Country

“Question the Universe” is a strange title for a song. It’s fairly abstract, doesn’t roll off the tongue and doesn’t sound like it rhymes with anything in a comfortable, singable way.

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But it sure fits independent artist Teddy Robb. He had a near-miss on a relationship, meeting a woman he thought was his soul mate just days before she moved to Los Angeles to live with her boyfriend. He had a near-miss on a songwriting opportunity when Old Dominion guitarist Brad Tursi started — and finished — a song about Robb’s almost-relationship before Robb had arrived for a writing appointment. And Robb had yet another near-miss when the song came along shortly after he lost his recording deal with Monument and had no label that would issue it.

All of that gives real perspective to the “Question the Universe” title. Robb struggled to find any meaning in the series of events, and his performance of the current release is heartbreakingly convincing.

“The emotion of it is so raw that when I’m singing it, it kind of takes me right back to that moment,” he says.

That moment was St. Patrick’s Day 2022. Robb met Leah Lawson, a former Miss South Carolina, at Nashville club Red Door, where the green beer was flowing. They had an instant, undefined connection and ended up talking and partying for much of the night. “It really started off the very first night, very platonic, just like friends,” he remembers. “There was sparks, but [she] was very up front: ‘I have a boyfriend. I’m going to L.A.’ ”

During the evening, they ran into Tursi, and the party expanded. “We hung out that night, and everyone kind of slept over at my house,” recalls Tursi. “We just stayed up late and indulged ourselves in music and all the other things you can indulge yourself with, and then I guess the next day, they’d really fallen for each other.”

Lawson and Robb met up daily during her final days in Nashville, and he admittedly tried to get her to stay. She insisted on sticking with her California boyfriend, and Tursi watched Robb experience torturously teasing circumstances. Robb planned a co-writing session at Tursi’s house, and before it commenced, Tursi sat down at a piano that he had recently purchased.

“I don’t really know how to play it that well,” Tursi says. “Accidents can happen, which makes it more inspiring sometimes.”

Tursi stumbled across some melancholy chords and began recounting Robb’s heartbreaking tale with conversational, out-of-meter lines about meeting over drinks and forming a seemingly doomed connection. It eased into an aching chorus melody that accompanied an accurate summation — “Right person, wrong time” — with the singer adhering more closely to the beat for singalong ease, even as he reveals his anger toward God. Tursi didn’t know where he was going until he reached the chorus’ final line: “It’s shit like this makes me question the universe.”

Musically, that chorus started on a two-minor chord — an unsettled sound that the listener intuitively hopes will resolve. The entire eight-line stanza dodges root-chord finality, though, until the last line, wrapping itself in the situation’s inherent frustration. “It’s hard to accept that, [when] you actually like the person and there’s seemingly some insurmountable obstacles in your way,” says Tursi. “The chorus definitely feels that.”

He kept going with it and finished “Question the Universe,” then texted it to Robb, who was en route for the co-write when it appeared on his phone. Surprisingly, he wasn’t at all bothered that he had missed out on crafting it.

“I was flattered because it was so accurate — Brad paid attention so well to our story,” Robb says. “I mean, I’m still a kid from Akron [Ohio] who moved to Nashville to write songs and play country music, and to find out a guy wrote a song about you … I still have those kinds of moments.”

On March 25, following a send-off dinner for Lawson, Tursi played “Universe” for the ill-fated couple on piano at his house, reflecting their turmoil back to them even as they lived it out. Tursi stealthily whispered to Lawson that he knew she was gone for good.

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Indeed, when she reached California, Robb told her not to call him again unless she moved back. But he decided he needed to record “Question the Universe.” Following the rules hadn’t necessarily paid off, and “Universe,” he felt, broke a bunch. “It starts with the title, ‘Question the Universe,’ ” he says.

It’s definitely outside the norm for country music, as are the melancholy chords, its piano foundation and its ballad tempo. But the differences are what make it stand out, as it did when producer Pete Good (Brandon Ratcliff, Alana Springsteen) reviewed a bundle of songs that Robb presented him. “When he played that, I was just like, ‘Holy crap, what is this?’” recalls Good. “It doesn’t sound like anything else. It’s a one-of-a-kind song.”

They recorded it on July 22, 2022 — four months after it had been written — at Good’s Stone Jag Studio with drummer Evan Hutchings, bassist Craig Young, guitarist Sol Philcox-Littlefield and pianist Alex Wright. The team agreed with Robb that they should break some rules with it.

“We knew that with this song in particular, we could take liberties,” Good explains. “It felt like it needed to be kind of dreamy, atmospheric, surreal — whatever word you want to use — and then we wanted to kind of crescendo toward the end of the song as well, where it just got more intense as it went on.”

Hutchings’ drum part felt sluggish — appropriate support for a depressed protagonist — and Philcox-Littlefield created a swath of razor-like sounds with a spacey vibe — “We’re talking about the universe here,” says Good — and a sitar-ish guitar break. As much as 90% of Robb’s final vocal came from his performance with the band as he relived every ounce of the pain in Lawson’s departure. It was so personal that he delivered even the difficult, out-of-meter sections with conviction.

“It stretched me vocally,” Robb says. “I just tried to do my best to sing what I was feeling, and so that’s probably why it feels like it pushes and pulls, as far as the meter goes. [The feeling’s] important when you’re telling a story like that.”

Good brought Sarah Buxton in to handle background vocals, and the sections where she sings unison octaves are particularly haunting. “It sounds like another person in a song versus a cast of people,” notes Good. “I wanted it to feel a little bit more like there’s an actual, singular female in the song with Teddy. It feels more intimate.”

Robb released it independently on April 20 with Gator Michaels Consulting. After Cumulus expressed some interest in playing it, Robb overdubbed a clean hook line — “Shit like this” became “Things like this” — and released it to radio on July 28 via PlayMPE.

The developments are making Robb more optimistic about his career path. And there’s a postscript regarding Lawson, too: A little more than a week into her time in Los Angeles, she realized it hadn’t been the right move. She returned to Nashville, pursued the relationship with Robb, and the two are now engaged. He has fewer questions for the universe than he did in March 2022.

“I think it takes heartbreak in this town,” he says, “to prepare you for the really good stuff.”