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When programmers gathered for the Country Radio Seminar in Nashville Feb. 19-21, they heard a scintillating version of the national anthem.

Tigirlily Gold, the Academy of Country Music’s reigning new duo/group of the year, delivered it with a fierce confidence, the kind of assurance that — based on the enthusiastic response — impressed a room full of hard-to-impress professionals. Considering that the duo had just released a new single, the timing was probably advantageous.

“We got such great feedback from that, and there were a couple of people who said they had tears in their eyes afterward,” Tigirlily’s Krista Slaubaugh says. “I’m just glad we were able to do a good job and kick off that week really strong, but I definitely don’t think it hurts.”

That current Tigirlily single is an anthem in its own right, a celebration of small-town America built on casual acoustics and spacious imagery. And, as it did with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Tigirlily sings “Forever From Here” like it means it.

“This song, for me personally, is the most connected I’ve ever felt to a song,” lead vocalist Kendra Slaubaugh Olson says. “I met my husband in our hometown of Hazen, N.D. We’ve been together for 15 years, married for over five, and when we wrote that song, I think I listened to it 100 times that night. I’m not kidding you — probably 100 times. I just felt so connected and so emotional about it. And just really felt like, for the first time, Jared and I had our song. It was a really beautiful moment.”

The title might have been “Forever From Here,” but the phrase that drove it was “harvest season.” It’s a major reason the song resonated so strongly with her.

“Krista had the title ‘Harvest Season’ in her notes for forever,” Kendra says. “Obviously, being from the Midwest, it’s a huge part of where we grew up. Our grandparents both farmed, and harvest season is just one of the most beautiful times of the year. It’s fall. The air is chilly, everybody’s combining. It’s very fruitful, so we really wanted to paint that picture.”

Krista floated “Harvest Season” a few times during 2024, but it didn’t feel like a natural phrase to end a chorus, and it never quite landed. However, when the duo held a short writing retreat with songwriter-producer Pete Good (“We Don’t Fight Anymore”) at the Santa Barbara, Calif., home of songwriter Shane McAnally (“Body Like a Back Road,” “Coming Home”), “harvest season” found its place. They locked into a breezy guitar foundation as they started the third song of the trip on Dec. 3, and Krista reintroduced the title. McAnally thought it was interesting, but he suggested it belonged in the middle of the chorus instead. He even whipped out a melody to go with it. They talked further about what North Dakota was like and started to shape a direction that paired a rural setting with a relationship.

“You’re painting this big open space in this beautiful scenery and geography,” says Good, who hails from South Dakota. “Somebody said that you can ‘just see forever,’ like, ‘Oh, I can see forever both with my eyes and also with my heart.’ ”

It set the tone for the verses, populated almost entirely by references to a stable, warm relationship and images from nature. “We used geese in a song, which I never thought we would use,” Krista notes.

The pre-chorus looked above the birds — “God turns on the stars” — pulling together multiple elements in the “forever” theme. “The most stars you’ll ever see in your life is looking up at a Midwest sky and just feeling so small compared with everything out there,” Kendra says. “To me, it’s like God painted that picture of the stars in the sky, because there’s no other explanation for that kind of beauty.”

As that pre-chorus eased into the chorus, they encountered the day’s biggest challenge: settling on an opening line for the sing-along section. They sifted through several options, ultimately embracing a phrase that places the adjective in the wrong spot: “I can see a house with the shutters blue.”

“A part of me knew it’s got to be ‘shutters blue,’ ” Krista says. “ ‘Shutters blue’ is weird. It’s just going to catch people.”

A passing mention of a prairie rose in the second verse further enhanced the sense of location, and of personal history. “I did a report on a prairie rose in fourth or fifth grade, and it really stuck with me that that’s the state flower of North Dakota,” Krista says. “So there’s a little bit of nerdiness to the song, which I really love as a songwriter.”

Santa Barbara is quite different from North Dakota, but writing in a room that opened to a large lot helped with the outdoorsy nature of the “Forever” lyric, especially since December falls in the harvest season for some of McAnally’s fruit trees.

“I think I ate about 15 oranges writing that song,” Good says. “I can’t pull oranges off a tree in Nashville, so when I was out there, I just couldn’t stop eating oranges.”

They built a simple work tape with vocal, two guitars and a drum loop, and the Tigirlily team got excited about “Forever” when it heard the results. The act recorded the instrumental tracks on Dec. 16 at Sound Emporium’s Studio A in Nashville. The first couple of run-throughs didn’t fully cut it, so an outdoor feel was captured by setting up a single microphone, campfire-style, with five musicians gathered around it: Drummer Evan Hutchings joined Krista and Sol Philcox-Littlefield on acoustic guitars, Todd Lombardo grabbed a banjo, and keyboardist Alex Wright took over on mandolin.

“That was the DNA of that particular session,” Good notes. “It’s just that breezy, acoustic sound.” Krista joined Good to produce the vocals, and she encouraged Kendra to keep her lead part light.

“I was standing on my tippy toes and smiling as much as I can — this is how I know to make it sound easy,” Kendra says. “That actually sometimes is harder for me to do than to sing a powerful song.” Krista added harmonies later, applying a high note first, then adding a low note beneath Kendra’s lead in key spots, particularly on the chorus and on a scorching “wi-i-i-ld” passage in verse two.

Jenee Fleenor also overdubbed fiddle, taking a solo and threading some choice shimmering notes at the end of the bridge. In the end, the personal tone and catchy chorus of “Forever From Here” helped it beat out a couple of other recordings to become the next single. Monument released “Forever” to country radio via PlayMPE on Feb. 13, and it’s already being embraced by dozens of stations, creating a sense that it could become the duo’s biggest single to date. Tigirlily Gold is cautiously considering what kind of success the recording might harvest.

“If this song goes No. 1,” Kendra says, “I’m definitely painting my shutters blue.”