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Why Eric Church’s ‘Doing Life With Me’ is Our New 2020 Anthem

Eric Church’s latest track “Doing Life With Me” dropped today. This is the sixth song he has released from his upcoming project and it might be THE song for 2020. Any other time it would have been a sweet, catchy, acoustic song. However, this year created the perfect storm to turn it into the anthem for all us Outsiders.

“Doing Life With Me” Isn’t Just a Love Song

Just about everyone could use a little light in their lives this year. The holidays can be stressful in the best of times, and this year ain’t exactly the best of times. Church’s latest release might just be the light that we need right now. We’ve discussed before why he is the King of the Outsiders. So, it’s only right that he would drop an anthem that fits perfectly for our crew.

“Doing Life With Me” isn’t a love song in the classic sense. While it does make reference to his wife, the song isn’t focused solely on romantics. This is a song of gratitude for all those who have walked the long road to the top with him, to those who have been through the hard times as well as the high times. We can relate.

Why It’s the 2020 Outsider Anthem

Here at Outsider.com, we believe in community. We may not be the “in” crowd but we don’t need to be. Our community is made up of people brought together by their passions. Sharing our experiences and knowledge holds us together. This transcends your political affiliation, where you’re from, how you look, or how you put food on the table.

This year, more than any other, that community matters. Most of us would be lost without those who are taking this long, hard, broken road with us. It’s important to acknowledge that. The gratitude expressed in “Doing Life With Me” is something that we can relate to. We feel it too. From our families to our Outsider tribe, we appreciate everyone who sticks with us through all of this.

We’re especially grateful to those who stick around when we’re not the easiest to deal with. Like Eric said, “It ain’t easy puttin’ up with/ a road dog with a cup with/ a little Jack in it.” Not many people have been doing much road-dogging this year. That cup, on the other hand, might be a different story.

How “Doing Life With Me” Came to Be

Back in January, Eric Church and a few others locked themselves away in a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. They stayed there for almost a month, writing and recording a song every day. “Doing Life With Me” is one of the tracks that came from that marathon writing and recording session.

During that time, they would write songs in the morning, work on them throughout the day, and record them late into the night. Everyone would get a few hours of sleep then get up and do it all over again. Sometimes. Church told Bobby Bones that they actually had to take a couple of days off because he literally couldn’t sleep for four days. Church’s creative juices were flowing non-stop and he was unable to shut his brain off to sleep. There were even times when song lyrics would come to him in dreams.

Other tracks to come out of those sessions include “Through My Ray-Bans,” “Crazyland,” “Hell of a View,” “Bad Mother Trucker,” and “Stick That in Your Country Song.”

A couple of those tracks, “Stick That in Your Country Song” and “Through My Ray-Bans,” seem to have been written specifically for this year but believe it or not, they were all in the can before it all hit the fan.

Much like “Through My Ray-Bans” and “Stick That in Your Country Song,” 2020 has made this track more relevant than it was when originally recorded. While the gratitude expressed in the track is timeless, the events of this year have made it that much more important. Much like the importance of using a platform to talk about social ills and longing for the camaraderie of live shows are more poignant now than they were in January.

The songs aren’t the only thing about this that seem like they were months ahead of their time. The writing and recording process is something that many groups and artists would do later in the year. The team was completely isolated. That isolation helped them create the music that has been our soundtrack for this crazy year.

Church Knows the Importance of Shared Experiences

According to Church, the whole marathon experience was “like The Shining.” They were locked away with work and madness inside and the Appalachian winter outside. Looking back, he knows that the magic in these songs was born from the shared experience of the team. They were all uncomfortable and the schedule was grueling. They were in it together, though. And, man, did the hard work pay off.

In that same interview with Bobby Bones, Eric Church talks about how the process itself made the songs better. Usually, he explains, you write a song and then sit with it for months at a time before going into the studio to record it. With these songs, though, they were recorded almost as soon as they were born. In doing this, he hoped to capture the magic of that moment when a song comes together.

In essence, he is sharing that experience not only with those who were there with him but also with the listeners.

So, Who Is Doing Life With You?

There is a lot of hustle and bustle this time of year. Your holiday errand lists are long, and in-laws are calling, and the kids are bouncing off the walls, and it’s all so busy.

But it’s also a time to pause and reflect on the last twelve months as we enter a new year.

While it may seem hard to look back that far, take some time and do that. Think about the ones who are doing life with you. Those that could have hopped off of that old runaway train at any time but didn’t.

While you’re doing that, listen to the lyrics of this track, especially the last half of the chorus, “Spend my life giving thanks/ For the ships I never sank/ Every big, every little in the everyday things/ The notes and the words and the songs I sing/ To the ones doing life with me.”

If you’re like us, you’ll agree that this is the anthem we needed to take this year out on a high note. No matter how hard you may have tried, 2020, we kept that ship afloat, despite your craziness. And now, those everyday things feel so much bigger.

Now don’t mind us while we cheers our cups with a little (a lot) of Jack in it to Eric Church and the ones doing life with us.