Makin’ Tracks
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It’s arguably easier to figure a pitcher’s earned run average than to determine a car’s horsepower, and it’s a good bet that the majority of drivers don’t know how much horsepower their engine generates.
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But nearly everyone realizes that a larger number equals more speed. So when Tyler Hubbard brags that he has “700 horses under the hood” in the chorus of his new single, “Park,” it’s easy to get what he’s saying. Especially since he, like most of us, understands it more as a comparative number than one he needs to calculate.
“I had a friend in college who had a super-fast car that was like a muscle car basically,” Hubbard recalls. “There was 800 horsepower. It was like a race car, and I can even go to the drag strip with it and compete. So I knew like 800 horsepower is a ton of horsepower for a car. So 700 is a souped-up car for sure.”
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It’s a detail that fits an automotive-themed T-Hub song.
“He’s always loved to go fast,” says co-writer Canaan Smith (“Famous,” “Runaway”). “Back in the day, when we first met at Belmont College, he was riding his motorcycle up and down the interstate doing wheelies at 80 miles an hour.”
“Park” emerged near the end of a songwriters retreat at the Gulf Coast home of Jesse Frasure (“Halfway To Hell,” “Young Love & Saturday Nights”). A couple different teams were working simultaneously on material for Hubbard, who ricocheted from room to room as the songs developed. They’d already built several by the time of the “Park” session, so Frasure, Smith and Ashley Gorley (“I Had Some Help,” “I Am Not Okay”) were in a position to take a few more creative risks.
“There’s a little bit of a freedom when you’ve got a couple in the can on a writing retreat,” Frasure says. “It’s very relaxing, and you’re like, ‘Okay, cool.’ So you pull up some more aggressive tracks.”
Frasure purposely introduced an instrumental track he’d created with a danceable tempo and a bright feel. “I want to put things in the artist’s pile that are fun, energetic, that you could see pyro going off on stage,” Frasure says. “The more I do this, the more that’s what I get excited about, because I just feel like that’s the soundtrack to people’s lives. People love a well-written tune, and we’ll give awards to those, but I want the one that’s gonna be on someone’s playlist on the boat.”
The track resonated in the room – Frasure’s wife, Rhythm House vp Stevie Frasure, and Hubbard’s wife, Hayley, were both grooving along with it – and the writers started sifting through ideas that would fit. Tyler was in the other writer room as they considered titles, and Gorley brought up the word “Park,” from his list. The contrast between the dance tempo and the word “Park” was worth exploring.
“To me, there’s a really interesting, cool flip in the storyline here,” Smith says. “Yes, he likes to go fast, but there’s nothing he’d rather do than just put it in park.”
When Tyler returned, he gave them a green light on the song, which was already in process, and they got the wheels turning on the chorus, launching into it with a line custom-made for Hubbard: “I can drive you from this holler to Hollywood.” The chorus explored the driving theme – the horsepower, speed and screaming tires – but made the thematic flip by the end of the chorus as the singer considers the girl riding shotgun: “All I wanna do is park.”
“It was just sort of a picture of young, innocent, and it’s fun and a little bit risky and wild,” Hubbard says. “We’ve all been there at some point in our life, and I like to think occasionally, it’s fun to just go back to that mindset.”
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The two verses added some detail to the storyline: a couple kids racing through dirt roads around midnight, flirting with the thrill of driving for hours in the anonymous darkness, but flirting even more intensely with each other. As the writers cruised through the lyrics, Hubbard reconnected with one of his own experiences, making out at age 15 in his girlfriend’s car in the church parking lot, only to have a cop interrupt, then take Hubbard home and rat him out to his parents. Hubbard was grounded for the next month.
“It was a learning lesson, for sure,” he says. “It was only a mile from the house. My dad was like, ‘Why didn’t you just come sit in the driveway?’”
Between the programmed track and the guitars in the room, the song was propelled by stacks of rhythm, and they decided to create room for a guitar solo that ultimately shifted into a short bridge. Those sections use the same four chords as the rest of the song, though they’re arranged in a different order, making that mid-song departure feel easy and natural.
“Bridges usually are for troubled waters,” Smith quips, “but we didn’t feel like this was any trouble. We wanted it to carry along and keep people immersed in what was happening, and sometimes you can do that musically with just a little reset.”
Frasure produced a brisk, almost-skipping demo that gave Hubbard and his co-producer, Jordan M. Schmidt (Mitchell Tenpenny, The Band Camino), a strong foundation. Tony Lucido’s start-and-stop bass hook, layers of guitars and Nir Z’s 700 horses of dramatic drum fills intensified the groove during a tracking session at Nashville’s Sound Stage.
“Certain songs just require certain things,” Smith reasons, “and this one definitely needed the Nir Z treatment.”
Schmidt and Jonny Fung completed the guitar-layering in overdubs, and Hubbard had a relatively easy go of it when he sang final vocals. The “All I wanna do is park” hook was likely the most difficult part of the process, since an “r” consonant can sound harsh at the end of a phrase (think Kevin Cronin singing “remember,” “together” and “forever” in the second verse of REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You”).
“It does roll off the tongue a little differently,” Hubbard allows, “but it’s somehow always felt natural and always worked, even live. I do have to be a little bit more intentional about it.”
The entire chorus fit perfectly into Hubbard’s vocal sweet spot. “His voice has always, throughout his entire career, cut really well,” Frasure says. “It’s very noticeable, and there’s certain melodies and certain tones – and certain keys, actually – with Tyler’s voice that are just money.”
EMI Nashville released “Park” to country radio via PlayMPE on June 3 as the second single from Hubbard’s album Strong. Hubbard played “Park” second in the set during Kane Brown’s In the Air Tour, though the possibility exists that he could bunch it with “Dancing in the Country” in the future to create an extended party atmosphere.
“When I get a few more singles under my belt and have a little more to play with, we could definitely make a 10- or 12-minute moment,” Hubbard says. “They do live in the same family for sure.”
Cole Swindell taps into his history on his new single, “Forever to Me.”
It’s the second time he’s sung about Carolina in the chorus of a song he issued to radio, following his 2022 release “She Had Me At Heads Carolina.” And a line in the bridge, “I wish you coulda met my daddy,” references the loss of his father, a life event that formed the backbone of his 2015 ballad “You Should Be Here.”
But “Forever to Me” also uses history to anticipate the future, recounting the 2023 engagement that led to his June 12 marriage in California to former NBA dancer Courtney Little. “Forever to Me” represents the start of the next phase in his personal life, now unfolding in a way he doubted it would.
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“I always wondered if I’d ever get married – you can’t really have a song like that if you don’t,” he says. “So for all this to happen within a year, man, and to have [the song] out there and finally be playing it live, it’s really cool.”
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“Forever to Me” is actually more than three years in the making. Swindell had met Little at a NASCAR event, and they struck up a friendship. But when his video team needed a love interest for his intricate 2021 video “Some Habits,” Swindell thought it’d work better to shoot it with Little than with an unfamiliar model. Working on that particular song on a Tennessee backroad created a spark, and the two began dating.
“The whole feeling on that day, I just felt like there was something,” he reflects. “I don’t know that I thought we’d be getting married, but I definitely knew that’s what I was missing.”
In May 2023, Swindell planned to pop the question in Texas in conjunction with the Academy of Country Music Awards, but just days before that event, he called an audible and arranged to take Little on a surprise detour to that same “Some Habits” backroad. He knelt on a soggy field, she said “yes,” and as he worked on his next album, he periodically attempted to write about the relationship for their first dance. Oddly enough, “Forever” arrived in tandem with a football game.
Swindell was to headline a swanky private party in Houston on Jan. 7, the eve of the National College Football Championship, and at the last minute, he asked Greylan James (“Next Thing You Know,” “Happy Does”) to join him and to suggest a third writer. James picked Rocky Block (“Cowgirls,” “Man Made a Bar”). They wrote a couple songs on the way to Houston, and after the concert, they stayed up late on the bus talking – so late that they saw the sun come up. They asked Swindell to describe his relationship, and he replied that Little is “forever to me.” That, his co-writers agreed, was the song they would write – after they slept.
When they awoke, James and Block worked on it a bit before Swindell was ready. James developed an opening acoustic guitar riff that Swindell compared to a Keith Whitley vibe.
“It was a really purposeful part,” James says.
They came up with the chorus’ opening line, “She gave 18 summers to Carolina” – not quite the correct number of years, but definitely the right state. “That was a little bit poetic license, but it got the point across,” Block notes. “We were just trying to say she grew up somewhere.”
Block controlled the melody at the close of that chorus, including the all-important set-up line, “I might’ve gave her the diamond/But she gave forever to me.” “I would have never sang that off the bat,” James says. “That’s just a Rocky Block special.”
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The word “gave” became an important device – “She gave 18 years…,” “I gave her a diamond…,” “She gave forever…” Swindell’s co-writers were very specific about it. “We kind of went in on what else she gave [in] other places in that chorus,” Block says.
Swindell didn’t quite realize it was happening. “It is a lot of ‘gaves,’” he says. “I didn’t even notice that we had done it. It just kind of felt right.”
One of the “gaves” – “I gave a grass stain to my knee” – is the kind of detail that specifically personalizes “Forever.” Originally, they started writing the verses with a line that referenced Dallas, since that’s where he intended to propose. Along with the references to Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, the geography felt cluttered, but they kept it. Eventually, that became the second verse as he spent the first recounting how they met.
The song’s powerhouse moment comes with the bridge. It sews in a cultural reference, “She said ‘yes to the dress’ with her mama,” as the writers specifically included Little’s mother in the lyric. It’s there that Swindell sings “I wish you coulda met my daddy,” tying in his own personal note. And they included a mention of Jesus, suggesting divinity is involved in the relationship. It was only after writing the bridge that Swindell came up with the opening line, “You ever seen a prayer in person?,” tying the front and back of the song together.
They had champagne on hand for the game, but they broke it out early for an emotional toast. “We’re holding cups of champagne, hugging each other, and tears coming down — because we felt every line in that in that bridge,” James recalls.
They barely got to the stadium suite in time for the game, a Michigan blowout over Washington. Numerous celebrities wandered in and out, but the three writers kept going back to a corner and playing a work tape of “Forever.” James paid extra attention to the demo when he got back to Nashville, since the song was likely to be important to Swindell’s fiancée. The story made it one of Swindell’s most challenging vocals.
“It was a different kind of feeling — like, ‘Man, I can’t believe I’m singing this. I can’t believe I wrote this song,’” Swindell remembers. “I felt a lot of pressure to get it right.”
Little and the in-laws loved it, though another song eventually supported their ceremonial first dance. Meanwhile, Swindell struggled to record a final version of it. They made several attempts with different groups of musicians, but none of the results captured the song’s emotion the way the demo did. Ultimately, Swindell contacted producer Jordan M. Schmidt (Tyler Hubbard, Mitchell Tenpenny), who used much of Swindell’s vocal and some of James’ drum programming from the demo. Schmidt hired drummer Nir Z to mesh light human drum work into the synthetic percussion, and he had Jonny Fung redo the guitar parts.
Swindell still needed to rewrite the Dallas line, though, and he had a long phone call with Block and James to change the lyric. They turned the lines into “There ain’t no dancin’ around it/ When your whole world’s standin’ there.” It might be the only part of the song that Swindell re-sang during one last vocal session, held under more pressure, since the label had picked “Forever” as a single, and deadlines were imminent.
Schmidt “was a huge reason we were able to release it,” Swindell says.
Warner Music Nashville issued “Forever” to country radio via PlayMPE on April 12. It ranks No. 46 on the Country Airplay chart dated June 22, documenting his recent history as he steps into newlywed status.
“I’m literally in this season of my life,” he says. “I will never talk about it any more than I will now and this kind of goes along with what I’m going through. It just kind of fit.”
The new Darius Rucker single “Never Been Over,” featuring a convincing appearance by Jennifer Nettles, is easily heard as a celebration of a long-term relationship. The chorus employs a series of separation images – splitting up the household items, burning old letters or waving goodbye – that often appear in songs about a breakup, but it notes in the process that the couple has no experience with that stuff: “We’ve never been over.”
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It’s also possible, knowing Rucker’s history, to focus on the song’s road images and see it as a nod to his ongoing membership in the sometimes-active/sometimes-not Hootie + the Blowfish.
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Those interpretations are legit in Rucker’s mind, though it’s not how the song ended up playing for him. “When I started it, I think it was a love song,” he remembers. “But then as we kept writing it, I just realized that wasn’t a love song for me. It was more of a breakup song, and it was so therapeutic.”
People needed therapy at the time. It was May 21, 2020 – barely two months into the pandemic, days after the U.S. death toll passed 90,000. Songwriters were just getting used to composing via Zoom, and Rucker had a session that day with Brothers Osborne guitarist John Osborne and songwriter Lee Thomas Miller (“It Ain’t My Fault,” “You’re Gonna Miss This”). The process was clunky – if they sang, talked or played guitar, it muted the other participants and made it difficult to coordinate well.
Fortunately, Miller showed up with the “Never Been Over” title, and then some. “He walks into a room with a title that he knows can easily be written,” Osborne says of Miller. “He’s just really good at coming up with things like that, and he just said the title and threw out some concepts around the idea.”
“I had the trick, ‘We’ve been a lot of things, but we’ve never been over,’” Miller reflects. “It’s my favorite kind of song. It’s just the laundry list to make a point, you know, and so it was, ‘Okay, how do we do these contrasts?’: ‘We’ve been apples, we’ve been oranges,’ you know, ‘hot and cold’ and all the stuff.”
Osborne eased into a descending chord progression – not just a short one, but one that takes a long, leisurely journey.
“It starts up high, and it just walks down and keeps walking down and keeps walking, keeps going down,” Rucker says. “You rarely hear a song like this, that’s just descending the whole time. And then you get to the second verse, and it goes back and descends again.”
“I can’t remember who called it this, but it’s been dubbed the Bluebird walk-down,” Osborne says. “If you go to The Bluebird [Café Songwriters in the] Round, you’re going to hear somebody play those chords … And it feels emotional and evokes a feeling. And at the end of the day, that’s all we’re trying to do, is just evoke emotion.”
Miller’s initial structure included the song’s first two contrasts, “good and bad, hot and cold,” simple pairings that clued the listener in before they grew increasingly complex: “Desert quiet and rockstar loud,” “up and down like we’re built on springs.” By verse two, the images include “two pink lines, up all night” at the open and “18 years around the sun” at the end.
“We got pregnant, and we sent them to college in four lines,” Miller says.
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Since the Zoom setup prevented them from doing a collective work tape, Osborne did a vocal/guitar recording on his own and sent it to Rucker. Barely 50 days later, Rucker and Beth Leonard announced their separation. Miller figured it was a bad omen for the song. “I thought we just lost our shot,” he says. “I felt like, ‘Wow, maybe this [will be] pushed on the back burner for personal reasons.’ I didn’t know, I didn’t ask.”
But he also didn’t realize that Rucker was viewing it as a breakup song, rather than a love ballad. “It was the first song I wrote about [the divorce],” he says. “There was no way I wasn’t gonna cut it. It was such a great song.”
When Rucker eventually recorded it, he made an acoustic version at the Blackbird Studios with producer Ross Copperman (Dierks Bentley, Gabby Barrett) and just three or four musicians. Ilya Toshinskiy turned the signature riff that Osborne had originated on acoustic guitar into a mandolin hook. “It just cuts better as a mandolin,” Copperman says. “It feels more signature, and it kind of fits his ‘Wagon Wheel’ vibe, that rootsy thing. It really fits him.”
Rucker needed no more than three takes to nail the final vocal, which sounds almost as if it were being delivered in a quiet moment in front of a fireplace.
“John Osborne sang the demo,” Rucker says. “I toured with John. John’s a real good friend. I didn’t know John could sing like that, because John’s a guitar player, you know. He sings background, and you can’t really hear because T.J. is so great and so loud. John sang the demo, and I still listen to his demo, and every time I sing, that’s all I’m trying to do, is sound like John does on the demo, because it’s so great.”
During the first round of sessions, they discussed turning “Never Been Over” into a duet – “There was initial talk of Kacey Musgraves doing it,” Copperman remembers – though it remained a solo cut on the Carolyn’s Boy album, released by Capitol Nashville on Oct. 6, 2023. Despite his reticence to pick singles, Rucker lobbied for “Never Been Over,” and the label consented, even before management suggested they reach out to Nettles. After they added bass, drums and electric guitar, she overdubbed her part on her own — though Rucker’s team gave some loose suggestions, particularly asking for her to enter with the “two pink lines” phrase.
“Adding Jennifer Nettles’ second verse kind of elevates the thing to a whole new level,” Copperman notes. “Hearing the female side of the story here – like, I always wanted this song to be a duet, man. I was so happy when we finally found out it was gonna be Jennifer.”
Capitol released it to country radio on May 6, and while it can be viewed as a love song, a breakup song or even a Hootie song, it also works as a statement about his ongoing relationship with his ex-wife. Even after they split, they’ve never been over.
“We love our kids very much, and we’re gonna be in each other’s lives the rest of our lives,” he says. “I hope we’re both being adults. I think after you get through all the stuff you have to get through, you can be friends. You have to.”
Life is lived in duality. We drift between the sun and moon, grapple with right and wrong, walk the thin line between love and hate.
Brothers Osborne is likewise built on duality. John Osborne and T.J. Osborne use two different primary instruments – guitar and voice, respectively – to channel a sound that’s primarily country and rock, and the duo’s new single, “Break Mine,” similarly runs on two tracks. The basic premise, “If you’re looking for a heart to break… break mine,” wreaks on one hand of classic codependence.
“I spent many therapy sessions talking about my codependency,” John says with a fair amount of sarcasm. “I’ll write about it.”
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But, T.J. suggests, the protagonist could on the other hand be looking quite realistically at a potential relationship, willing to accept its inherent risk of success or failure. “You can take it either way,” T.J. allows.
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“Break Mine” appropriately required two writing sessions. The first took place with co-writer Shane McAnally (“I Was On A Boat That Day,” “Body Like A Back Road”) at the home studio of Pete Good (“We Don’t Fight Anymore,” “I Tried A Ring On”) pre-COVID, circa 2019. McAnally, most likely, brought the “Break Mine” idea, Good introduced a foundational groove, and John landed on an almost-haunting chord progression. T.J. started singing a melancholy melody that peaked on successive lines on a different, unexpected beat.
“When he started singing that melody, I was like, ‘Oh, here we go,’” Good recalls.
With that start, they began working on the opening verse, rather than the chorus. “Which is, honestly, the kiss of death,” John says. It started fairly well. They fashioned that first verse as an invitation for a sleepover. As the singer waits for a response, he ends that stanza in limbo: “Baby, bring it on and on and on and on and on and on.”
“For me, it feels like another hook, as simple as that is,” Good says. “It kind of sets you up for the chorus, I think, in a beautiful way.”
That chorus comes in with a change in phrasing, the melody moving forward with the emphasis at the front of each line. But before finishing, and the four writers seemed to run out of gas. “We got about halfway through the song and just couldn’t get through it,” John says.
That might say less about the song than it says about the Osbornes’ compatibility with McAnally, who they typically see only once or twice a year. “A lot of times when we get together, because he’s so fucking funny, we end up just spending a lot of time catching up with each other and just shooting the shit,” T.J. says. “We probably just ran out of time because we couldn’t shut up.”
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They made a work tape of their progress and called it a day, which left “Break Mine” in limbo, where it remained for perhaps two years. But it came up again when McAnally proposed a second writing session. Going through unfinished songs, he came across the work tape and sent a text to T.J., who found it sounded better than he remembered. “When I write, there’s sometimes – I call it my checkout lines, where I’ll hear a lyric, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m over this,’” T.J. says. “I remember this song having one or two of those.”
One of them – the “on and on” section – was fixable by simply changing a lyric at the front of that line the second time it appeared, at the end of verse two. Meanwhile, the set-up line at the end of the chorus, “Get here in a straight line,” seemed fresh.
They met up again at Good’s studio in a new house and buttoned up the remaining issues with “Break Mine.” Good produced a demo, and the Osbornes decided it should be the first song they attacked when they wanted to test recording with producer Mike Elizondo (Twenty One Pilots, Eminem), who’d moved to Middle Tennessee from Los Angeles. Elizondo played bass and pulled together two more players the Osbornes hadn’t worked with previously, drummer Nate Smith and keyboardist Phil Towns, for a session at his Phantom Studio.
Elizondo’s bass, in particular, had such power that it felt like it could rattle the amplifier cabinet, though it never quite overpowers the rest of the performance. The bass’ weight came in part when Elizondo doubled it with a synth bass. “Quincy [Jones] would do that a lot on Michael Jackson records,” Elizondo says. “It’s something that, when it seems appropriate, I’ll try it out.”
John developed a cheery signature guitar riff for the intro, and it got doubled as well, with T.J. doing a vocal on top of it. John also took off on a guitar solo after the second chorus that worked like a scenic detour, changing the chords and creating a sense of fresh forward motion. “It’s a weird part,” he says. “It’s one of the hardest solos I play in our set, because it doesn’t physically feel the best on the guitar. There are certain things that just didn’t work out physically, but when I change the solo up, I miss it. So I’m always trying to adhere to that solo as much as I can.”
They tagged it with a one-minute instrumental finale, though Elizondo also had them cut an ending that capped it without the extended minute, knowing it would require an edit if it became a single. “That wasn’t hard to guess,” he says.
A day later, Elizondo threw on some bell-like keyboard parts – “twinkly things,” as T.J. refers to them. Those high notes form a subtle contrast with those deep bass lines, mirroring the duality of sweet surrender and darkness in the “Break Mine” lyric.
“That’s one of the things I love about Brothers Osbourne,” Elizondo says. “There are a handful of songs where there’s this mix of dark and light, whether the melody is brighter, but then the undertone of the music and the chord changes can be a little darker, or vice versa. I feel like ‘Break Mine’ really encapsulates that as far as the lyric, and even though it’s kind of got this sort of bounce, there’s this undertone of a mood that we wanted to make sure was always going to be there.”
The Osbornes originally planned to make “Break Mine” the first single from their self-titled 2023 album, but it didn’t quite fit sonically with the rest of the project. They eventually made it the title track of a four-song EP, released by EMI Nashville on March 21. The edited version of “Break Mine” was issued to country radio on April 15, finally rewarding the duo for sticking with the song through two writing sessions and a five-year journey.
“It’s still one of our favorite songs,” John says. “We’ll see what happens.”
When The Texas Regional Radio Report handed out its annual awards in Arlington on March 25, Wade Bowen was the most-honored winner, taking home three trophies, including male vocalist of the year.
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Three nights later, he hit Global Life Field – again in Arlington – for the Texas Rangers’ season opener. It was a big deal: Bowen has a lifelong obsession with the team, and attending that game meant he got to witness as they hoisted a flag to recognize the Rangers’ first-ever World Series victory in 2023. Bowen delivered “The Star-Spangled Banner” that day, but the team also played another anthem on the stadium sound system: Bowen’s “Nothin But Texas.”
“Of all the times I’ve listened to it,” Bowen says, “it’s never been better.”
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The New Braunfels resident is one of the leading red-dirt artists, grounded in a country bar-band style that fits the club-heavy listening habits in the state. But the area also boasts a notable blues/rock current, and “Nothin But Texas” leans on that under-represented part of Bowen’s musical personality.
“Obviously I listened to Stevie Ray Vaughan and ZZ Top and Delbert McClinton,” he says. “I listened to them a lot, you know. It’s around me all the time, so it’s like, ‘Okay, I need to show some of this.’”
“Nothin But Texas” came in Bowen’s first collaboration with songwriter Leslie Satcher (“Troubadour,” “When God-Fearin’ Women Get The Blues”), whose default goal is to write something energetic.
“I’ll leave the ballads to the other guys,” she says. “I want to write the uptempo, let’s-turn-up-the-radio-and-drive song. And I’ll say, ‘Let’s do something that will have your crowds with their beer in the air.’”
They didn’t have a particular title or musical approach in mind when they started writing, but both are from the Lone Star State, and Satcher had just gotten back to Nashville after visiting Texas. Somewhere in their introductory conversation, one of them said that when they were able to retire, it’d be “nothin’ but Texas for me.” That sounded like something they could turn into a celebration, and Satcher started playing a blues-laced groove in an open tuning, starting the chords on the afterbeat and cutting them off on the downbeat. It had the same propellant feel as The Ozark Mountain Daredevils’ “If You Wanna Get to Heaven.”
Most Nashville songwriters would focus on the chorus first, but that’s not how it worked here. “I always start at the first line,” Satcher insists. “It was just sort of building blocks as we went – sort of Jenga, you know. It’s like you just keep stacking until something falls down.”
Figuring the song out was almost too easy. They turned the opening verse into a travelogue of American party cities, leaning into Las Vegas, New Orleans and Los Angeles, with the singer reflecting that he’s been “pedal down in L.A.” That, of course, is quite the accomplishment – anyone who’s driven on the 405 during daylight hours knows the brake is down as much as the gas pedal.
“I guess we shouldn’t should have said that,” Bowen says. Nonsense, Satcher counters: “There’s lots of ways to drive fast in LA., you know. It’s a party life, and it’s a fast life.”
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Those cities set up the chorus’ payoff: Those towns are great, but “It ain’t nothin’ but Texas for me.” That opinion gets stronger when it’s repeated in line two, and after a melodic detour that applies blue notes at the end of lines three and four, they said it again to end the chorus. Thus, the title appears hree times in five lines.
They both second-guessed it – the repetition is quite stark when it’s written down on paper – but the questions quickly disappeared. “Anthems need to be simple,” Bowen quips. “That’s what makes them anthems.”
The second verse seemed easy, too. After playing up the state in the chorus, they needed to explain what makes Texas so great. Or, since it was a song for Bowen to sing, what makes it such a great place for him.
That meant putting a country-band perspective on partying in the Lone Star State. They latched onto I-35, “straight to the river” – it cuts across the entire state, north to south, from Denton to Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and to the streets of Laredo, linking with a Mexican boulevard at the edge of the Rio Grande. “I-35 is obviously a huge part of my life,” Bowen says. “Like, I live on 35 more than [in] my damn house.”
By the end of the verse, the singer promises to clap back at “any law dog that tries to run me off” for playing the music too loud. The “law dog” is a phrase Satcher has used previously – “It’s just so fun,” she says – though it’s probably false bravado.
“Anybody knows me knows that I’m gonna keep my mouth shut,” Bowen admits, asked if he’d really confront a cop. On the other hand, he offers, “I’ve got a drunk alter ego named Paul that might do it.”
Satcher slipped in a reference to “cowboy beers” – a phrase she and her husband use for his Coors Light habit – during a bridge that’s so subtle it could pass without the listener recognizing the change of pace. “People who are dancing in Texas, dancehall people, they don’t particularly care for a song that busts up the groove or has a weird melody or something like that,” Satcher offers. “They’re dancing, and so they want to keep going round the circle.”
Bowen created a sparse work tape, but when his crew had some down time on tour in Colorado, they did a more extensive demo that laid out the basic arrangement. Bowen recorded “Nothin But Texas” during three days of sessions for his album Flyin’, Nov. 15-17, at Curb Studio 43, a Music Row facility with Spanish-flavored arched entrances, an architectural touch that’s familiar in Texas.
An eight-piece studio band firmed up the demo’s blues/rock foundation, approximating the sound of Vaughan’s recordings, particularly through Jim “Moose” Brown’s earthy Hammond B-3 tones and Tom Bukovac’s assured guitar licks. The band members entered informally during a 25-second intro that toughened the original rhythms, and they kept going for at least a minute after the song had survived its Jenga course. Bowen, self-producing the track, asked after one take for Bukovac to expand the solo, giving it even more of a live sound.
A day later, Satcher came in to layer in soulful backing vocals, offering R&B-flavored ad libs and churchy three-part harmonies. “This track is not near as good,” Bowen says, “if Leslie doesn’t sing the parts.”
“Nothin But Texas” was a key focus track leading into the May 10 release of Flyin’, while another cut, “Rainin On Me,” plays on red-dirt stations, ranked at No. 9 on the May 24 Texas Regional Radio Report chart. It’s a statement about the musical identity of both Bowen and his homeland.
“Texas is not just country music,” Bowen notes. “This kind of music is a huge part of our state: blues/rock. It’s a huge, huge aspect of where I come from.”
As a former firefighter, it’s easy to think of Tyler Braden as a community-minded guy who’s not afraid of perilous situations.
That background provides automatic authenticity for “Devil You Know,” a country single with strong, early-2000s rock overtones. The sound is dangerous, and so is the message to any listener who might test the singer’s limits: “Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness.”
“I’m not gonna be some person that’s gonna flip the switch very easily and yell all the time and be angry,” Braden says. “But at the same time, I’m not gonna let myself be pushed around.”
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“Devil You Know” is “the anthem for the underdogs,” says writer-artist Graham Barham, and that’s an appropriate sort of song to emerge from the creative crew behind it. Braden is a developing Warner Music Nashville artist, and all four of the song’s Warner Chappell writers – Barham, Jon Hall, Zack Dyer and writer-producer Sam Martinez – are experiencing personal landmarks with “Devil.”
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“We’re all underdogs,” notes Barham, a Sony Music Nashville artist. “This is all our first song on radio as writers. And I think this is one of Tyler’s best ones to date. So I mean, for this to be the anthem for us to come out with is really freaking cool.”
Barham is actually the artist they were targeting when the four writers met up at Warner Chappell in July 2023. None of them brought any specific ideas to the appointment, but they knew they wanted to create something dark. Hall leaned into an unsettling chord progression, and Martinez tweaked it just a hair.
“The last chord in the progression is kind of ambiguous,” Martinez says, noting that it’s neither a major nor a minor triad. “It’s kind of a rock thing from the ‘90s and 2000s. Like, that one chord in this song is actually suspended, and there is no third.”
Martinez layered the sound with a repetitive, three-note pattern on acoustic guitar that became an identifiable part of the intro. That hook never quite resolves, adding to the tension. Barham started singing a melody that would become the chorus, though they still didn’t have any words or message.
As they sorted through concepts, Hall thought the word “devil” fit, and Dyer started scrolling through titles he’d saved on his phone.
“I came across this ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t’ [idea],” Dyer recalls. “We had this rhythmic thing on the end of [one] line, and I was just kind of messing with different titles in that spot. And I was like, ‘What about this idea? It kind of works with some of the lines we’re messing with,’ and we just rolled with that.”
Initially, they tried to make it a song about picking between different types of alcohol – bourbon, gin, tequila, etc. – to find the devil of choice. But it morphed into a good-guy-with-a-quiet-power story. “Everybody’s got their tipping point,” Hall reasons, “and without being a fighting song, it does a good job of politely saying, “I’ll kick your ass if you if you mess with that side of me.’”
They wrote the bulk of the chorus first, promising the listener that “there’s a hell on the other side” if the good guy gets crossed. With a couple lines unfinished in the middle of that chorus, they turned to the opening verse, creating a plot in which the singer owns his quiet-hero image. But when it broke into a melodically ascendant pre-chorus, the attitude changed with the melody – it’s where they introduced the “don’t mistake my kindness for weakness” line.
Unlike most country songs, they didn’t include any “furniture” – no specific items that provide a sense of time or place. The closest they came was in verse two, as the protagonist dares the listener: “Go on pull the trigger/ Try your luck.” Given the song’s menacing tone, it could be perceived as a real gun.
“That’s definitely a metaphor,” Barham says. “I got better s–t to do than kill people.”
“Songwriting,” he adds, “we exaggerate everything.”
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The unfinished lyric they had left in the chorus finally got completed during a break when Hall and Dyer shot hoops on the Warner Chappell basketball court. “That lyric came to me: ‘Dare you to light that fuse/ ‘Cause I can be a loose cannon,’” Hall says.
The fuse and cannon lined up allegorically, while “fuse” and “loose” established an internal rhyme that indirectly enhanced the song’s rough-cut nature. “It just adds this new element with the cannon not rhyming,” Hall explains. “It makes it pretty cool.”
Martinez produced the demo with Barham singing lead and Hall handling the bulk of the harmonies. As they finished the preliminary work at Warner Chappell, they collectively agreed that it needed a post-chorus. They settled on a haunting, rising melody, all of them singing in unison. When Martinez finished the demo later, Barham suggested using that section in the intro, too, underscoring the song’s darkness.
In October, Braden spent a day listening to outside songs, and “Devil You Know” stood out. He contacted Martinez about recording his voice in place of Barham’s on the demo to see how it sounded. They booked a date at Nashville’s Starstruck Studios and treated it like a master session with Martinez paying attention to every vocal detail. Braden mostly replicated Barham’s melodic nuances, though he brought a smoky rock resonance that replaced Barham’s twang.
“It wasn’t [always] my first melodic instinct, so I would do it differently and Sam would stop me because he really liked the original,” Braden says. “He kind of honed in on it, and so it took kind of a real focus.”
Martinez wasn’t a total taskmaster. Braden sang the word “dust” idiosyncratically in the first verse – it sounds like “doost” – and Martinez kept that enunciation. “It does have a funky little thing to it,” Martinez allows. “Those are the things that give us that much more identity.”
Braden’s team thought highly of the performance and wanted to tease it on social media. Some of the songwriters were nervous – if it didn’t go over, it was likely that no one else would be willing to cut it – but they ultimately decided Braden was worth the risk. “He sounds amazing on it,” Dyer says. “He sang his ass off. We’re just like, ‘Let them have it.’”
Braden shot a video in what looks like the woods in mid-January; it’s actually about 15 feet from his back porch. “A lot of people would comment, ‘You’re copying Oliver Anthony,’ I guess because of the beard and the trees,” Braden says with a laugh.
Indeed a lot of people saw it – that first video has 3.5 million views on TikTok alone – and Warner wanted a master recording for quick release. Martinez had little more than a week to pull it off. He used Braden’s existing vocals, the group vocals from the demo and about half of the demo’s instrumental parts, including the repeating three-note guitar hook. He brought in musicians to cut new parts one at a time, beginning with fiddler Kyle Pudenz, who injected Cajun spirit into the rock texture.
“Devil You Know” went to digital service providers Feb. 2, scoring 25.5 million plays on Spotify, and WMN shipped it to country radio via PlayMPE on March 26. It ranks No. 33 on the Hot Country Songs chart dated May 25, giving underdogs a biting song they can call their own.
“It’s been cool to watch people that say, ‘Hey, this is our anthem,’” Braden notes. “The best part of music in general is that we can all hear the same song, and it means something different to every one of us.”
With Mother’s Day in the rearview mirror, Gabby Barrett is learning to better appreciate the parent/child relationship the holiday represents.
In successful child-rearing, Mom and Dad essentially make themselves obsolete — after doting on the kids, sinking time and money into them, those children grow up, move away and create lives of their own. It makes things complicated, but there’s a sweet full-circle experience when the grown-up offspring come to understand the sacrifice that was involved in raising them as they, in turn, parent the next generation.
“I never understood that before I had kids,” Barrett says. “I’ve seen those relationships where it’s really difficult for parents to let their children go, you know, but they’re going to be adults longer than they’re going to be children, and having your mind set up that way will hopefully make it a little bit easier whenever that day comes.”
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Barrett isn’t the only person thinking about circle-of-life inevitability. So is Luke Combs, who had an idea in 2022 to write about how letting go plays out in a father/daughter relationship. Combs was trying to widen his creative relationships at the time, setting appointments with some of his frequent collaborators’ co-writers. And it was in that spirit that he proposed a writing appointment with regular co-writer James McNair (“Lovin’ On You,” “Glory Days”) and one of McNair’s professional partners, Emily Weisband (“Can’t Break Up Now,” “Looking for You”). When Combs extended the invitation, it fell during a week Weisband had intended to take off to prep for her wedding, but she couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
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“I’m a huge fan of Luke,” she says. “And I’m a huge fan of the way that he does business and the way that he stays so connected and loyal to his friends.”
Combs, McNair and Weisband met on Sept. 26 at Sony Music Publishing’s Fire Hall, spending about an hour chatting before Combs mentioned “Dance Like No One’s Watching,” an idea he had about the sweep of a father/daughter relationship. The setup for the day was perfect because a song about a daughter needed to have a female involved in its creation.
“I think in his brain it was this big, iconic wedding song,” recalls Weisband. “He was like, ‘If you can write one of those, they’re huge.’ And so we took on the challenge.”
They fell into a waltz time — not because the hook involved dancing, Weisband says, but because it felt “big and dramatic.” That’s certainly the tone they gave the chorus first, fitting the title to a languid melody with long notes.
“The big drawn-out melody, ‘Daaaance liiiike noooooo ooooone’s watching,’ it just felt like this is a singer’s song,” explains Weisband. “So [we] let the notes last a long time, let it just kind of flow out. It doesn’t have to be too wordy. It just has to be pure emotion. I definitely think we had to get that part right first.”
That chorus included her father’s encouragement to accept the risk of love if it appeared, unwittingly mirroring the encouragement in Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance.”
When the chorus was mostly finished, they started building the rest of the story. Verse one relied, in part, on Weisband’s memory of a father/daughter Valentine’s dance at elementary school, when her dad guided her through her insecurities about dancing in front of her classmates. Verse two zoomed ahead to Dad helping pack the trunk as the protagonist heads off for college — shades of The Chicks’ “Wide Open Spaces.”
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Weisband had mentioned as they wrote the chorus that she and her father had taken lessons for the first dance at her wedding — “Well, that’s the bridge,” Combs told her — and they reversed the emotions from the Valentine’s dance for that section, with the daughter coaching Dad during the wedding dance to stay cool: “Just don’t look at Mom.” Though they consider it a bridge, it’s literally a third verse, using the established verse melody.
“When I say ‘bridge,’ it was just that last thing that’s going to really put the dagger in the heart,” she notes.
Weisband played “Dance Like No One’s Watching” for her dad later that week, and he managed to hold it together. “I remember he went, ‘It’s good,’ and just turned away,” she says. “He had to wait till after my wedding to be like, ‘That song’s amazing.’ ”
Between her Oct. 1 wedding, the honeymoon and moving into a new home, it was weeks before she finished the demo. The day she sent it to Combs, he texted it to Barrett, whom he had always envisioned as the beneficiary of their work. Barrett was taking a leisurely bath when the phone pinged, and she held the cell tightly as “Dance” connected with her on an emotional level. “Fortunately, I did not drop it in the water,” she says.
“Dance” resonated with Barrett as a mom — she delivered her third baby, Ivy Josephine Foehner, on Feb. 17 — but it also spoke to her of her own transition into adulthood.
“The lyric ‘Girl, it’s a big world/ And it’s so easy to get lost in’ — that lyric hits me and just brings me back to the memories of really starting to do things all on my own,” she says.
She joined a band of session players at Nashville’s Blackbird Studios to record “Dance,” the first time she had been able to do that. Her first album’s vocals, recalls producer Ross Copperman (Dierks Bentley, Darius Rucker), were either from her songwriting demos or done remotely during the pandemic. The band responded to her emotions, dressing her performance with a quiet fragility.
Barrett returned to Blackbird at a later date to do the final vocal, delivering the parent/child storyline with all the right emotions, though she remained almost motionless in the process.
“She was so pregnant,” says Copperman. “She was sitting on a stool, and it just kind of flies out of her mouth. You’re like, ‘Wow, how did that just happen?’ ”
McNair orchestrated Combs’ participation on background vocals. Combs never steals the show — there are moments that it sounds like him, though he’s mostly tucked in behind Barrett, acting very much like a support singer. In the final seconds, though, he lines his harmonies up tightly with Barrett’s curly melodic ad-lib.
“This guy is such a good singer,” Copperman says. “I would not have followed that trill. I would have just kind of fallen off that note. But it’s cool, and it’s also cool just how intentional he was with singing the harmony. Most people wouldn’t have gone that deep on a harmony.”
Warner Music Nashville released “Dance Like No One’s Watching” to country radio via PlayMPE on March 8. The plot is timeless, but it should make a particular impact next month as the calendar reaches Father’s Day.
“It’s becoming a song to create new special memories like Daddy/daughter dances or at-school events or weddings,” says Barrett. “I’m receiving all these sweet clips of fans sharing that moment with me, and I’m seeing my fans make core memories. It’s just so amazing they think of me to share their forever moment.”
Conner Smith earned his first top 20 single when his swampy speedster, “Creek Will Rise,” worked its way to No. 12 on Country Airplay. Its torrid pace and pickup truck motif likely made more than a few listeners think of Garth Brooks’ “Ain’t Goin’ Down (Til the Sun Comes Up).”
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But the follow-up — “Roulette on the Heart,” featuring a vocal assist from Hailey Whitters -— resembles a country classic from the other end of the energy spectrum, the Brad Paisley/Alison Krauss duet “Whiskey Lullaby.” Like that ballad, “Roulette” pairs a male and female solo artist in a Dobro-heavy piece built around a dark, fatalistic storyline. In “Whiskey,” the plot captures an alcohol-infused double suicide, fueled by broken hearts. Smith’s concoction, conveyed at a slightly faster tempo, leans on Russian roulette as a metaphor for risk in a relationship with a wild woman.
Smith didn’t have “Whiskey” in his mind when he created “Roulette” in early December 2022, but he sensed a significance about his work from the outset.
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“When we wrote it, I knew the song was different,” he allows. “I knew the song was a next level for me. It felt like a song for me -— and it still does — that could last for a long time, in a way that I don’t think I’ve put out a song before. And so it mattered a lot.”
Smith had his then-girlfriend -— surfer Leah Thompson, whom he married on April 12 — in mind when he developed the “Roulette” title, which sprouted from the inherent danger in both single-bullet games of chance and extending love to another.
“When you’re in those [intense] relationships, the reality is you get married or you break up,” Smith explains. “You either find the person for the rest of your life or you shatter your heart when you fall in love with someone, and that game, in and of itself, is roulette.”
Smith brought the title up during a writing retreat at a Tennessee cabin owned by Thomas Rhett. He wrote two songs simultaneously, “Roulette” and the title track to his EP How It Looks From Here, shifting about every half hour from one writing room to the other. That is, it turns out, an ideal situation for him.
“I’ve been writing with him for a long time now,” says songwriter Mark Trussell (“Your Place,” “Good Time”). “What I’ve noticed is that he does kind of need to step out and step back in. It’s good for him creatively to take a break and come back. And then he comes back real fresh, and he can just pick up a guitar and spit out a whole verse. He’s really good at doing that.”
Trussell and co-writers Jessi Alexander (“Light on in the Kitchen,” “Chevrolet”) and Chase McGill (“5 Foot 9,” “Break Up in the End”) were all on board with “Roulette.” McGill developed a folky, foreshadowing guitar lick, and the group came up with a telling first line: “Picking you up’s like picking up a gun/ Your kiss is the trigger.” The story unfolded chronologically from there, each phrase underscoring the protagonist’s magnetic attraction to a romantic partner he knows could destroy him.
“This is definitely not your perfect, healthy relationship,” notes Alexander. “This is for the people that are playing with danger and mystery and a little bit of an unsettled relationship. And she’s a pistol.”
The chorus lifted the song’s energy, altering the cadence and the pace of chord changes to signal the arrival of the singalong section. “A lift doesn’t always have to be a melodic, high lift or a crash cymbal on the chorus,” Trussell says. “So in this chorus, the melody moves quicker and starts rolling a little bit more, and the chords slow down.”
Verse two focused on an intimate moment between them, mixing a half-dressed sexual inference with another “steel of a Colt” gun metaphor. Alexander had a leading role in that stanza’s tone. “I love provocative, I love edgy -— you know, shock value,” she says. “I’m the girl that put makeup sex in ‘Mine Would Be You,’ so I’m like, ‘Bring it on. Let’s do something kind of edgy.’ ”
The bridge spelled out the risk that the rest of the song implied. Again, they fashioned a subtle melody, using a variation on the last half of the chorus’ tune, maintaining continuity amid the lyrics’ tension. In the final chorus, Smith inserted an extra line — “Loving you, baby/ Is flipping off the safety” — continuing the firearms symbolism in a unique way.
“The action of that elicits an emotion of danger, and I think it’s cool because that is the game of love,” says Smith. The characters are “obviously taking it to a much deeper and darker place. Anytime you step into a relationship, you realize that you are flipping off the safety of your heart.”
Smith turned in a lead voice, and Alexander provided harmony for a demo that Trussell continued to work on after the session ended, using mostly acoustic instrumentation, including a resonator guitar.
Just days after writing it, Smith sang it during a WDAF Kansas City concert at PBR Big Sky on Dec. 7, 2022. A rowdy cowboy bar wasn’t the best venue for an unknown ballad — patrons mostly ignored it — but when Smith was done, fellow artist Whitters leaned over to compliment him on a “brash” song with an uncommon level of vulnerability.
“I thought it was cool hearing it from a guy,” she says. “Instantly, as a chick, I connected with it.”
Smith’s team had high hopes for “Roulette” when he recorded it in February 2023, with producer Zach Crowell (Sam Hunt, Jelly Roll) booking a studio band at Nashville’s Sound Stage that seemed appropriate for a commercial country recording. The performance wasn’t over the top, but it was still too much; Smith and Crowell agreed they should lean on Trussell’s demo, so they repeatedly peeled back parts from the tracking session. Thus, Trussell plays numerous instruments amid the studio cats, and Alexander appears in some background vocal moments, though Whitters is the dominant female voice.
“This song was shockingly hard to do,” says Crowell. “It took a lot of different versions to get it to that [final] version.”
That’s also true of Whitters’ vocal. She hit the studio somewhere between two and five times — even she’s not certain how many sessions were involved. She sang the song in its entirety the first time around, but as the production morphed, they developed more specific ideas about how to use her voice. She was willing to keep coming back.
“I knew how special the song was to Conner,” she says. “I don’t think we knew at the time it was going to be a radio thing, but it meant a lot that he asked me to be on it, and I just wanted it to be right.”
In the final iteration, Whitters makes her first appearance singing harmony on the first chorus. She never sings as a solo lead until the final chorus, when her entry suggests that the female in the song is risking as much as the guy. “It definitely makes the payoff better if you kind of wait,” Crowell says. “It’s a little bit of a prize once you finally get the whole chorus from her.”
Valory released “Roulette on the Heart” to country radio via PlayMPE on April 8, providing some “Whiskey Lullaby”-like heft to Smith’s growing reputation.
“‘Creek’ is a really fun song that works great live,” Smith says. “But in the true heart of country music, what I want to stand for as an artist, I think this one begins to kind of unveil that.”
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Alone in his house, surrounded by friends.
That’s the contradictory state presented in John Morgan’s first radio single, a collaboration with Jason Aldean titled “Friends Like That.” The two singers are pals at a professional level, for sure, since Morgan wrote three of Aldean’s recent hits and is signed to Aldean’s record label, Night Train, affiliated with BBR Music Group.
But the buddies in “Friends Like That” are a little more figurative: vices and voices telling the protagonist he’s better off alone than to be weighed down by the woman who just walked out on him. Broken hearts aren’t typically pleasurable, although the breezy melody and pulsing guitars on “Friends Like That” make loneliness sound attractive.
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“That was kind of the point,” Morgan says, “to make light of a heavy subject.”
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Mission accomplished — with a little help from some friends.
Morgan wrote “Friends Like That” during September 2020 – the height of the pandemic – at Cornman Music in Nashville, where songwriter Will Bundy (“Half Of Me,” “Brown Eyes Baby”) maintains an office. They were joined by Lydia Vaughan (“If I Didn’t Love You,” “Out Of That Truck”) and Brent Anderson (“Cab In A Solo,” “Lonely Tonight”), ostensibly a group of writers who’ve been interacting with each other in different combinations for several years.
The day started – as it did for so many Americans in that window of time – fairly directionless. No one had any ideas they were passionate about, so they chatted, puttered and brainstormed a bit until something caught their attention. That something was a mysterious-sounding guitar riff that sounded like it was leading somewhere. It was ideal for an intro, and interesting enough that Vaughan insisted they make it part of the melody later in the song. It became the basis for the pre-chorus, setting up the sound of the chorus, which they attacked before they even knew where they were going.
“A lot of times the pre-chorus is just a transitional piece to get from A to B,” Anderson says. “Having, to the best of my knowledge, started this song with that part is probably the reason that it stands out.”
His co-writers are convinced that Anderson spit out the “Friends Like That” title, though none of them know how they got there. It was apparent, however, that they were writing a breakup song, with the singer listening to his friends’ advice about pulling himself together and moving on. The song’s conversations, though, took place in front of a fire at home. The friends were music (Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings) and alcohol (Jack Daniel’s), and staying home with them spoke volumes.
“When something like that happens to you, a lot of people write about the bar,” Morgan says. But having the character stay home “was more real to me, because when I get pissed off, or whenever something happens, I just don’t want to talk to anybody.”
Buoyed by “Willie,” “Jack” and “Waylon,” the singer addresses his ex in absentia with a dismissive payoff at the end of the chorus: “Who needs you when I got friends like that?”
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As self-sufficient as the guy tries to sound at that point, he evinced a brooding outlook when the writers started filling in the blank spaces in the first verse. They established the setting with much of that opening stanza – it’s after sundown, with the ex’s keys on the table. When they reached that transitional pre-chorus, the lyrics refocused on his “friends,” changing the feel from lonely atmosphere to party central.
In verse two, the singer recalled the couple’s better days, reiterated that he no longer needed her, and – when the pre-chorus returned – boasted that he’s “got buds to get me through it.” It may take several listens to realize that while “buds” is short-hand for “buddies,” it might also simply be “buds.”
“It rides a nice line to me where it’s not like completely hidden,” Bundy says of the weed reference. “It’s sort of camouflaged in a cool way.”
The bridge gets ultra-cheery, with a call-and-answer component while the vices actually start talking to the protagonist, “telling me I don’t need you no more.” “It’s a great singalong moment,” Vaughan notes. “I just thought it was really catchy. I don’t know that it necessarily revealed anything new about the story that wasn’t already there, but we all just liked it.”
Aldean and two of his band members, bassist Tully Kennedy and guitarist Kurt Allison, produced “Friends Like That” at Nashville’s Sound Emporium with Kennedy’s adventuresome bass and Mike Johnson’s haunting steel adding some sonic burn to the track. Morgan played the opening riff and the guitar solo, but he was particularly impressed with the crew. He referenced a driving rhythm element on Tom Petty’s “Running Down A Dream” when they got to the bridge, and guitarist Rob McNelly locked onto it right away. “Seeing how pro those guys are is pretty unbelievable,” Morgan says.
Bundy produced Morgan’s final vocal session at Ocean Way. Morgan didn’t need much direction – the song had been written to fit his voice – but he definitely paid attention when Bundy gave him notes. “It’s sort of like getting to drive a Mercedes when you record John’s vocal,” Bundy says. “The great thing about John is we’re also such good buddies that I can criticize him and be tough on him, and he takes that and runs with it. You know he’s going to improve on it.”
Morgan’s solo version of “Friends Like That” became his most played song, racking up 23 million streams on Spotify following its Sept. 30, 2022, release. Aldean thought they should take it to radio. He also suggested that maybe he should add his voice to it, providing a little extra promotional incentive for programmers to add it.
Originally, Aldean wanted to just sing the second verse. Ultimately, Morgan persuaded him to do more – including the call-and-answer part on the bridge and a background vamp in the closing moments. Aldean also makes subtle melodic changes, adding a blue note here or there that creates a little extra grit. “That’s what’s so badass about him,” Anderson says. “He’s done that since the beginning.”
Night Train and Broken Bow released the Morgan/Aldean remix to country radio via PlayMPE on April 8 and set April 22 as its official impact date. “The song itself being called ‘Friends Like That’ — how fun is it now that it’s two friends singing on it together?” Vaughan asks.
In the end, “Friends Like That” will sink or swim on the lead voices, the breezy outlaw references and the self-deception that’s hiding just beneath the surface of the song’s relentless pulse. The freshly rejected guy in the song is a character everybody knows.
“There’s some bitterness in there, but also some sarcasm,” Morgan says. “Also, you know, [he’s] lying through his teeth.”
It’s a good time to be Kylie Morgan.
The EMI Nashville singer-songwriter picked up her first gold single, “If He Wanted to He Would,” on March 14; she’s begun performing in coveted opening slots at arena-level concerts; and she’s 16 months into a rewarding marriage to fellow artist Jay Allen. The cheer, the career advances and her romantic story all come together in “Two Night Stands,” released to country radio via PlayMPE on March 18.
Not that Morgan plotted it out that way. In fact, she hadn’t intended to reveal much about how she met her husband, but the tale fit the concept of a song she dashed off in a bit of a scheduling crunch, and she just let the narrative flow.
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“It definitely was a piece of our story,” she says. “It was a very organic thing that happened.”
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Upping the ante, “Two Night Stands” evolved as the kind of material she was hoping to create: “an anthemic, uptempo, fun love song.”
Though “Two Night Stands” ended up telling Morgan’s story, it started as someone else’s experience. A lifelong friend who’s witnessed Morgan’s rise from budding talent to national artist went out on the road as a weekend guest last fall when Morgan was opening for Old Dominion. During a conversation in the green room at one of the shows, the friend said she’d noticed that when she hooked up with men who’d not had a live-in relationship, they invariably had just one night stand next to the bed. She thought maybe there was a song idea with potential wordplay, about encountering just one night stand while on a one-night stand.
Morgan thought it had potential, and she brought it up as she wrapped a writing retreat last Halloween with Shane McAnally (“We Don’t Fight Anymore,” “half of my hometown”) and Track45 member Ben Johnson (“Bulletproof,” “Give Heaven Some Hell”) at McAnally’s house in Santa Barbara, Calif. Morgan had just a couple hours to write the song, which had morphed into a story about how a one-night stand led to a marriage and two night stands next to the bed. It needed to be playful, and Johnson led them in that direction with a shiny, busy guitar riff.
“It almost sounds like ‘It’s A Great Day to Be Alive’ or one of the ‘90s riffs,” Johnson says. “The song didn’t really end up sounding super-‘90s at all, just the riff itself.”
With that instrumental hook setting a caffeinated tone, they went to work first on the chorus, where the “two night stands” hook balances the front and back of the sing-along section, much as two night stands balance a couple’s bed. They first gave the chorus a busy melody, then affixed a string of lyrics to the notes.
“If you need to say a lot in a few words, [that] is way harder,” Johnson says. “It’s actually easier when you have more syllables because you don’t feel as constrained and can say everything you want to. This one, I don’t remember feeling constrained.”
The melody started in a descending pattern, but took a sharp ascent midway through the chorus. “That’s a Shane melody, for sure,” Morgan says. “He is a genius when it comes to that. Just when you think the chorus couldn’t get any better, he throws in another section that you’re just like, ‘Oh, yes.’”
They were fairly deliberate once they focused on the verses. For starters, they inserted more space between the phrases in a departure from the chorus. “You want contrast for all your sections – at least I always feel like that,” Johnson says. “So if the chorus is very wordy, the verse is going to be very sparse.”
The lyrics were intentional, too. They set up two people meeting at a bar in the opening frame, leading into the celebratory chorus. In verse two, Morgan insisted on explaining the one-night stand, saying “I never do things like this.” And after noting the couple shares the same mailbox and same last name, they characterized the hookup as the “best bad decision I ever made.”
“That’s the essence of the song,” Johnson notes.
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They added a bridge that cemented the couple’s current committed status – more importantly, it provided a musical break before the song returned to one final chorus. Johnson had built much of the demo as they wrote, but with the clock ticking away, Morgan had just a few minutes left before she needed to bolt for the airport. She sounded a little groggy as she laid down a vocal – unintentionally perfect for a song keyed to night stands – then headed home.
In November, she recorded the instrumental tracks with McAnally producing. He stacked multiple stringed instruments playing the signature riff and had drummer Evan Hutchings do several different tracks so they could experiment with a variety of rhythms during mixing. Morgan recreated the groggy morning voice as Johnson produced overdubs, though that wordy chorus presented a challenge.
“There’s no room to breathe, like at all,” she says. “There’s so many words, and so I originally had to do the chorus in two separate parts when we recorded it. When I do it live, I have to really focus when that chorus hits to get a really big breath, because there’s nowhere for me to breathe.”
“One Night Stands” had the kind of energy and upbeat attitude that made it a likely radio single, but Morgan also came to realize it had some unexpected relevance to her home life, too. She bought a couple of wooden night stands that were a little unusual, but perfect for the space in the bedroom she shares with Allen.
“It looks so great,” she says. “Well, guess what!? They’re actually barstools, and they have a curve to them. We love them so much, we still use them, so now I just have to make sure when I set a water on it, I have to put it in exactly in the middle of the nightstand.”
Barstools becoming nightstands is symbolic for her relationship with Allen, which started over drinks and led to two nightstands. She hopes the parallels are a good omen for the future of “Two Night Stands.” Especially since the song fits the sound she was aiming for this time around.
“I wanted something a little easier when it came to the second stab at radio,” she says, “with a little more sway, and you don’t have to overthink anything. You know exactly what the song is about.”
Indeed. It’s about Kylie Morgan.