That’s right, “Somewhere On a Beach” was not written with the intent of being a top-charting country song.
Unofficially dubbed the continuation of the 2014 smash-hit ‘Drunk On a Plane,” the hook for first single off of Dierks Bentley’s newest studio album BLACK actually began as the foundation for a potential hip-hop song out in Los Angeles by songwriters-producers Alexander Palmer and Dave Kuncio, whom have a slew of artists such as Chris Brown and Selena Gomez to their credits. Unbeknowest to them, a trip to Destin, FL implanted the title for the track, the lyrics being brought to life over a several week span between Nashville songwriters Michael Tyler, Jaron Boyer and Josh Mirenda. Palmer brought the demo from LA to Nashville on a trip, and after a bit of mastering, the songwriters, friends, family and the country music community amassed at South on Demonbreun to celebrate the song that became Bentley’s 14th number one single.
In regards to the second single, “It came out really organically, it really did,” Bentley told The Country Note during the sit-down. “Elle King – that song “Different For Girls” – we needed to have a girl on a song called “Different For Girls.” Even though we already had Maren (on “I’ll Be the Moon”) it was like ‘Gosh it would be awesome just to keep going down this road. Keep more on this road.’ I had already written some other songs with Hillary Lindsey, Jessi Alexander, and Natalie Hemby, so I kind of had this thing going on. And then Elle came right back to us, and we flew down there to Austin to record her and it was a really magical situation. And it’s a real collaboration – it’s a real friendship now. I mean I’m even good friends with her mom. Her mom sends me videos all the time of her singing “Somewhere On A Beach” and stuff so we’re really good pals now. It’s a real honest collaboration and I never really had that in my career before.”