genre country

“You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.”
Suffering through bad relationships to finally find the ideal romantic partner is a universal story that’s understood by men and women of every age, and of every generation. It’s at the heart of most Hallmark movies and a number of fairytales. And it’s a go-to subject for plenty of hit songs, including Rascal Flatts’ “Bless The Broken Road,” Foreigner’s “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” Garth Brooks’ “Unanswered Prayers” and Johnny Lee’s “Lookin’ for Love.”

It’s appropriate that when LOCASH strode down that same thematic lane, it took years for “Wrong Hearts” to find its right moment.

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“I always believe songs are on journeys, and they have their own timing,” LOCASH’s Preston Brust says. “And so here we are.”

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“Wrong Hearts” was created when the whole of society was (im)patiently waiting to move forward. They penned it in 2020, when the pandemic had forced musicians off the road. LOCASH was writing via Zoom nearly every day, and on this particular occasion, they connected on computer screens with Josh Thompson (“Drowns the Whiskey,” “One Margarita”) and Matt Dragstrem (“Mamaw’s House,” “What My World Spins Around”), who checked in from his third-floor writing room on Music Row. Either Dragstrem or Thompson had the “Wrong Hearts” title, but all four related to its inherent message.

“I been married 15 years,” LOCASH’s Chris Lucas notes. “Trust me, there was a lot of broken jukeboxes that didn’t play. There’s a lot of neon lights that flickered. You know, there’s all kinds of stuff we went through to get to where we’re at.”

The trick was to make that sentiment work for LOCASH’s rough-cut vocal sound.

“Josh was playing this vibe, almost like a ‘50s, ‘60s vibe – retro, but at the same time, cool again,” Lucas recalls. “We just started writing it, with a kind of ‘God Bless the Broken Road’ vibe, but a little edgier.”From the start, Dragstrem built a musical track to work from, centered around a strummed guitar part that held an Eagles/Poco sort of country-rock attitude. They dug straight into the chorus, setting their intent with the first lines: “All the wrong hearts/ All the wrong bars.”

“We’re chorus writers,” Brust says. “If that hook doesn’t feel really good, then we’re probably not even gonna chase a verse.”

They recounted empty whiskey glass and bad barroom choices, using short, breezy phrases. But midway through the chorus, they changed the phrasing and the melody, as the text got even darker.

“At that time, post-choruses were really in, so I think we thought of [that section] as a post-chorus,” Dragstrem says. “Then the more we were writing it, we were like, ‘Oh, this kind of feels like just a part of the chorus.’ Doing that front half of the chorus again might get a little old, so I remember I was trying to play with a different back half that kind of wrapped it nicely in a bow. I love the front half of the chorus, but I wanted that melody to be really special and be interesting every time you hear it.”

The back half started on “that highway to hell” – not intended as a nod to AC/DC, though they knew people would make that connection. That highway “led straight to your arms,” cruising into a new emotional light that carried through to a reprise of the “Wrong Hearts” hook at the chorus’ end.

With that section complete, they turned to the verses, using the opening stanza to recap the lonely prior wilderness. “Wastin’ my time,” “gettin’ used to the rain” – they used a conversational tone while recasting that period as drudgery. Then, the singer’s dream girl walks in “outta that neon blue” – it’s easy to picture her silhouetted in cigarette smoke with a Bud Light sign glowing behind her.

“That’s always the challenge for songwriters: to find new ways to say ‘the bar’ without saying ‘the bar,’” Dragstrem notes.

In verse two, the singer recognizes the former relationships were always doomed to fail, and he revels in the time he’s spending with his partner now “under midnight stars.” It was a mere coincidence that they’d placed a light source – the “neon blue” and the “midnight stars” – in each verse, though it fit “Wrong Hearts” well.

“There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” Lucas says. “Sometimes you can’t see it when you’re younger and you’re still trying to find love.”

To finish, they crafted a bridge that pulled the bar and the relationship together, raising a drink to their romance. They would also “raise one to…” – then comes the final chorus – “All the wrong hearts.” By celebrating those former romances, they framed the failed past as necessary for the victorious present.Dragstrem completed the instrumental part of the demo on his own, adhering to the country-rock motif, and Thompson sang the vocal for that version. LOCASH was enthusiastic about “Wrong Hearts,” but their label relationship at the time was, it turned out, nearing its end. They had two more singles, then moved on, eventually starting their own Galaxy Music Group.

As they worked on their first Galaxy album, LOCASH pulled “Wrong Hearts” off the pile and asked producer Jacob Rice (Jon Langston, Kidd G) to record the instrumental bed. Rice was up for the assignment.

“The way the melody sat over the chord progression was very cool to me,” he says.

He cut it at Saxman Studios around the end of 2023 with drummer Grady Saxman, bassist Devin Malone, guitarists Nathan Keeterle and Dave Flint, and steel guitarist Andy Ellison. Rice encouraged them to follow Dragstrem’s country-rock lead, with a specific alteration.

“One of the main things I told everybody in there was, ‘I don’t want this to be too light,’” Rice remembers.

“I wanted it to have a little bit of a toughness to it, a little bit of a masculine thing to it. The demo had a beachy kind of lighter vibe, I’d say, because it had nylon guitar [strings] going on, and it kind of leaned itself a little bit more [Kenny] Chesney, when Chesney was kind of doing his beach thing.”

If listeners dig deep, they’ll hear Ellison playing steel lines with elongated notes mid-chorus, handling a supporting role that would typically belong to a string section. Keeterle used a tremolo effect to apply a bubbly sound in the bridge, and Saxman slipped a maraca-sounding shaker into a quiet space before the chorus.

“That’s all musicianship,” Rice says. “A lot of that came from those guys just playing off each other.”LOCASH cut its vocals at a later date, working out their parts in the studio. Lucas took the primary lead on the chorus, while Brust dominated the verses. And before it was all over, Brust developed a bonus post-chorus that had the guys singing a background counter melody.

As previous single “Hometown Home” wound its way to No. 1 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart, a major programmer suggested “Wrong Hearts” was the obvious follow-up. They researched it through multiple avenues, and the feedback supported that advice. Galaxy released “Wrong Hearts” to country radio via PlayMPE on May 2. Interestingly, that phrase at the end of the bridge – “raise one to” – is being heard by some listeners as “raise one, too.” It takes “Wrong Hearts” even further, suggesting the guy is wanting to become a father – making him obvious wife material.

Thus, “Wrong Hearts” is even more utilitarian than they expected. Its journey so far is five years – long by typical standards – but the song has a shot at making a long-awaited connection, mirroring the story embedded in its easy-going melody.

“The right heart has been waiting for you all along,” Brust suggests. “You just got to get there.”