People magazine recently spotlighted Fort Worth’s own JT Hodges on his inspiration for “Ray-Bans.”
Hodges, now living in Nashville, took a cruise vacation with his wife, and one night in Cozumel she began dancing while wearing his favorite Ray-Ban sunglasses.
Later, back home, he thought of that image while working in a writing session with Bart Butler and Aaron Goodvin.
“I’d had a new pair of sunglasses because I actually lost that pair on that cruise,” he told People magazine. “They were commenting about how they liked them, so I told the story. They were like, ‘Wow, if she was the girl that got away, at least she’d have those Ray-Bans to remember you by.’ We loved that idea and so we wrote the song.”