Cole Swindell fell in love years ago. And that love was country music.

“Even though I lost my dad in just a tragic, sudden way, there are so many more stories that are so much worse. A song like ('You Should Be Here') is why I fell in love with country music,” Swindell told ACM Tempo magazine in its latest issue. “I hate the circumstances, but I think this is my first chance to really show the power of what music can do.”

Swindell admits he hadn't yet put pen to paper about his loss, but when he started writing this one with Ashley Gorley, there were a lot of chills.

“I might have teared up a time or two,” Swindell said. His father died in a tragic accident in 2013.

The way the song was crafted, though, about Swindell’s tight bond with his dad and his sorrow that he’s not here now to see everything good going on in his life, it could relate to just about anyone. And that’s how Swindell wanted it.

“It’s definitely about my dad,” he says, “but we tried to write it universal enough to where anybody could relate."

Going back to his father’s grave, as Swindell does in the video for the song, took him a while because he was in shock for so long.

“When you lose somebody like that, you want to say, ‘Oh, I’ll get to talk to him tomorrow,’ and it never really sets in," he said, "until you go back and see it in stone like that.”