Dustin Lynch Gives Second Life to ‘Thinking ‘Bout You’ with New Single Featuring MacKenzie Porter

“Thinking ‘Bout You” featuring Lauren Alaina quickly became a fan favorite off Dustin Lynch’s Tullahoma album, after being released about a year ago. Because of its success, Lynch decided to release a brand new version, but this time, with country artist MacKenzie Porter.

“We just saw how huge the reaction was… so I knew we needed to shine a light on this song,” Lynch recently told Country Now and other media outlets.

The singer continued to explain that he always planned to have a collaboration on this song. When it was decided that he would make another version with a new artist as the other voice on this track, he went straight to the country music community.

In asking for submissions, Lynch knew he didn’t want to base his opinion off the name of the artist, so he listened blindly to the recordings that were sent in.

“I picked my favorites, my team picked their favorites and it all pointed to MacKenzie,” says Lynch. “We had never met and the first time we did meet, was actually to go in the studio and get [MacKenzie’s] part down.”

After being chosen to be part of this song, Porter described their first interaction in the studio, from her point of view.

“I definitely was a little nervous… it was so cute, he decided to show up in my merch, so he like instantly broke the ice and it was just like … I do feel like in that moment my nerves were lessened,” recounts Porter, “but it was like, your producer came in, you were there and then you guys were like ‘okay, sing!’ and I’m like, ‘okay, let’s do it!’ I think it turned out really well.”

Since then, these artists have become “best buds” according to Lynch. Now that they have worked together more closely, and finished recording this single, Lynch has confirmed his original assumption that Porter was the right choice for this role.

“There’s a difference in performing and projecting a character I think, and Mackenzie just effortlessly has this awesome tone and I fell in love,” the singer shared.

It was no easy task for Porter to come in after the song was already a hit with the fans. In order to top the original version, she had to give it her all and make it her own.

“Of course I had heard it before just as a fan of Dustin and Lauren… and I thought, you know, I could try to do it like her or I could really just try to do it myself and, I think what Dustin said is my voice is a little bit like more, almost like soft and … it feels more honest I think… I just wanted it to be me,” explained Porter.

Before this song was even recorded for the first time, Lynch shared that during the writing process, which happened while on tour with Thomas Rhett, he had a gut instinct that it was going to be great.

“This is one of those special God moments… we were backstage at a festival in Ohio and I had a bus full of songwriters that weekend, guys I love. This is an idea that kind of just presented itself to me,” Lynch recalled. “We got to talking about me doing a collab… and we had this idea of a phone conversation and it kind of just fell out from there. I really connect to this song because the chorus was almost a one take for me…”

Both Lynch and Porter hope to be able to perform this song together live and in person as soon as they are able to.

“It’s been a great year for me, and now we’re kinda coming out of this on the other side with what I think is a career song for myself and that’s ‘Thinking ‘Bout You,’” says Lynch.

Click above to watch the just-released “Thinking ‘Bout You” music video, starring Lynch and Porter.