Country

Gauged solely by its title, “Standing Room Only,” it’s understandable if listeners expect Tim McGraw’s latest single to be a song that celebrates big concert moments or triumphant sports events.
In fact, it’s a crucial lesson about acting with integrity for the benefit of friends, family and the community in general. The question McGraw asks about life in the bridge of “Live Like You Were Dying” — “What did you do with it?” — is a query that gets revisited, at least in spirit, in “Standing Room Only.”

“To me, it’s like the last point on a triangle with ‘Humble and Kind’ and ‘Live Like You Were Dying,’” he explains. “They all, to me, have this big, universal feel. You know, I’m just the vessel. They’re not my songs. I just feel lucky to be in the same universe with these songs and to be able to sing them every night. It’s almost like they belong to everybody.”

The “Standing Room Only” copyright actually belongs to songwriters Tommy Cecil (“Home Alone Tonight,” “You Were Jack [I Was Diane]”), Craig Wiseman (“Live Like You Were Dying,” “The Good Stuff”) and Patrick Murphy, a singer-songwriter-pianist signed to Warner Music Nashville. They wrote it over Zoom in April 2020, roughly a month into the coronavirus pandemic, when the outbreak and online writing were both still new to Music Row composers.

Cecil presented the “Standing Room Only” title with the twist already built in. “It was inspired by something in a movie, and I don’t remember what [movie] it was,” says Cecil. “But the thought I wrote down was, ‘When he dies, at his funeral, everybody will be standing. It’ll be so packed that there will only be standing room.’ ”

The idea connected immediately. Wiseman blurted out the first two lines of the chorus: “I wanna live a life, live a life/ Like a dollar and the clock on the wall don’t own me.” It launched them into a song about prioritizing character over wealth, about spreading hope instead of hoarding power.

“It’s just a song about treating everybody, in my opinion, the way that you want to be treated,” Murphy suggests. “Be kind to every single person that you come into contact with each day because you have no idea what that person’s going through.”

They worked in a non-sequential order, fitting key phrases into the chorus or into the verses as the ideas surfaced. The opening lines focused on misplaced anger and the loss of old friendships, and Wiseman diverted the narrative in the last half of that verse down a symbolic road, with the protagonist chasing a pot of gold in a downpour. He shakes his fist at the sky, only to catch a life-changing thunderbolt in the midst of the storm. It’s a metaphor that Wiseman wasn’t entirely certain his co-writers would accept.

“Most songs, I just try to say, ‘F-150,’ you know, and get down to the chorus,” he says. “It was so fun to be able to actually write and use the metaphor.”

That thunderbolt represents a light-bulb moment when the singer reframes his life, letting go of temporary, short-term distractions and emphasizing meaningful, long-term results. “You have to get right in the middle of a wrong decision to realize what the right decision is,” says Wiseman.

As the writing progressed on “Standing Room Only,” Wiseman rolled out one more key phrase, forming the song’s bridge: “Stop judging my life by my possessions/ Start thinking ’bout how many headlights will be in my procession.” His co-writers were stunned.

“I looked at Craig, and I said, ‘Craig, where did that come from?’ ” Cecil remembers. “Craig goes, ‘Well, I’ve been trying to write toward that the whole song.’ ”

Counting the number of headlights following the hearse is not the literal point, says Wiseman. It’s about making a difference among the lives that one does touch. “You could actually fall into the same trap you did chasing money and stuff if [the attendance] was your only thing,” he observes.

When the song was completed, Wiseman recorded a guitar/vocal and sent it to Cecil. He used it as a template for a full demo with Murphy singing lead over a piano-based production loaded with ethereal elements that highlighted the spiritual quality of the message. Since Murphy was the participating artist, he had been the original target for “Standing Room Only” — but he was only 22 at the time and wasn’t entirely certain if he had enough life experience to convince an audience that he fully understood it.

“Toward the end, they had asked me, ‘Hey, do you think this is a song for you? Should we pitch it?’” recalls Murphy. “I was very appreciative for them even asking, and so I was like, ‘You know, let’s just see where the song could go. Maybe I will cut it. But if it ends up in a different artist’s hands that we love, why not?’”

The song languished for months with little feedback, but Cecil — who repeatedly played the demo — refused to let it go. He ultimately tweaked the percussion in it, then resent it to Wiseman for an evaluation. Within a half hour, Wiseman responded: “Hey, man, it’s on hold for McGraw.”

McGraw had just released his Here on Earth album and wouldn’t be recording for a while, but “Standing Room Only” was special. In fact, when the sessions started a year or more later in a high-ceiling recording studio owned by drummer Shannon Forrest, McGraw and co-producer Byron Gallimore (Jo Dee Messina, Sugarland) waited until they had cut at least 15 other songs and fully knocked off the pandemic rust before they tackled “Standing Room.”

McGraw tempered the ethereal ambience from the demo and grounded his recording with more standard instruments, highlighting the communal, neighborly tone of the story. “I wanted it to be more of a band-sounding song, and I wanted the earthiness in it,” McGraw says. “I wanted the human aspect in the record because of everything that’s going on in the world and because of what this song says. I wanted my vocal to be really out front so you really hear the story.”

He caught about 80% of the final vocal during the tracking session, and it finds him sonically mirroring the song’s intent. The back half of the chorus is pitched near the top of his natural range, and by challenging himself in the performance, his art reflects the message. “You’re not taking the easy way out,” he says. “The song challenges everyone to be the best of themselves that they can be and challenges me to be the best of myself I can be. Therefore, the way you sing it, the way you approach it, should challenge yourself to be the best that you can be.”

Big Machine released “Standing Room Only” to country radio on March 9 via PlayMPE. It reaches No. 31 in its fifth week on Country Airplay, making a mark with an affirmation when many communities — Nashville, in particular — need to hear it.

“The song just came along at a time when I thought it was important for something to say, and I love having those kinds of songs,” McGraw notes. “To be an artist that songwriters will bring those kinds of songs to, and to be able to record a song like that and have people actually listen to it, that doesn’t escape me. And I’m grateful.”