Behind the Song: Thomas Rhett, 'To the Guys That Date My Girls'

Perhaps the most personal song on Thomas Rhett 2021 album Country Again, Side A is "To the Guys That Date My Girls," a musical letter of sorts to his three daughters' future suitors. Though his girls were all still quite young when Rhett co-wrote the song with his father, "That Ain't My Truck" singer and hit songwriter Rhett Akins, Josh Thompson and Will Bundy, before a 2019 tour stop in Birmingham, Ala. -- third daughter Lennon Love, in fact, wasn't even born yet -- the singer admits that he'd had the song idea for "a while" by that time.

Below, Rhett recalls how the song came to be, and how the reaction to "To the Guys That Date My Girls" was immediate.

That song has kind of had a longer life than I imagined, because I wrote that song on the road. I was in Birmingham, Ala., in 2019, and me and my dad and Josh Thompson and Will Bundy wrote this song the day of a show.

I had this idea for a while. Basically, this song is a letter to the guys who are gonna show up on my doorstep one day and be like, "Hey, Mr. Aikens, I'm here to take your daughter on a date."

I've thought about all the ways I would approach that situation: Am I going to be a super-stern dad? Am I going to be the dad that invites him in for coffee? What kind of conversation is that gonna be like? And so we kind of just sat down and wrote out a list of things that I wanted these guys to know.

And I remember, that day in Alabama, I knew we had something special because I played it in concert the same night we wrote the song, and I was just watching grown men hugging their daughters, crying, hearing the song that they just heard for the first time. Looking out into a crowd, getting to play a song that no one's ever heard, and watching that kind of reaction was really special.

[It's] a song that I'll just have blasting on the speakers when that day comes when someone comes over to my house and tries to take my kids on a date. I'll just be playing that song in the background.