Music

When newcomer Hudson Westbrook breaks into the chorus of “House Again,” his first single promoted to country radio, he draws the word “now-ow-ow-ow” across four greasy syllables.

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“It is not,” he allows, “the most normal way to do it.”

In fact, the line wasn’t written that way originally, but stretching the word creates an extra melodic effect and makes it linger, like the woman that the singer can’t get out of his mind. It fits the song’s images nicely, the word hanging around — just like her memory — haunting the hallways where every moment of lonely he “now” experiences seems to last forever.

That “now-ow-ow-ow” twist may be a defining moment in Westbrook’s growth. Just 20 years old, the former Texas Tech student has only been playing guitar for four years and writing songs for two, so he’s still figuring out who he wants to be as an artist and musician. But retooling that one key word in the chorus shows his ability to personalize a piece of music and bring out its central meaning.

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“Hudson likes to sit with songs,” says “House Again” co-writer Neil Medley (“Made for You,” “Hung Up On You”), who has penned about a dozen songs with Westbrook. “What I get back from him that we’ve written is always a little different, but it always falls right into what Hudson does best. I think if he were a video game, he unlocked a skill that day of knowing how to [tap into] his artistry. That was his voice that did that, and he made it so hooky.”

Neither Medley nor co-writer Dan Alley (“Country Song Came On”) knew Westbrook when they wrote with him for the first time on June 4, 2024, at the River House office in Nashville, where all three were signed.

“To be honest,” Alley says, “I had never heard of Hudson.”

Uncertain what to expect, Alley and Medley went through possible topics in a phone call the night before, though it turned out they didn’t need them.

“Hudson came in hot with probably five or six just really solid ideas right off the bat and blew me away,” Alley recalls. “One of them was basically the concept of a girl turning a house into a home. [We were] building a story around that, whether it was going to be positive, whether it was going to be negative.”Medley and Alley had both written songs before using a house-and-home foundation, so they dug in, looking for a different angle they could explore.

“I said, ‘Well, I want to write a song about a home that turned into a house again,’ ” Westbrook says. “They were like, ‘Well, that’s the hook.’ Honestly, I didn’t even know if the idea was writable.”

As Westbrook does routinely, they wrote it in chronological order from the first line.

“You got to set the scene before you sing about the scene,” he reasons.

They started with an image, “This kitchen used to be a dancehall,” that introduced the household theme while incorporating his Lone Star roots. Westbrook leaned emotionally on his parents’ divorce, inserting himself into a situation he had witnessed at age 7. Similarly to George Jones’ “The Grand Tour,” the song proceeded through the house, with nods to the bedroom, the window and the front door, each of them triggering some thought of the woman who no longer resided there. Medley concocted a video in his mind that helped capture the mood.

“I’m walking through these rooms in my head, and I can see what’s missing, what she left behind that used to mean something,” Medley recalls. “Everything we were trying — maybe not ‘Doorbell don’t ring,’ but the porch swing, the kitchen where they’re dancing together — we wanted to, for the most part, try to connect it with them as a couple.”

The lyrics played out primarily as a narration until the end of the second verse, when the singer finally lets loose with “What the hell did you do?” almost like a primal scream.

“It’s the primal ‘I’m screwed,’ ” Westbrook notes. “It’s the first time in the song that you really hear a point of anger.”

The whole process took place with strummed acoustic guitars ringing underneath.

“We kind of let Hudson run with whatever melody was in his head and didn’t try to really get in the way of that,” Alley says. “He’s just a very organic artist, and he loves to sing. He was singing a lot in the room, and everything was just kind of sticking.”

They recorded a very basic work tape; neither Alley nor Medley had a clue that day if Westbrook actually liked “House Again.” Westbrook didn’t know either, though he played with it periodically in the weeks afterward. He slowed it down about 10 beats per minute, and in the new tempo, that “now” lyric at the start of the chorus practically begged to get stretched out.

In September, he cut “House Again” at The Amber Sound, a homey studio in Nashville’s Hermitage neighborhood co-owned by producer Ryan Youmans (Muscadine Bloodline, Luke Grimes). They cast it sonically like Keith Urban’s “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” using bluesy triplets in tandem with a Hammond B-3 and a gritty electric guitar. Youmans revised a major chord near the end of the chorus as a minor one, heightening the self-pity in the text.

A day later, Westbrook returned to River House to do the final vocal with co-producer Lukas Scott (Austin Snell, David J). Scott used the room’s ambient side lighting to give the place a darker atmosphere, and Westbrook sang it like he meant it. The performance had some small quirks — he sings “pillow,” for example, as “pellow” — but those enhanced his authenticity.

“He does have unique little inflections and ways that he sings things, and sometimes, if he tries to change it, I tell him, ‘Don’t,’ ” Scott says. “His voice has so much character in the way that he sings those words.”

They got Kaylin Roberson to sing harmonies, allowing the song to subliminally hint at the woman who’s still inhabiting the singer’s mind, even if she’s no longer in his house.

“When you hear the female vocal and his vocal,” Scott says, “it can almost feel like there’s potentially a girl singing, and thinking the same thing.”

Westbrook thought initially that the song was too personal to appeal to anyone else, but River House vp/GM Zebb Luster suggested he might be overthinking it. The label released “House Again” to digital streaming partners on Oct. 18. It has rolled up more than 45 million streams since on Spotify alone, leading to a deal with Warner Music Nashville, which released it with River House to country radio via PlayMPE on Feb. 24. It debuted at No. 57 on the Country Airplay chart dated March 22. It’s at No. 31 on the multimetric Hot Country Songs list in its 19th charted week, creating a welcome dichotomy in his concerts.

“It did help get some stuff off my chest, and I do enjoy singing it with a fistful of anger every single night,” Westbrook says. “But how do you sing with a fistful of anger if you got 3,000 people singing along? You just can’t help but smile, so it’s been really cool.”