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What Toby Keith's Devastating Song "Don't Let the Old Man In" Is Really About
How Clint Eastwood inspired Toby Keith's final hit.
During NBC's Toby Keith: American Icon special, country stars past and present will perform their favorite songs by the late superstar Toby Keith. In tribute, we're revisiting some of his most beloved tracks right here.
To start: one of Keith's final songs, "Don't Let the Old Man In," which carried special meaning after he passed away in February 2024 from stomach cancer. Read details, below, to learn why.
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What "Don't Let the Old Man In" by Toby Keith is about
The song is about reckoning with mortality. The line "I knew all of my life / That someday it would end" shows that the singer is aware that he's near the end of his life, but with whatever time he has left, he's not going to just sit back and be a passive person (or the "old man" version of himself). He's going to, "Get up and go outside / Don't let the old man in."
How Clint Eastwood inspired "Don't Let the Old Man In"
In 2018, the Hollywood legend and the country rocker were sharing a golf cart when Eastwood mentioned he was about to start filming a new movie, The Mule, which he both starred in and directed. Impressed by his energy (Eastwood was on the cusp of 88 at the time), Keith asked for his secret.
“He said, ‘I just get up every morning and go out. And I don’t let the old man in,’” the musician recalled to Billboard. “And I thought, I’m writing that.”
Though he had a cold, Keith recorded a demo and sent it to Eastwood, who immediately wanted to use it in the movie, illness and all. "[Eastwood] said, ‘I’ve got a spot in the movie and I’m putting it in there.’ And then Warner Bros. called asking did I read the script before I wrote this song because it fits perfectly...He wanted it sick and tired and dark like that,” Keith said.
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"Don't Let the Old Man In" was a posthumous hit for Toby Keith
Keith hadn't yet been diagnosed with stomach cancer when he wrote and recorded "Don't Let the Old Man In," which was a modest hit at first. But the song took on more meaning after Keith went public with his cancer battle in 2021.
In 2023, Keith performed the tune at the People's Choice Country Awards. The response was overwhelming. "All the girls are gonna cry, but I've had so many guys go, 'Dude, I bawled my eyes out,'" Keith told Taste of Country about the performance. "We didn't design it for that. Things that are really, really special just have to happen for a reason. You can't plan — if you knew how to pull that off every time, you'd plan it that way. There was no planning."
When Keith died five months later, many of his songs re-entered the charts, with "Don't Let the Old Man In" hitting number-one on Country Digital Song Sales, per Billboard.
Watch Toby Keith: American Icon on NBC on Wednesday, August 28 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
