Story Behind the Song: Steve Moakler, ‘Blue Jeans’

The track list of Steve Moakler's 2019 release, Blue Jeans, is comprised of songs that offer a zoomed-in look into moments and pieces of life. The only exception, the singer says, is the title track, which paints with broad brush strokes, offering a central metaphor for the album as well as the singer's life. Read on to learn the story behind the song, as told by Moakler himself.

I would say [the whole project] actually started with that song. I'm pretty sure it was the first song that was written for this new record cycle, after [2018's] Born Ready. And when I wrote it, I was like, "Man, this feels like it's got something special to it."

The hook itself, "Breaking in this life like a pair of blue jeans" -- I was like, "This is an overarching storyline. It's big. Breaking in this life is everything." So with that, it really became the overarching narrative, and the rest of these songs that followed it are more specific stories and emotions that kind of fall under that.

So the "Blue Jeans" song, to me, is kind of a metaphor for my journey in Nashville the last 14 years. And it's all spoken in metaphor, but it means a lot to me, and hopefully other people can relate to the lines in it, too. The rest of the songs are a little more zoomed in, and you can hang those songs on this storyline.

I actually wrote it with a guy I'd never written with before, [Keith Varon], from LA, and he didn't even know what my music sounded like. So I played him "Born Ready," and he's like, "Oh, I get it. I get what you do. You do this kind of classic thing. It's not modern, really, whatsoever."

And he started strumming, and I had the title, "Breaking in this life like a pair of blue jeans," and the song came together really quickly. It was very exciting.

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