Story Behind the Song: Brett Young, ‘In Case You Didn’t Know’
Brett Young earned a No. 1 hit with his debut single "Sleep Without You," a song from his eponymous debut album, and followed it up with his second single, "In Case You Didn't Know." Young, who wrote 11 of the 12 songs on his Brett Young album, penned "In Case You Didn't Know" with some of his songwriting buddies. Below, Young recounts how the song was written, in his own words.
“In Case You Didn’t Know” was written in Mexico, actually, on a songwriter’s retreat. I was with Trent Tomlinson and Tyler Reeve, and Trent started telling a story about his childhood: He said when he was a kid, every time he would leave the house, his mom would stop him on his way out the door, and she’d say, "Trent, in case you didn’t know, I love you."
I thought, "Wow, that’s such an everyday expression, obvious thing, that I think is overlooked," because the fact of the matter is, women really need to hear "I love you," and men are really bad at remembering to say "I love you." And also, there’s that element of, nobody ever wants to lose a loved one -- I know that’s dark -- and then wish that they had said "I love you" more.
We just started talking about all those things. When we wrote it, we wanted to keep it really down the middle and basic, because it ended up being a love story that we wrote, and we wanted everybody to be able to make it their love story, so we just kept it really simple and said what we would like to say the person that we love, or we would like to hear back from the person that we love.