* ActorSharedBackground: Chiles parents are revealed [[spoiler: to have served time in prison]]. Creator/LeightonMeester was in the same situation.
* BreakawayPopHit: Leighton Meester's "Summer Girl" is better remembered than the film.
* DuelingMovies: With ''Literature/CrazyHeart''.
* IronyAsSheIsCast: Tim [=McGraw=], a successful country singer, is the only one of the four leads who does not sing in the film.
* MethodActing:
** Garrett Hedlund actually stayed in Tim [=McGraw=]'s ranch and had guitar rehearsals there so he could fully immerse himself in the mindset of a country singer.
** Both Garret Hedlund and Gwyneth Paltrow learned to play guitar and trained their voices for the film, so as not to rely on doubles.
* MissingTrailerScene: A music video for the song "Summer Girl" contains a few shots of Chiles performing in the bar that don't appear in the final film. She's shown only performing the end of the song in the actual scene.
* RealitySubtext:
** Beau was based off country singer Hayes Carll, who ended up writing most of his songs in the film.
** Leighton Meester was also in the process of releasing her first album, giving her a few parallels to Chiles.
* StarDerailingRole: The successive failures of this movie, ''Film/MonteCarlo2011'' and ''Film/ThatsMyBoy'' ended any chance Leighton Meester had at becoming a bankable Hollywood star. [[{{Irony}} She has found a little more success as a singer]].
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