“Life is good today.”
Before Zac Brown Band were the country superstars they are today, they were promoting their 2008 debut album, The Foundation, with the release of their third single, “Toes,” which has since become one of the more prominent go-to beach songs in country music.
The track was written by Brown along with bandmates, Wyatt Durettte, John Driskell Hopkins and Shawn Mullins. Durrette was ultimately the driving force behind the creation of the song, which Brown recounted in an interview with Billboard:
“Durette called me about six in the morning on my home phone which either meant that something was wrong or that somebody was up late partying. He said, ‘I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand and we gotta write a song about it.’ That’s kind of how that one started.”
“Toes” was the band’s first dip into the tropical/beach country subgenre that they have carried over into nearly every album since then. At the time, many critics compared the song favorably to the late Jimmy Buffett and current tour-mate, Kenny Chesney’s famous beachy tracks.
Commercially, the track was an absolute smash. Though it wasn’t as monumental as their debut single, “Chicken Fried,” Toes kept the momentum going for the Georgia-based band, reaching #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, making it their second chart-topping hit. It was also the band’s third consecutive Top 30 hit all-genre.
“Toes” is currently certified 3x Platinum by the RIAA and boasts over 344 million streams on Spotify alone, third only to the aforementioned “Chicken Fried” and “Knee Deep.”
Listen here: