postcards.
Nick Wheeler told Songfacts that some of The All-American Rejects' hits are songs they have been "scared of" during the writing process, since the tracks sound like they could be disastrous. The band is big on experimentation, and when they come across a sound that is not typical, they're not always sure if it's a terrible idea or a huge hit. Said Wheeler: "'Dirty Little Secret' was just an acoustic guitar and a vocal, that's all it was. We put off getting the full band in and coming up with the arrangement until the very last second. We were literally less than a week away from going into the studio, and we all four started jamming and tossing out ideas. We had the arrangement down within an hour and that was that. We ended up recording it and couldn't get the motherf--king thing out of our heads. So it turned out to be a good thing."
See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.
Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.