"We Owned the Night" | ||||
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Single by Lady Antebellum | ||||
from the album Own the Night | ||||
Released | August 15, 2011 | |||
Format | CD single, digital download | |||
Recorded | 2011 | |||
Genre | Country | |||
Length | 3:17 | |||
Label | Capitol Nashville | |||
Writer(s) |
Charles Kelley Dave Haywood Dallas Davidson |
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Producer(s) |
Paul Worley Lady Antebellum |
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Lady Antebellum singles chronology | ||||
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"We Owned the Night" is a song recorded by American country music trio Lady Antebellum. It was released in August 2011 as the second single from their album Own the Night. The song was co-written by two of the trio's three members (Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood) along with Dallas Davidson.
Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood wrote the song with Dallas Davidson. The title started during a conversation that Kelley had with his and Davidson's wives at a bar, telling them that they should "own the night" and stay longer at the bar. After hearing Lady Antebellum perform another uptempo song with a mandolin, Davidson suggested that Haywood and Kelley should "capture that same energy, and write a big hit song on the mandolin." Haywood then began playing the mandolin. Davidson said that he wanted the song to "dive into a deeper lyric, take it to a place a little more serious[…]but keep it light and keep it fun".
In the song, a man recalls a brief but memorable romantic encounter with a woman who he has not seen since. The song is in the key of D-flat major with an approximate tempo of 96 beats per minute. The song consists of four verses plus a bridge in between verses three and four. Its main chord pattern for each verse is D♭-G♭-E♭m-D♭, with all but the first verse ending in Kelley singing "yeah, we owned the night" over the pattern B♭m-G♭-D♭. In the bridge, the chord pattern is E♭m-G♭ twice, followed by another E♭ minor chord before returning to a final verse which uses the same pattern as verses two and three. The title phrase is then repeated one last time. All guitars in the song are tuned to E-flat tuning.