"Back When" is the title of a song written by Stan Lynch, Stephony Smith and Jeff Stevens

Jeff Stevens (singer)

Jeffery David "Jeff" Stevens is an American country music singer, songwriter and record producer. He recorded two albums on Atlantic America Records with his brother Warren Stevens and cousin Terry Dotson as Jeff Stevens and the Bullets, and later as a solo artist on the same label...

, and recorded by American country music

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 singer Tim McGraw

Tim McGraw

Samuel Timothy "Tim" McGraw is an American country singer and actor. Many of McGraw's albums and singles have topped the country music charts with total album sales in excess of 40 million units in the US, making him the eighth best-selling artist, and the third best-selling country singer, in the...

. It was released in August 2004 as the second single from McGraw's 2004 album Live Like You Were Dying

Live Like You Were Dying

Live Like You Were Dying is the eighth studio album by American country music artist Tim McGraw. It was released on August 24, 2004, by Curb Records and was recorded in a mountaintop studio in upstate New York. It entered the Billboard 200 chart at number one, with sales of 766,000 copies in its...

. The song reached the top of the Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales...

chart in December 2004 and peaked at #30 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Content

"Back When" is an up-tempo song in which the narrator states how he misses the past and how the current slangs were not used for drug and sexual reference, but the objects themselves. Stephony Smith, one of the writers, told The Boot that she went into the kitchen to make breakfast one day when she saw a snake on the floor. The snake crawled into a tight space and then she called Jeff Stevens and Stan Lynch, who he was writing with: "[Smith] said, 'Back when a hoe was a hoe, my mama woulda just chopped his head off.'"

Reception

Kevin John Coyne, reviewing the song for Country Universe, gave it a positive rating. He stated that "Back When" is the only up-tempo song on the album that matches his ballads in quality. He also added that McGraws "vocal performance is just over-twanged enough to suggest he’s making fun of the sentimentality that he’s celebrating."

Chart positions

"Back When" debuted at #58 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for the week of September 4, 2004.

Chart (2004)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs	1
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	30