‘Overdrive’ by Thomas Rhett - Lyrics & Meaning

Arriving as the third single from Thomas Rhett's seventh studio album, About a Woman, ‘Overdrive’ finds the Georgia native slipping into his familiarly sweet, lovestruck shoes as he recounts all the nights he'd spend speeding to his wife, Lauren, when they were teenagers.

‘Overdrive’ pivots playfully around a witty piece of wordplay, with Thomas Rhett looking fondly back on the uniquely exhilarating sense of anticipation ahead of a date-night. He throws his two-tone Ford into ‘Overdrive’ as he accelerates away towards his then-girlfriend, before teasing he's on his favourite “‘Baby I'm coming over’ drive”.

Opening with a distorted electric guitar, Thomas Rhett's trademark warm, genial vocals enter the fray alongside an emphatic, driving beat that feels as though it mirrors the pace of his F-150. Throughout the hook, Rhett's infectious delivery combines with the yearning cry of the guitar riff to create a feel-good, rose-tinted anthem.

There's a satisfying cascade of internal rhymes in the lines, “I pulled up where the party was / Where the Bacardi was / That was the start of us”, which capture Thomas Rhett and his co-writing team's unrivalled ability to craft a wordplay-filled earworm.

“Something pretty simple 'bout an eighteen Tennessee summer

84 was the number that I wore under Friday lights

How could I forget that night?

Yeah, that girl was a homecoming honey, kinda small-town pretty

Made them dark days sunny with her emerald eyes

I thought, Lord, I had to make her mine”

Thomas Rhett laces a feeling of fuzzy nostalgia into his opening verse, looking back to when he was 18 and he played football with the No. 84 jersey under lights in Tennessee.

TR took to socials to share a photo of him and his wife, Lauren, when they were at college, and he is indeed wearing No. 84, making ‘Overdrive’ all the more personal and intimate.

“Yeah, I's about to go and crash a party with the guys

And when she called me up and said, "Can you pick me up tonight?"”

Although he recalls being en route to a party with his buddies, Thomas Rhett gets a call from Lauren asking if he can pick her up. Endearingly highlighting where his priorities lie, TR wastes no time in changing direction and heading straight to her.

“I put that '04 F-1-5-0 right into overdrive (Overdrive)

Like a bat outta hell with them JBL's working overtime

Yeah, I'm high-beaming down a backroad, yeah

Tires screaming, I'm getting close

Tryna do the limit, but my heart doing way more than sixty-five

On that "Baby, I'm coming over" drive

On that "Baby, I'm coming over" drive”

He describes how he puts his two-tone 2004 Ford F-150 - which also appears on the About a Woman artwork - into ‘Overdrive’ as he excitedly races away. He's blaring out music as he drives, portraying his JBL speakers as working ‘overtime’, before charmingly underlining how he's struggling to stay below the 65 speed limit - because his heart is beating way higher than 65bpm. Then, he introduces the keystone of the song as a whole - a clever piece of wordplay, flipping the titular phrase ‘Overdrive’ into the lyric, “On that ‘Baby I'm coming over’ drive”.

“I pulled up where the party was, where the Bacardi was

That was the start of us, I told you

Got your heels stuck in the mud, I had to carry ya

All the way to the truck on my shoulders”

This flurry of internal rhymes paves the way for Thomas Rhett to retell how the romantic evening progressed, reminiscing about how he had to carry Lauren because she got her heels stuck in the mud. He told her that this night would be the start of their long-term relationship - and now, they've been married for around 12 years.

“Yeah, we both smelled like bonfire smoke

Took my hand as she moved in close

She said, "I'll kiss your cheek, but I'll kiss your lips

If we can go somewhere alone"”

Lauren teases that, if they can find somewhere a little more private, they can make out - which lays the foundation for the next chorus, in which TR is again eagerly spinning his poor old truck's tyres as he tries to get them to a quiet spot as fast as he can. He switches out the titular lyric for “On that ‘Friday-night-still-ain't-over’ drive”.

When speaking to Holler about his creative process for the new album, Thomas Rhett explained, “When I think of this project, I keep thinking of the word ‘Freedom’. Not to dive super deep here, but...2019 was the last year that I felt that sort of freedom of just, ‘Man, whatever I'm feeling, I'm just gonna say, whatever feels good I'm just gonna write, whatever sounds good, that's what gonna go on the record’. I think COVID did a number on all of us, but for me, I think being so secluded and not being able to get that instant feedback from fans by constantly being on the road - I love playing new songs on the road to kind of feel, “Is this song vibing, is this song not vibing”. And so I made a couple of records that I'm for sure proud of, but I think those records were...‘Fear’ is not the right word either, but they were made from not a free place, if that makes any sense”.

He went on to share, “I don't know where that came from, I don't know if it was because it was my fifth and sixth record, and I'd already had so much success that I felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, there's so much to lose all of a sudden’. I think when you're on the climb, there's nothing to lose. You're just kind of doing the next right step and then all of a sudden you start selling out arenas and you sell out amphitheaters and you get to start opening up for your heroes in stadiums, and it's like, ‘Man, there's a lot of eyeballs on my right now, and you're like, ‘Please let's not mess up, let's not fall for a step here, and when you start making music out of anything but freedom, it feels like there's sort of a weight on all the music”.

Thomas Rhett candidly emphasised that he ensured joy was at the heart of About a Woman, “So somewhere around the beginning of last year, I started having conversations with the guy who actually produced this whole next record, Julian Bunetta, who I've been friends with forever and he produced all the One Direction stuff, just recently produced the whole Sabrina Carpenter record, and produced the whole new Teddy Swims project, so he's had this big resurgence. He looked at me and was like, ’Man, it'd been six years I had a hit, and I just kept coming back and kept coming back and kept coming back, because I love it’. And he was like, ‘How much do you love this?’ That was a very pivotal question for me, because I was like, ‘Man, I love it more than most things in the world. Minus my family, music is what I live and breathe’. He was like, ‘Well, lets write from that part, rather than from the part of, ‘Well what if and what if and what if’”.

“Something pretty simple 'bout an eighteen Tennessee summer

84 was the number that I wore under Friday lights

How could I forget that night?

Yeah, that girl was a homecoming honey, kinda small-town pretty

Made them dark days sunny with her emerald eyes

I thought, Lord, I had to make her mine

-

Yeah, I's about to go and crash a party with the guys

And when she called me up and said, "Can you pick me up tonight?"

-

I put that '04 F-1-5-0 right into overdrive (Overdrive)

Like a bat outta hell with them JBL's working overtime

Yeah, I'm high-beaming down a backroad, yeah

Tires screaming, I'm getting close

Tryna do the limit, but my heart doing way more than sixty-five

On that "Baby, I'm coming over" drive

On that "Baby, I'm coming over" drive

-

I pulled up where the party was, where the Bacardi was

That was the start of us, I told you

Got your heels stuck in the mud, I had to carry ya

All the way to the truck on my shoulders

-

Yeah, we both smelled like bonfire smoke

Took my hand as she moved in close

She said, "I'll kiss your cheek, but I'll kiss your lips

If we can go somewhere alone"

-

So I put that '04 F-1-5-0 right into overdrive (Overdrive)

Like a bat outta hell with them JBL's working overtime

Yeah, I'm high-beaming down a backroad, yeah

Tires screaming, now I'm getting close

Tryna do the limit, but my heart doing way more than sixty-five

On that Friday-night-still-ain't-over drive

On that Friday-night-still-ain't-over drive

-

Yeah, I's about to go and crash a party with the guys

And when she called me up and said, "Can you pick me up tonight?"

-

I put that '04 F-1-5-0 right into overdrive

Like a bat outta hell with them JBL's working overtime (Working overtime, yeah)

Yeah, I'm high-beaming down a backroad, yeah (Down a backroad)

Tires screaming, now I'm getting close (Now I'm getting close, yeah)

Tryna do the limit, but my heart doing way more than sixty-five

On that "Baby, I'm coming over" drive

On that "Baby, I'm coming over" drive

-

I'm high-beaming down a backroad, yeah (Down a backroad, yeah)

Tires screaming, now I'm getting close, yeah”

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