Doug Johnson, who signed Lee Brice to Curb Records and produces him, told The Boot, about how he and co-writer Tim James were inspired to write this song.
"When Tim and I walked into that room that day, I don't think either one of us had a clue what we wanted to write. I normally don't. I basically just show up thinking, 'God, you know my heart. And I'm going to try to keep my brain out of it!'
This song really started with that little guitar intro. A lot of songs I write start with first lines from there ...'Three Wooden Crosses' was like that for me and 'Sarah Beth' that Rascal Flatts had was like that. And 'Love Like Crazy' started from there, too.
Melodically, this song would not exist had I not already been working with Lee Brice. Looking back, it sounded exactly like Lee wrote it. And I didn't even realize it. I'm a huge fan of Lee's - not only as an artist, but as a great songwriter. I called him after we wrote it and told him, 'I've got a song and man, you've got to look at it.' And thankfully, he loved it.
The atmosphere in this song was where I came from ... where you hang in there through good and bad, and you believe that great things are gonna happen. Like one of my favorite lines in another song I had, something my grandmother used to say - 'Trust in God, but lock your doors.' So it's like the chorus of this song - do all these things, but don't forget to pray!
We were lucky. Sometimes we're just storytellers. And I love story songs. And that was one of those days - Tim and I were lucky enough to get to start down a road and let the song carry us. And sometimes it carries you in a corner, and you get stuck! [laughs] Luckily, this song carried us through.
'Love like crazy' is actually a phrase I say all the time: 'Hey, be safe. But love like crazy!' I tell that to my children and friends all the time. That's something we strive to do everyday. In this crazy world, the only hope that we've got is to love crazier... to love crazier than this world is crazy!"
The song logged its fifty-fifth week on Hot Country Songs for the week ending September 18, 2010. In doing so it overtook the 54 week run of Eddy Arnold's 1948 single "Bouquet of Roses" to set a new record for the longest stay in the history of the chart.
The song topped Billboard's 2010 Hot Country Songs chart, making it the most-heard country song of the year. Having only peaked at #3, it was the first song in the chart's history to achieve this distinction without reaching #1.