Music

In the closing moments of Mitchell Tenpenny’s “Not Today” video, the singer is strapped into an electric chair, waiting for the lightning bolt that ends his existence.

The mini-film is dark, frenetic and a bit chilling. That mirrors Tenpenny’s experience on the set.

“We finally sit down in the chair to film that, and I had to act like I’m getting electrocuted,” he remembers. “I don’t even know the word for it. It was wild. It was emotional.”

The video draws in part from the movie The Green Mile, while the song itself is a bit of a remake, too. Tenpenny recorded a ballad called “Just Not Today” for a 2014 album, Black Crow, released prior to his affiliation with Riser House and Columbia Nashville. It’s not a shock to discover the original idea came from a college-era breakup that led to a year of hard emotions. The whole premise of “Just Not Today” was to accept those feelings in the moment, fully expecting a positive change would arrive at a later date.

“I always loved the idea of owning the hurt,” he says. “I’m going to move on. I’m going to figure it out. But not today. Today, I’m going to wear this for a little bit.”

Tenpenny revisited the idea in May 2023 during a writing session at the home of songwriter-producer Chris DeStefano (Chris Young, Chase Rice) with Claire Douglas and Michael Whitworth. And since Tenpenny wrote the original song on his own, he underscored to his co-writers that they need not worry about copyright issues.

“I’m not going to sue myself,” he says with a laugh.

Tenpenny and DeStefano started playing guitars at a brisk tempo, establishing a very different attitude from the original, and Tenpenny sang the opening lines, setting up the premise that everyone handles pain their own way. “Not Today” grew in intensity during the pre-chorus, introducing a specific method of addressing the hurt: “I’ma sit my ass in the back of church.”

“That line tickles me to my core,” Douglas says. “I mean, that is Mitchell. It’s both reverent and irreverent at the same time.”

At the chorus, the melody jumped to a higher level as the singer vows to forget his ex, hammering the same note seven straight times as they unlocked the song’s singalong power. “It initially gets the listener — at least it does for me — instant singability,” Whitworth says. “You can catch on because it’s a very simple melody, but it’s anthemic and passionate, so that it just immediately grabs you.” 

If the chorus’ first line solidified the musical tone of “Not Today,” the next one cinched the storyline. Tenpenny tossed in three ways to erase a memory: “a bottle, a Bible or a mistake,” the latter representing a one-night stand or a rebound relationship. Verse two brought those methods all together on a common bar stool. The protagonist orders a drink, sends up a prayer and scours the club for a potential partner — literally employing the bottle, the Bible and the mistake in a single moment. “That second verse felt kind of like the stars lined up,” Douglas says.

To finish writing, they kicked in a bridge, reusing the pre-chorus and slipping the “ass in the back of church” line in a second time. By re-singing lyrics from an earlier part of the song, it offered the listener familiarity, though they also freshened the section three different ways: They broke into a halftime tempo, Tenpenny took some melodic liberties, and the underlying chords got a slight, ascendant revision.

“What makes it cool to me is the music changes, and it does this sort of building, like a walk up,” Whitworth says. “It’s kind of this triumphant sort of approach to it instead of just the chord progression on the verse.”

DeStefano produced the demo, applying an aggressive drum part and encouraging Tenpenny not to hold back. “I approach demo vocals like I approach record vocals,” DeStefano says. “There’s literally nothing different that I would do. It’s exactly the same. This particular day, you know, we just caught the lightning.”

The writers were ecstatic about the results. Douglas took photos and videos to document the occasion — not a usual part of her writing experience — and they all hit DeStefano’s billiard room for a round of tequila, almost as if they were sharing a winning locker room. “We all did a shot,” he says. “And we’re like, ‘This feels so good, guys.’ This was a magical day. Everybody just brought their A game. It was like, ‘This is NHL right here.’ It felt pretty good.”

Douglas, to be clear, abstained from the tequila. The others repeatedly coaxed her, but she held firm and didn’t tell them why for several weeks. “I was very, very newly expecting my first baby,” she says. “We weren’t telling people, and I was literally sick as a dog.”

DeStefano’s first demo got the crew excited — Douglas texted, “GET THIS ON THE RADIO,” when she heard it later that same day — but in the ensuing months, he cut two more demos around Tenpenny’s vocals. With the third version, he reduced a danceable vibe and made it a tad more country.

Producer Jordan M. Schmidt (Tyler Hubbard, Cole Swindell) knew they couldn’t beat Tenpenny’s demo vocal, so he got those wave files from DeStefano and had a studio crew record new tracks around them at Blackbird Studio. Drummer Nir Z took the percussion even further than the demo, relentlessly bashing a snare with a modern-rock ferocity. “He had a blast doing it, but by the end, he was like, ‘I can’t do another take,’ ” Schmidt recalls. “He was just exhausted.”

The players heightened the dynamics, particularly at the halftime bridge, which contrasts with an intense final chorus. Johnny Fung gave it a guitar solo that created some extra hooks. “He’s got a very melodic way of playing guitar,” Schmidt says. “It’s not about just shredding for him. It’s about creating moments and parts. You know, I love when guitar players can turn down the ego and just decide, ‘Hey, I want to make a guitar solo that people can sing along to.’ ”

Columbia released the death row “Not Today” video on May 9, and the electric chair was used as a prop for fans to take Tenpenny-themed selfies when the label set up its Camp Sony attraction at Acme Feed & Seed during CMA Fest in June. On June 11, the single was released to country radio via PlayMPE, and it’s targeting adds on July 15. The song may be about coping with the loss of a relationship, but Tenpenny believes it applies to numerous life issues.

“We all have one thing in common,” he says. “We should acknowledge the fact that the pain is there. That’s how you begin to heal.”