During NBC’s Toby Keith: American Icon special, country stars of the past and present will play their favorite songs of the late superstar Toby Keith. As a tribute, we repeat some of his most beloved songs here.

First up: one of Keith’s final songs, “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” which held special meaning after he passed away from stomach cancer in February 2024. Read the details below to find out why.

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What Toby Keith’s “Don’t Let the Old Man In” Is About

The song is about coming to terms with mortality. The line “I knew all of my life / That someday it would end” shows that the singer is aware that he is nearing the end of his life, but with the 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 shared a golf cart when Eastwood announced he was about to begin filming a new movie, The mulein which he both starred and directed. Impressed by his energy (Eastwood was nearly 88 at the time), Keith asked for his secret.

“He said, ‘I get up every morning and I go outside. And I don’t let the old man in,'” the musician told Billboard“And I thought, I’ll write that.”

Despite having a cold, Keith recorded a demo and sent it to Eastwood, who immediately wanted to use it in the film, despite his illness. “(Eastwood) said, ‘I’ve got a spot in the movie and I’m going to put it in.’ And then Warner Bros. called and asked if I had read the script before I wrote this song, because it fits perfectly. … He wanted it to be so sick and tired and dark,” Keith said.

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“Don’t Let the Old Man In” was a posthumous hit for Toby Keith

Keith didn’t yet have stomach cancer when he wrote and recorded “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” which was initially a modest hit. But the song took on greater significance after Keith went public in 2021 that he was battling cancer.

In 2023, Keith performed the song at the People’s Choice Country Awards. The response was overwhelming. “All the girls are gonna cry, but I’ve had so many guys say, ‘Dude, I cried my eyes out,'” Keith said. Taste of the 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 it — if you knew how to make it happen 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” reaching number one on Country Digital Song Sales, according to Billboard.

Watch Toby Keith: American Icon on NBC on Wednesday, August 28 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT.