Be Like That

Updated on Jan 18, 2024

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Released June 11, 2001 Label Republic Records		Genre Post-grunge "Be Like That" (2001) "When I'm Gone" (2002)
Length 4:25 (Album Version) 3:57 (Radio Edit) Writer(s) Brad Arnold Chris Henderson

"Be Like That" is a song by the American post-grunge band 3 Doors Down. It was released in June 2001 as the fourth single from the album, The Better Life. It peaked at number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the U.S. for the week ending November 10, 2001. A version of the song with minor lyrical changes was made, for the movie American Pie 2, and was featured on the movie's soundtrack.

Music video

A video was also made for this version directed by Liz Friedlander.

Content

"This song," says 3DD lead singer Brad Arnold, "was strange, because I wrote the verses and the choruses at two completely different times. And I couldn't think of the verse for the chorus, or the chorus for the verse." Until one night driving home from band practice, the singer had an epiphany, "and I was sitting in my car singing, and I put those two together, and I was like, Duh. And I went home and just got a three chord structure going for the melody of it, and took it to practice the next day, and I asked Chris to make something out of it, and he came back the next day and he had it, and it just went from there."

Arnold confesses to having no ability to play guitar, so when he writes a song, it's more like "chicken pecking" notes, and it can be a long process. According to Arnold, this song is about following your dreams. "And I know everybody has 'em. It's not also just about following your dreams, though. It's kind of a little bit about dreams that you've missed, and a little notion of regret, also." The person in the first verse of the song is fictional, and Arnold left it open to interpretation on whether that person is older or younger. He explains: "It's just kind of an idea. And it's kind of weird. Maybe it doesn't have a perfect string full of lyrics in that first verse, and for me I've never thought it had a perfect one, because it's almost suggesting that it's an older person, but in a lot of ways it's kind of suggesting it's a younger person. But I left it like that because I want things to be like that. I want it to be like it would be interpreted a lot of different ways. I don't do it so much anymore, but I used to think that when I write lyrics, I tried to do every line to where it could be taken more than one way. And my thought process behind that was, Well, if I can get two meanings out of it, then there are countless meanings out there for somebody else to apply it to their own life." He also offers this bit of philosophy: "The difference in a good song and a great song, to me, is the difference in a good book and a good movie: They're both telling you the same story. They both have the same outcome. But whereas the movie is telling you exactly what to see and be heard, the book kind of lets you see whatever your mind comes up with, and it makes it a lot more applicable to your life in a lot of ways."