Luke Bryan Tries to Avoid Icky and Weird

by Alison Bonaguro 9/10/2015

Here’s what would happen if you wrote a sexy song, but then kind of danced around the issues: it would not work.

Luke Bryan knows that, which is why his new “Strip It Down” is exactly as sexy as it needed to be.

So there are references to bed sheets, Dirty Dancing, and ultimately, getting undressed. Those lines about “leave my T-shirt in the hall” and “feel my belt turn loose from these old blue jeans” are just about as dirty as country music can get without getting the cold shoulder from radio stations.

And that’s kind of how Bryan planned it. To take it right to that edge.

“If you write a song like that and you don’t get really, really steamy, then I think you’re kind of dodging what it needs to be,” he told Billboard. “But if you go over the top with it, then it’s kind of icky and weird and not natural either. ’Strip It Down’ is just the right amount of sexiness, in my opinion,” he said of the tune he wrote with Jon Nite and Ross Copperman.

Listeners must agree, because the song is already in the Top 10 on Billboard’s country airplay chart.

Alison Bonaguro

Alison makes her living loving country music. She's based in Chicago, but she's always leaving her heart in Nashville.

@alisonbonaguro