Story Behind the Song: Kelleigh Bannen, ‘Deluxe’
Kelleigh Bannen tells the story of a high-class love on a working-class budget in her swagger-filled song "Deluxe," which she co-wrote with Danielle Blakey. Sultry and evocative, the tune describes a couple treating themselves to a buffet dinner, an evening at a motel with free air conditioning and more. Read on to learn how the song came to be, as told by Bannen herself.
I love the idea of calling a love story "deluxe," but also being a little tongue-in-cheek: allowing it to be not about Mercedes-Benzes and diamonds and business class, but like, to be, wherever you are, as extra as you want to be -- like, extra in your lane.
So the way we wrote the verses, is I was telling Danielle what I had kind of thought the images could be, and she said, "What if that's the language?" -- like, "We're pulling off an exit, pulling into an old motel parking lot and it has an 'AC' sign flashing." She said, "Let's figure out how to say the verses like that."
In the chorus, she had this funky loop going, and we just started trying to rhyme things with "deluxe" that just felt like attitude. So it was one of those songs where it was less that the story was this way and [more that it was like], "Okay, here's the pallet, and now we fill in the story."
Who Is Kelleigh Bannen? 5 Things to Know