Story Behind the Song: Dustin Lynch, ‘Mind Reader’

Dustin Lynch earned his third consecutive No. 1 single with "Mind Reader," from his sophomore Where It's At album, following the tune's release in September of 2015. The sexy song, written by hitmakers Rhett Akins and Ben Hayslip, was inspired by a woman whom Akins briefly dated; while the romance never flourished, the relationship was enough to help Akins and Hayslip pen a chart-topping hit. Below, Akins and Hayslip recall the day they wrote "Mind Reader," while Lynch shares why he felt compelled to record the song.

Ben Hayslip: Rhett and I, we write a lot, and nobody ever brings ideas to the room. Everything we write usually is generated, originated, right there ...

[This time,] he comes in, and he's been out with the girls the night before -- imagine that. [Laughs] He's like, "I'm pretty into this girl. The scary thing is, I thought she could read my mind." I'm like, "Man, the last thing you need is a girl to read your mind."

Rhett Akins: I was thinking about where to take her to dinner, and she said, "Kentucky Fried Chicken," and I was like, "She's reading my mind, buddy" ... Somehow, the title of "Mind Reader" got thrown out, and that's where we took it.

We finished the song that day. When you get to the chorus where it repeats, "Baby, you a little mind ...," that was not in the song; that came up in the studio when we demo-ed the song. The chorus doesn't end with, "You're a mind reader;" it still doesn't. We didn't want to say "mind reader." It was hard enough to do it once; we can't end it with "reader." That's just hard, so we just ended it with "reading my mind."

Dustin Lynch: When a big song comes to you, you remember where you were on the road. I was between Seattle, [Wash.,] and Portland, [Ore.,] making the drive. We were doing some radio appearances, and I get a text, I think from Rhett, which says, "Check your inbox; it should be a good one."

I listened to it, and it was really good. We were just now starting to listen and decide what to cut for the Where It's At album, about to go in with our first round. I loved the song, but at the time knowing what we had, it was like, "Man this doesn't feel like the first single."

Fast forward to April or May, I still have "Mind Reader" on my short list, and [Broken Bow CEO] Benny [Brown] pitches me "Mind Reader" again, and it's like, "I love this song. I love it." I guess he forgot he had pitched it to me or something, but it came out on the top of the album and then resurfaced at the end and was part of our last session for the whole record.

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