Music

Jordan Davis has built quite the reputation as a modern-day storyteller, winning the Country Music Association’s song of the year award in 2022 with “Buy Dirt,” claiming the Academy of Country Music’s song trophy this year for “Next Thing You Know” and climbing to No. 1 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart in May with “Tucson Too Late.”

Moving at a ballad or midtempo pace, all three explore a life lesson or personal crossroad. But his latest release, “I Ain’t Sayin’,” takes a different attitude, mirroring the barroom setting of his 2017 debut, “Singles You Up,” with a steady dance texture similar to Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time.”

“It’s been a minute since we’ve released this kind of song,” Davis says. “I feel like I’ve been long overdue for it.”

“I Ain’t Sayin’” was tailor made for Davis, fashioned May 25 on the final day of a writing retreat in snowy Livingston, Mont. While Davis wrote that morning with several other creatives in a rented cabin, Travis Wood (“Girl in Mine,” “’98 Braves”), Mark Holman (“Flower Shops,” “Don’t Think Jesus”) and Steve Moakler worked in a separate building, determined to craft something a little more speedy for Davis. Holman had created a few musical tracks prior to the trip, and one of them, built around some hand claps and a buzzy acoustic guitar, energized the room.

“It might just be like little guitar parts and a little loop or something behind it just to kind of catch a vibe,” Holman says. “It’s not a full thing. It’s just enough to be like, ‘Oh, we like this. We like the feeling of this.’ ”
Wood had a ready-made chorus that he had penned with Los Angeles-based songwriter Emily Reid, with whom he frequently writes “starts” — small chunks of potential songs that can serve as a foundation during a full writing session. He reached out to her to make sure she was OK with this one getting used on this trip.

“I’m in L.A., they’re in Montana, and I got the FaceTime from him,” Reid remembers. “He was like, ‘Hey, we’re writing this “I Ain’t Sayin’” idea. It’s really going well. Can you just make sure this first verse makes sense?’ Because sometimes when you’re in the thick of it, it’s hard to have perspective. And I was like, ‘Damn, sounds brilliant.’ ”

Reid’s original idea wasn’t actually the title. It was the phrase “He sure as hell ain’t,” which became the payoff line at the end of the chorus that she and Wood started. They weren’t entirely certain what the plot should be, though it fit a scenario involving a mismatched couple. As they built it, they used the phrase “I ain’t sayin’ ” as a repetitive lyrical device in a loaded chorus.

“When we were punching out that phrasing, we wanted to do something that felt really fresh,” Reid notes. “We wanted to make it really rhythmic and get a lot in there.”

When they came up with one particular line, “I’m here and he’s MIA,” they felt it had a lot of potential, though once they finished writing it, Reid put it out of her mind. Thus, the call from Wood was a welcome surprise.

As it started taking shape in Montana, Wood, Moakler and Holman unlocked the opening verse, depicting a woman who had bought a beer for a date who seems to have stiffed her. The protagonist presents himself as a short-term alternative, though the writers knew instinctively that he couldn’t be too pushy.

“We could have gone to further extremes with the guy and the girl,” Moakler says, “but we ended up choosing [to] walk the line, I think, in a cool way where he’s not overtly trying to steal the girl. He sees his opportunity, and he seems like a relatable guy, you know. That was the job of the day.”

As the protagonist moves in during the second verse, he attempts to reframe the woman’s bad moment with a bit of hope: “He let you down, but here’s the upside” — using a word, “upside,” in a way that’s rarely heard in a country song.

“It’s a little different,” Holman acknowledges, “which is always good.”

They saved the most elaborate lyrical twist for the end of that second verse, guaranteeing that that stanza could meet — if not exceed — the quality established in verse one.

“ ‘I ain’t trying to change that miss to a missus/But he don’t know what he’s missing’ — I just love that wordplay, Wood says. “It perfectly paraphrases the ‘I ain’t sayin’ I’m the one, I’m just saying he ain’t.’ I mean, you couldn’t find a cooler way to paraphrase that.”

They debated “He Sure As Hell Ain’t” as the title, but settled on “I Ain’t Sayin’,” avoiding a slightly profane word in favor of the song’s most frequently heard phrase.

“I think we picked the right one,” Moakler says. “I haven’t heard a song called that. The only hang-up with the song is, people say, ‘What’s it called?’ And you say, ‘I Ain’t Sayin.’ ’ And they say, ‘Wait, why won’t you tell me?’” Holman quickly whipped a demo together, and Wood went back to his cabin, where Davis’ small group was still writing in a different room. When that team finished, Wood had writer-producer Paul DiGiovanni (Travis Denning, Justin Moore) play the demo, which seemed to connect with Davis.

“Jordan was pretty effusive about it, but I didn’t know if he was just being polite,” Wood says. “When we hit that miss/misses line, he turned around and looked at me after that line. So I was like, ‘I think he likes it.’”

Indeed, the next week, Davis, DiGiovanni and a studio band tackled “I Ain’t Sayin’ ” at Sound Stage in Nashville with drummer Nir Z sharing duties 50/50 with the programmed percussion. “The loop thing was going basically throughout the whole song, so I needed to just go to another level on the master and just keep the energy going,” DiGiovanni says. “The demo was just like the verse feel the whole time, and I just kind of kicked it over the top.”

But the enhancements were comparatively incremental. “We never made a lyric change, we never made a melody change,” Davis says. “We dropped the key a half step from the original demo, maybe we bumped the [beats per minute] down a couple. But other than that, it was basically taking Mark’s demo and letting Paul kind of pepper in his touch on it.”

While the tracking band established most of the rhythm and textural sounds, DiGiovanni did add some color during overdubs, including a Spanish-flavored guitar in the background, steel-sounding guitar parts and a Southern rock-like twin guitar break.

“It didn’t need a shreddy, really crazy guitar solo by any means,” he says. “There’s so much melodic stuff happening in the song, so I just tried to do something that was kind of familiar. I think I sat down and put my track on loop and played like five or six different kinds of melody things, and that one just stuck out.”
Davis tends to inject downward-sliding grace notes into his vocal performances, and though the writers didn’t specifically put that into “I Ain’t Sayin’,” it adapted well to his approach.

“That chorus melody, I was kind of like, ‘Wait a second, you’re sure I didn’t write this?’ ” he notes. “It just felt like something that I would write and something that I would say.”

MCA Nashville released “I Ain’t Sayin’ ” to country radio via PlayMPE on July 24, and it’s at No. 52 in its beginning stages on the Country Airplay chart dated Aug. 17.

“It’s something that I think people want,” Davis says of its breezy, summer-ish sound. “It feels like it’s the right release right now.”