Listen to the episode in-full anytime on-demand at apple.co/_KelleighBannen

Parker McCollum Tells Apple Music About the Day He Wrote ‘Burn It Down’

I was so burnt out with writing songs. I was really done. Because, Liz Rose walked into my house that day, she’s a dear friend of mine, and she said, “Well, what are we writing today P?” And I said, “I don’t know.” I said, “I don’t even want to write today. I’m kind of over it.” And, I was pretty much done with the record at the time. And she said, “Well,” this was a true story. She said, “Don’t say that. You might write the biggest song on the record today.”

Parker McCollum Tells Apple Music About Lighting His Boots on Fire for the ‘Burn It Down’ Music Video

They really lit those boots on fire. It was a brand new pair of Luccheses. They call them the peanut butter steppers… I had to take my boots off and my socks off, and he rubbed this really cold gel concoction mixture of chemicals and stuff all over, all the way up to my knees, just covered in it, like jelly… And then, [I] put my sock over that, put the boots over that. And then, we did one shot. Off camera, there’s 10 dudes with fire extinguishers, and I had a safe word, which I think was “off” or “out” or something like that. And they, “Action,” he has the torch, lights my boots on fire. I took about 20,25 steps, one take and… it started to get pretty hot.

Parker McCollum Tells Apple Music About Struggling to Relax

I really struggle to relax. I always have to be going somewhere or doing something, and it kind of becomes unhealthy at a certain point. It’s good to take some time off, but that just kind of seemed like that’s how I always felt. No matter how many, we sell 20,000 tickets in Dallas and then have a number one song and win an award and all this stuff. And then, it’s like you’re still sitting there going, “All right, what next?”

Parker McCollum Tells Apple Music About Writing ‘High Above Water‘

I remember the day I wrote that song, I had read something about John Mayer and how he’ll write songs looking in the mirror, playing guitar and write songs looking in the mirror. And, I just so happened to where I was living at this time… I had the sliding closet doors like on your closets on the wall, like in an apartment, and all four sliding doors were big glass mirrors, floor to ceiling. And so, I stood there that day and looked in the mirror and wrote Hive Above Water in 30, 40 minutes. And, I didn’t know what I was writing about. I didn’t know what the song was about. I was just trying to be a clever, poetic songwriter and put together a good melody.

Parker McCollum Tells Apple Music About Covering Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl’ for Apple Music Sessions

Everybody sang that song forever, and it’s such a massive classic hit. And, that opening lick is so, just identifiable with everybody. I think every generation’s probably heard that song and probably knows the hook at some point or another. So, it’s just a fun song. We’ve always struggled to find covers.

The post Watch, read or listen: Parker McCollum tells Kelleigh Bannen about the fiery ‘Burn it Down’ video & his cover of a Tom Petty classic appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Listen to the full conversation anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.

Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music About ‘The Devil I Know’ Album Cover

Blackout Betty is on the couch. There is basically regular street Ashley looking at her. There is observer Ashley behind the piano. There is a fully glammed version that is tossing a pancake at somebody. And then there’s the Ashley in the middle with a cup of tea. But in this frame, because when you open the album, it’s band and crew, and there’s an Easter egg for every single song on the record. There’s an Easter egg inside this picture. Once you’ve listened to the record, you can look at the picture and go, “That’s why that’s on the floor.”

Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music About a Specific Line from ‘Blackout Betty’

There’s even a line in Blackout Betty that says, “Why can’t I have just one glass of wine? Hey, I’m a real piece of s**t sometimes.” And at the time, I was. Pretty often. But you’ll hear it in context and you’ll be like, yeah, it’s kind of said in a jabbing you in the ribs kind of way… And I know that my therapist would be like, “We’re not going to say that I’m a piece of s**t sometimes. We can say I’m messy, we can say I’m complicated.” But at the time, it was absolute truth. I mean, I wrote the song hung over.

Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music How ‘Blackout Betty’ and ‘6th of October’ Are Related

I do love that at the beginning of “Blackout Betty,” right in the first verse, because these songs weren’t related until I put them together on this record, but she says, “What time did you throw up?” The very first line of the 6th of October is, “I threw up this morning in Christiansburg, VA.” So at the time, this song is written with CJ Field and Blue Foley and myself. We’re at my house. This is back when I lived out in Watertown, out in the middle of the woods. And we had a co-writer and best friend, Randall Clay, that had passed away. And this is probably six or eight months after he passed away. And we are on the porch to write together. We’re not going to write about Randall. We just want to kind of invite his spirit to be with us… On the last verse, we thought, if Randall were here on the porch right now, what advice would he give? I won’t recite it because it’ll make me tear up. And that’s how the record ends. So there’s so much advice on the record. And then I was like, the record has to end this way.

Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music About Being More Than 450 Days Sober

KELLEIGH: Do you want to talk about where you are with drinking?

ASHLEY: I didn’t check the counter and I haven’t, but it’s 450 something days. I think the last time I sat with you, it was 100 days.

KELLEIGH: 100. It was 100.

ASHLEY: What a white-knuckled time to sit down and talk. But I didn’t really want to talk to anybody about it even lightly until a year had passed because I was like, what if I screw it up?

KELLEIGH: Oh, so much-

ASHLEY: But it’s so wonderful.

Ashley McBryde Tells Apple Music Why She Got Sober

Turns out it was just really detrimental. And then when you’re finding out the reasons that you’re going so overboard all the time was because of your inability to feel something that your brain was like, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’m like, well, that’s weak. I’m not going to accept that. I’d rather just hurt. This morning I was at the boxing gym working out with my coach. We were doing something that was hard, and he said, “Are you okay? Do you need a break?” And I said, “I know how to hurt.” I do now. I mean, I knew how to hurt before and add extra to it for no reason. And now, when I’m uncomfortable, I say out loud, “I know how to be uncomfortable.”… This conversation is hard. That’s okay. I know how to have a hard conversation… And I don’t have to go hide because I’m not a weenie. When I was like, “You have no idea how much I can drink. I can drink you under the table,” what an awful thing to admit. You are so weak that you have to drink an entire bottle of anything instead of just feel what you feel.

The post Watch, read or listen: Ashley McBryde tells Kelleigh Bannen about her new album & being sober appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Friday (September 15th) at 7am PT / 9am CT / 10am ET or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.

Dan Tells Apple Music About Not Forcing the Sound of ‘Bigger Houses’

We weren’t forcing anything or we weren’t trying to be something or we weren’t saying like, “Okay, cool, we had this song with Bieber, now what do we do from there?” It wasn’t a very intentional pivot. It was just being ourselves for the first time in a long time. I think when we got through that and when we listened back to the album, I was like, “Man, this feels like there’s an intangible lightness to this, an intangible happiness to this album that we didn’t set out to accomplish.”

Shay Tells Apple Music About Being Burnt Out After Their Last Tour

We just got to this place where Dan and I had no plan on making an album. We both got off the road and were just really crispy. We were just burnt. Just like, man, that wasn’t as fun as it should have been. We were just so tired going on and on and on and on doing all these incredible things and reach all these goals, but it was just so much had built up over time and little things over time and you just resent what you have to do. You’re around the same people all the time, so you’re all just like, “I’ve been with these people forever.”

Shay Tells Apple Music About the Conversation with Dan Where They Decided Whether or Not to Continue as a Duo

There was a night that Dan called me and we got together and that changed everything because we finally had a conversation that needed to be had over the years. We got back to that square one of what if nothing else happens with our career, if we never make music again, Dan + Shay is always going to be a tattoo on someone’s arm. It’s always going to be a first dance. It’s always going to be these things. It means something to so many people.

We knew that whether we continued on with the band or not, we had to get to this place where we were in the beginning. That’s where we started with this album.

Dan Tells Apple Music About the Meaning Behind the Song ‘Bigger Houses‘

You start to have these things where it’s like these goals. Three, four years ago, I would be like, all right, I got this better house, but there’s this other one we’d have room for this or whatever it is. You think when you get it immediately it would be like, “Oh, okay, perfect. I can stop doing what I was doing and wanting this next thing.” It’s the great lie that we tell each other because you get there and I got that new house and I was immediately on Zillow being like, “All right, what’s the future goal of this?” It amazes me what you can get used to of the thing. Yesterday’s dreams become today’s necessity. Almost like, “This isn’t even as cool as I thought it was.”

The post Read or listen as Dan + Shay talk about new album ‘Bigger Houses’ with Kelleigh Bannen appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Friday (August 18th) at 7am PT / 9am CT / 10am ET or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.

Warren Zeiders Tells Apple Music About Having an Athletic Approach to Doing Music

I think it is very much an athletic approach with discipline, rituals and habits, routines. It’s knowing how much water intake I need for that day. It’s waking up knowing what my eating habits are. It’s okay, I know I got to run today. I know I got to a box. I know I got to do content. I know I got to do this. It’s being super structured and I think that the athletic background built me to enjoy what I do. All that pent-up emotion, all that stuff leads to that hour and a half on stage, giving people everything you got. And for me, it’s getting on that stage, being the best version of myself for that day.

Warren Zeiders Tells Apple Music About Connecting Even More with ‘Pretty Little Poison’ After Fans’ Reactions to It

I think that singing night after night and seeing how everyone has related with it or drawn their own stories from it, I think it’s actually just heightened that emotion and I think that the emotion side of me and business acumen side of my brain goes back to it was the best decision I ever made to make that the focal point and the overall arching theme of what this album’s called and what it represents.

Warren Zeiders Tells Apple Music He’s a “Teddy Bear for the Right People”

I think for me is that you look at me, I’m all dressed in black and you see the guy on stage and you think, “Oh, holy crap.” I’m like, “This guy may seem intimidating,” but at the end of the day, I’m actually a lover. I’m a teddy bear for the right people. So I think for me that I am a lover and I put myself in situations where I tend to have gotten hurt along the way and that’s okay.

Warren Zeiders Tells Apple Music About ‘Pittsburgh Steel’

I wouldn’t say [that idea was] fully baked [when we walked in to write that day]. I think being from Pennsylvania, I think Randy [Montana] and I and Joe [Fox], we were beating around the bush and stuff and talking about what we wanted to write and approach that day. Wanted to write about a lady and what was on my heart and I can’t take credit for it. I don’t think it was my concept, but I think, shout out to Randy. I think Randy came up with the whole Pittsburgh Steel concept, which is absolutely genius.

The post Listen or read as Warren Zeiders talks to Kelleigh Bannen about new album ‘Pretty Little Poison’ appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Friday (July 21st) at 7am PT / 9am CT / 10am ET / 3pm UK or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.

Hailey Whitters Tells Apple Music About Recording “I’m In Love”

I didn’t write this song. Nicolle Galyon, Cameron Bedell and Lee Miller wrote this song, but the minute I heard it, I was just instantly like, I love this. And so to me, it’s like the butterfly, giddy, but also, there’s that long-lasting element to it, too. The lyric to me isn’t all just chronological. It feels like it could be different seasons, different phases, different times.

Hailey Whitters Tells Apple Music About Her First-Ever Pitch Meeting

I came into town for my first ever pitch session, which I got to … It’s like going shopping. You’re in this room and all these different publishers come in and bring you tapes and are playing you things. And Nicolle [Galyon] is very involved in a lot of my process. I mean, she’s a person who’s been writing songs with me for several years now. She’s from the Midwest. She gets where I come from. She’s also my label, Songs & Daughters. And so she’s very tapped into my influences and who I am and what I would say, and I guess my spirit, musically and stuff.

Hailey Whitters Tells Apple Music About Opening for Shania Twain

Getting to go on tour with Shania Twain… that’s a dream that I don’t even know if I could have dreamt that one up. So it just totally surpassed my expectations, and getting to do that was just a total pinch me moment. Things are happening so fast right now, and I think actually getting to stand side stage and be still and hear her and those songs in that room, that was the moment that that hit me… It was so nuts. I mean, just so many dreams coming true right now, which is so cool.

Hailey Whitters Tells Apple Music About Her Respect for Lainey Wilson and Other Hard-Working Artists

[Being an artist is] nonstop. If you’re physically doing it, you’re mentally doing it. It’s really hard to turn it off ever. And I just have so much respect for artists. It’s just so many things being thrown at you all the time. And I just look at a person like Lainey Wilson. I look up to her a lot. And when we were on tour last year, she was still in a van and trailer. And I was like, well, dang, girl. I can stick it out in the van and trailer too then… This shit’s for the birds. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. And I just have so much respect for people who are in it and people who are doing it because it isn’t all glitz and glamour. It’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears.

Hailey Whitters Tells Apple Music About Her Husband, Jake Gear, Being Her Producer

It is a lot because he’s someone who just loves working and I like to turn it off. I like to play. But yeah, he’s so involved. He’s so invested. On the one hand, that’s the coolest thing in the world because it’s someone who knows what you do in and out and is just as much of an advocate for you as you and is right there in the shotgun seat with you on a lot of it. And on the other hand, it is hard because it’s … I mean, last night, shoot. I’d had a crap day and I just wanted to get a pizza and drink wine and chill in the backyard. And he came home like, all right, let’s dive in. And I was like, no… We aren’t. I’m going to get a little drunk and I’m just going to sit in the backyard and I don’t even want to listen to music right now.

Hailey Whitters Tells Apple Music About Almost Not Recording “Everything She Ain’t”

I thought my record was done and that was just kind of an extra song that we had that Jake had played for the label and they flipped out about, and they’re like, we have to record this or put this on the project. And I was like, okay, we can do that. And then now, I’m playing these stages and tens of thousands of people are singing it back. And it’s just been so crazy and so bizarre and just really cool because for me it was like, this came out of nowhere. You know what I mean? And so I think it’s taught me to allow yourself to be surprised and don’t put too much pressure on a song and don’t put too much pressure on the recording of it and the writing of it, and just let it be.

The post Hailey Whitters talks about new songs, learning from Lainey Wilson and what it’s like being married to your producer appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Friday (June 16th) at 7am PT / 9am CT / 10am ET or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.

Lauren Alaina Tells Apple Music About Her New Music Being Intentionally Very Country

It’s country through and through, there’s nothing pop about it. Nothing pop about it, which I was very intentional about. I spent a ton of time with my family over the last few years and back home in Rossville, Georgia where I came from… I want[ed] to make a record that the girls in my hometown will be proud of. That will represent them… I’m in just a different season, I’m in a season where home is the most important thing to me and I feel like I’ve found my forever homes everywhere with the label, with the music, with Joey [Moi] as my producer, with [my fiancé] Cameron [Arnold] and my family in general.

Lauren Alaina Tells Apple Music About Matching Her Voice with Her Personality

I came from a TV show [American Idol] where you want to be the best singer on the show. [On previous records,] I sang the highest I could and the loudest I could and this record’s not really that way at all. It’s just very different, but I’m so proud of it because I feel like… [my producer] Joey [Moi] said something so important to me when I met him… I’m so blessed that we’re working together. But he said, “I was so surprised by you when you came into the studio. Because what I’d heard of your music and your actual very loud country personality were kind of different and I want your music to reflect your personality more.”

Lauren Alaina Tells Apple Music About Writing “Thicc As Thieves” for Her and Lainey Wilson

I wrote it for [Lainey and me]… In fact, we tried to write it together. It’s something we’ve been talking about for over a year which is so embarrassing. I’m like… we’re going to write this song “Thicc As Thieves,” but it’s T-H-I-C-C and we were talking… So the whole TikTok thing with her booty and it going viral. We had already written the song when that happened, it was the most blessed day of my life. I was like when this song about donks comes out and hers is viral on TikTok I’m blessed, her literal butt went viral on the internet. I was like this is great, this looks like we did this on purpose like we’ve paid for this publicity.

Lauren Alaina Tells Apple Music About Luke Bryan Giving Her and Lainey Wilson His Blessing for Sampling “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” on Their Song “Thicc As Thieves”

Now we have a song about big butts and we sample “Country Girl (Shake It For Me)” in it which is really cool. Luke [Bryan] FaceTimed me the other day and said, “You and Lainey are such a hoot, you’ve got my blessing.”

The post Lauren Alaina talks about being intentionally Country & what Luke Bryan thinks about the sample on ‘Thicc as Thieves’ appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full anytime on-demand at apple.co/_KelleighBannen and read our review of ‘Weathervanes’ right here.

Jason Isbell Tells Apple Music About His Songwriting Rule
I have a rule where if I write a line and I think, “I don’t know if I want people to know that,” then I’m like, “Ah, crap. I’m stuck with it now. Now I have to keep it,” so I have to make it work. And that has served me well, especially as I’ve gotten older because I’m not so… I think when you’re younger and you write songs, sometimes you can have this desire to startle people, shock people, and that tempers as you get older.

So you find ways to present those secrets that might, in the long run, make people more comfortable with their own image and their own identity… It’s a way of normalizing those things because at least I have felt that too. We never would’ve gotten there, though, if I had stayed vague and broad and told people things that I only felt comfortable with because those things are on the surface. 

Jason Isbell Tells Apple Music About Being Careful with Who He Writes Songs About
You want to be careful about who you talk about in these songs because some people didn’t sign up for that, and especially when it’s people who knew me [back] then. If it’s somebody who knows me now, I think they should probably understand that this might come back up because they know this is what I do. But in those days, I was just a kid and I wanted to be this, but who knows what’s going to happen. Most of the time people who want to write songs for a living don’t eventually get to do it. So you want to be careful about that, but my way of handling that is really just to try to get the facts straight, try to tell the truth and try to tell it from my perspective.

Jason Isbell Tells Apple Music About ‘Whiter Beretta‘
On a song like “White Beretta,” there are things that I regret. I regret that I wasn’t able to be as supportive as I could have been to somebody that I cared about who was having a really difficult time, and that’s really what that song is, among other things, what it’s about. I hate to say what a song is about because it’s in there… but it deals with that feeling, as you get older, of, “I could have done a better job of this.” That was really tough. That was a tough one to write.

Jason Isbell Tells Apple Music About ‘Cast Iron Skillet’
‘Cast Iron Skillet’ was a tough one to write because there’s two separate stories in that song. The first one deals with some kids that I grew up with that wound up killing somebody and going to prison for it. And then the second one deals with somebody that I was related to who had a boyfriend who was not the same race as her, and she was disowned by some of her family for that.

Both of those things really happened to people that I really knew and people that I was really close to growing up. And it was hard to talk about not just what had happened, but how it had affected me and how it affects me still, that idea that hope is fragile and you have to work to protect it.

Jason Isbell Tells Apple Music About Having a Different Job as a Songwriter Than the Average Country Music Star
I don’t feel like I have the same job as a country music star… It’s just not the same job. My day is not the same. My goal is not the same, and I don’t know enough about that job really to say, “They’re doing something wrong.” I don’t feel that way. I think that some people are out there trying to sell records and some people have a super positive message and they use nostalgia to widen their audience, and then once they get everybody in a room, they tell them something really important and special and awesome. You know what I mean?… And I think that’s great, but that is not what I do.

What I try to do is look at the truth of things and find the details that paint the clearest picture of the way things really, truly are. This is not always a happy job, and it’s not always the kind of job that brings in the vast numbers of people, but the ones who do come are attached and connected to what we’re doing because they feel the weight of it and they feel like it’s something that there’s a purpose to it. It’s not just commerce.

Jason Isbell Tells Apple Music About ‘King of Oklahoma‘
The character in that song, the main character, has fallen victim to something that a lot of people in our country have fallen victim to over the past decade, which is this idea of, “I work hard. I do what I’m supposed to do. I take care of my family. One day, something happens and I’m a drug addict.”

This has happened so many times. And of course, I’m not saying that he deserves more leeway than somebody buying drugs off the sidewalk, off the street, because they have their own set of issues, but sometimes a song is me saying, “Will you take a minute to just listen to this perspective, this person’s story, before you judge, before you view them as a disposable character that’s just a blight on all the rest of us in our little community? Take a second to understand why they made the choices that they made.” Maybe they weren’t good choices, but they were pressured to make those. This guy hurts himself, goes to the doctor, doctor gives him pain medicine, and it doesn’t take very long to get addicted.

Jason Isbell Tells Apple Music About ‘Save the World’ and School Shootings
When I was in school, we had tornado drills… But I remember going to school and being so worried about what we were going to have for lunch, or if I was prepared enough for a test or some kind of audition or some kind of bully or some kind of girl, or all these things that you’re supposed to be worried about at that age and now you got all that, and then somewhere in the back of your mind, you’ve got shooting drills in the classroom and the idea that that is a vulnerable place.

Also, the play-acting of trying to make it look safer. “Let’s put cops… Let’s give the teachers guns, let’s do this.” The idea of there’s this one thing that we’re not going to do. We’re not going to approach it. We’re not even going to consider doing it, so we will do all these other things to make you feel this false sense of security, and then you’re dealing with the symptom. You’re not dealing with the issue. I don’t know. It’s a lot to ask of a child to grow up under those circumstances. It was already hard to grow up

The post Jason Isbell talks with Kelleigh Bannen about ‘Weathervanes’, uncomfortable truths & how he has a different job to do than your average Country star appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Listen to the episode in-full anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.

Gabby Barrett Tells Apple Music About Her Songs Needing to Apply to Her Life

I’m not really the person who likes to sing or create songs that don’t apply to my life. I never can jive with them. The most genuine songs for me are the ones that literally do apply. So when I wrote ‘I Hope’ that did apply to a story in my life. I was I think only maybe dating my husband at the time. I was dating him, but I was 19, so high school was still pretty fresh on the brain and I had an awful, terrible breakup in high school. And so that was very genuine. Then I wrote ‘The Good Ones.’ which was written about Cade, my husband.

Gabby Barrett Tells Apple Music About ‘Glory Days’

I wrote [“Glory Days”] with a couple of friends and we’re just talking about all the life that I’ve kind of went through within the last couple years. I think it’s pretty abnormal to what normally happens at this age for certain people, 23, 2 kids, and all the things happening with music. And I’ve been married for four years. So normally those times when you’re in the trenches a little bit with kids and just the days are long, but the years feel fast. Those are the times that you look back on per se. And I just remember my parents kind of saying, oh, those are the glory days. Those are the good old days. And so I was like, well, I’m in my glory days right now.

Gabby Barrett Tells Apple Music About Her Next Album

Second album, hopefully the goal for that is to release it in the early fall. And I think this album is just next level in a way… I think it has a more just continual vein to it. It’s not kind of all over the place. I have to be very vulnerable about some of the subjects that are talked about. It’s very close to my heart in a different way than the first album was, for sure.

Gabby Barrett Tells Apple Music About Collaborating with Luke Combs and Miranda Lambert for Her Second Album

There’s lots of collabs. Luke Combs wrote one of the songs on the album and I fell in love with it. And then I did another song with Miranda Lambert that’ll be involved on the album. And you never know, there could be something else that pops up before we get to early fall. So there’s just a lot to look forward to.

Having strong creative input with ‘Glory Days’ as the first release off her hotly anticipated sophomore album, Barrett co-wrote and co-produced the song. Writing alongside Emily Weisband, Seth Mosley, and James McNair, the lyrics lay out a humble world of family and faith – filled with quiet mornings, front porch swings, and pure gratitude for the little things – all delivered in emotional resolution by Barrett’s soaring vocal. Meanwhile, Barrett approached this single as co-producer with Ross Copperman to give the song its propulsive, heart-thumping sound that further melts arena-rocking guitars and pounding drums into the tender Country sway.

The post Gabby Barrett talks new song ‘Glory Days’ & collaborating with Miranda Lambert & Luke Combs with Kelleigh Bannen appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Friday (June 2nd) at 7am PT / 9am CT / 10am ET / 3pm UK or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.

Diplo Tells Apple Music About the Country Music Audience

I think people that work in the country industry think too much that their audiences are purists. There are some country purists, they’re really, they’re there. They keep some things in check and they kind of guide a certain style of country to be beautiful and great but at the end of the day, I grew up in South Florida and I was listening to country just as much as hip hop and just as much as pop music and I never really, as I got older, I got even more varied… [and] as I got older, living here in Nashville, I lived in Hendersonville, the music was hand in hand. We listen to Three 6 Mafia and you listen to Alan Jackson… I do think purists underestimate the audience.

Diplo Tells Apple Music About Creating Space for Everyone in Country Music

There’s room for everybody, especially in country. I think a younger audience definitely sees that there’s a lot more stories to be told in country music. It’s not just songs about whiskey and beer and things. There’s other stories to tell and there’s other messages. And it’s cool to lean into even more classic styles of country that are becoming big now like what someone like Charley Crockett does or whatever and it’s like funky.

Diplo Tells Apple Music About Making Country Music to Dance To

For this [record], I definitely was thinking of Stagecoach. I was like, “What works live? What can I do that’s uptempo, has energy?” And I tapped into that urban cowboy vibe. Why can’t you dance to country music? And I’m not talking about line dancing, which I still want to learn those… I want to make a record like Watermelon Crawl or Boot Scootin’ Boogie or something one day. But that’s tailored to a honky tonk.

Diplo Tells Apple Music About His Writing and Producing Process

I’m always making things. I’m not a great guitar player by any means, but I can play some chords and drop chords. Usually every country player is a writer and is a virtuous sort a guitar but I’m kind of there tracking. I’m like, “Oh yeah, stop there!” And I just record a little piece of the guitar and I’m like, “Okay.” And I have my headphones on and I kind of play it, do some things to it and they’re like, “Whoa, what’d you do?”… And then I flipped the record quick and they’re confused by writing and producing at the same time… So it’s a learning curve ’cause people usually just want to have a guitar and that’s it. And they play. But I’m always tracking and recording and trying to, that’s how I write.

Diplo Tells Apple Music About Nashville Being Supportive of his Project

There hasn’t been a lot of naysayers… especially in Nashville, it might be the most supportive place I’ve been to… I was like, “Okay, I’m done with this [record] now. I got maybe one more song I’m going to finish.” And then it’s a lot of work to do these records… but now… we have all these people calling up, “I got this record for your project. I want to do this.” And I’m like… “Where were you at a month ago when I was rapping the record?” So, nobody wants to be the first person to jump off the bridge, you know? Or whatever. The water’s not even that deep. I’m just going to always jump off. I’m going off first and showing you guys it’s safe and I’m like happy there are guys who do it, like Morgan [Wallen] or Paul [Cauthen] or whoever that are able to trust me and do it because at the end of the day, what do you got to lose?

The post Watch, Read or Listen to Diplo talk about shaking up Country music with Kelleigh Bannen appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Friday (May 26th) at 7am PT / 9am CT / 10am ET or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry.

Jake Owen Tells Apple Music About His Earliest Memory of Being on a Boat

When I turned 12, my dad bought my brother and I a little Boston Whaler. And so I was actually telling someone about this the other day who has daughters. He was telling me how he has Life360 on his daughter’s phone, I guess so he can see and track how fast she’s going, where she is and whatever. And I thought to myself, I didn’t have a cell phone growing up and my dad gave us this old Boston Whaler and we could go out in the middle of the Intracostal River in Florida right after school every day, and we just would be back by dark. Had a little six gallon gas tank on the back of it that we mix oil in it when you put the fuel in and we’d just go… To this day, it’s my favorite thing to do. It brings me the most happiness is being on the water somewhere on a boat. 

Jake Owen on Recording His New Record ‘Loose Cannon’

It wasn’t anything I had to fight for really. But to me, every record that I put out post the record before is always more important because you want to be better than you were the last time. I also… not only musically, but as a person, you kind of want to grow. So you have to showcase that with your music. And I didn’t record any of the songs I wrote.

Jake Owen Tells Apple Music Why He Called His New Album ‘Loose Cannon’

I love a super serious song, but I also love a song that’s not serious at all and it just makes you smile or feel good. And that’s kind of how I am. And that’s why this album’s going to be called ‘Loose Cannon’ because I realized when I heard that song, that that is my life to a T, finding a good woman in my life and someone that can wrestle with this person that is never comfortable with anything. I’m just all over the map all the time.

Jake Owen Tells Apple Music Why He Included the Songs He Did on ‘Loose Cannon’

I just think you have to believe in what you love and be passionate about it. And that’s kind of… this album is a lot of songs that I love, a lot of things I care about, a lot of things I wanted to say, and I’m in a cool part of my life and I just think this explains a lot of it.

Jake Owen Tells Apple Music About “Hot Truck Beer”

That song for me is… another one of those kind of anthemic, just sing along the way we felt when we were that, when we were Jack and Diane, kind of like, I love songs that are always reminiscent of what it felt like and that freedom that you didn’t really realize at the time was so free.

The post Jake Owen talks to Kelleigh Bannen about new album ‘Loose Cannon’, boats and hot truck beer appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

You can read our five star review of Luke Combs’ new album ‘Gettin’ Old’ right here.

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Friday (March 24) at 7am PT / 9am CT / 10am ET or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry

Luke Combs Tells Apple Music About Having a New Sound on ‘Gettin’ Old’

It felt like ‘Growin’ Up’ was the last record of the tail end of my career at that point of what my sound used to be and where it’s kind of evolving to so that we really did shift our focus production wise as soon as that record came out and we knew we wanted [‘Gettin’ Old’] to sound different… it’s still rooted in what we’ve always done. It’s the same songwriters. It’s just the song ideas and the production are different based on where I’m kind of at in my life right now.

Luke Combs Tells Apple Music About the Origin of the Title for ‘Joe’

So Erik Dylan wrote that song with James Slater and he had sent it to me. Originally it was called “The Bottle.” I was at the Opry, and it was during COVID when I was playing the Opry when nobody was there. It was empty. It was just me and Craig Morgan. [I] sat down and my creative guy, Zack, was there. They were like, “What’s the name of this song or whatever?” He told them it was “The Bottle” and then when I played it, I said it was called “Joe” because I wanted it, I just wanted it to jump off the page. That was just the name that was in the song when Erik Dylan sent it to me. Was like, “I got a job, my name’s Joe.” That was the first line of the song.

Luke Combs Tells Apple Music About ‘Fox in the Henhouse‘

It’s mega swampy. I think when we wrote it, we were thinking, okay, a [Chris] Stapleton/[The] SteelDrivers thing. If you hear the work tape, I think that’s kind of what that song was rooted as when we wrote it. Then two years later we ended up cutting it and it ended up being something completely different… We wrote that song, me and my buddy Dan [Isbell], we both have chickens and foxes were literally killing our chickens. It was literally just about that. Then we listened to it, we’re like, “God, this could be about a litany of [things.”]… Someone’s coming after your girl, someone stabbed you in the back, or somebody’s breaking into your house.

Luke Combs Tells Apple Music Why He Released His Own Version of ‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman

[It’s] my first favorite song probably ever. I remember listening to that song with my dad in his truck when I was probably four. He had a cassette, a tape of it, and we had this old brown camper top F-150… We rode around that thing and he had a tape cassette player in there, and I have the original cassette — my dad brought it to me a couple years ago… I have the one and I have it in my shop. The only music I have in my shop is a cassette player. I love to go to antique stores and just you can get a bunch of cassette tapes for 50 cents and some of the best records of all time are on cassette.

Luke Combs Tells Apple Music About ‘5 Leaf Clover’

That came to be kind of, I guess kind of the tail end of COVID. We were talking about trying to figure out how we were going to go back on tour. This is probably spring 2021 I would think. We ended up going out in the fall. I was just riding around my place with my buddy Nudey and I have a clover field up on this hill and I just started looking around for four-leaf clovers and I found one and I was like, oh man, that’s cool to find one. Then Nudey found a five-leaf clover… I have a picture of it on my phone. The actual one he found that day. Because I was like, “Man, that’s cool.” I’ve never seen that before. I just wrote “5 Leaf Clover” in my phone because I was like, “Man, how lucky do you have to be to find a five-leaf clover?”… I think to me, country music sometimes is people that listen to it, they want to hear songs about loving the life that they have and so I think, I hope we accomplished that that day with that song.

The post Watch the video or read the highlights as Luke Combs talks ‘Gettin’ Old’ with Kelleigh Bannen appeared first on Entertainment Focus.

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Friday (March 17) at 7am PT / 9am CT / 10am ET or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_TodaysCountry. Read the highlights below:

Carrie Underwood Tells Apple Music About ‘Out Of That Truck’

We all have, if it’s a date place or your house, or something that reminds us of people, whether it is like a former relationship or people that are in your life or currently in your life or whatever, it’s kind of like you just see fingerprints of people everywhere, if it’s a familiar space.

So we kind of wanted to explore that in the song. And, if you’re spending a lot of time with somebody in a vehicle of some sort, especially if you do live out in the country, and you are riding around in trucks, it definitely would be a space that, if you’re leaving your mark physically in that space, it would just make that person always think of you and your time together.

Carrie Underwood Tells Apple Music About Still Driving the Mustang She Won When She Won American Idol

I do still have the car that I won when I won American Idol. So I have my blue Mustang. And every once in a while something will happen where I’ll have my car getting serviced or whatever, and I’ll get to drive that car. And it always makes me want to drive it more, because it was such a pivotal point in my life, and that was the car that I was driving around when I was first moved to Tennessee. I’m very, very glad I still have that car. Like I said, every time I get in it, I’m always like, why don’t I just drive this more often? Just because, it makes me feel good.

Carrie Underwood Tells Apple Music About Her Las Vegas Residency

In Vegas, I think one of the coolest things is that everybody’s from everywhere. Like everywhere in the world, people come to Vegas, and it’s such a cool thought to look out on the audience and think, how many states, how many countries, how many different places are people from, and we’re just all in this theater, having a blast together.

I enjoy it, I enjoy the theater stage, it’s such an incredible theater. It looks great, it sounds great. And it’s just kind of a different… I get to switch gears, and I enjoy that… And it’s nice to stay in one place too. It is nice to travel. But again, in the kind of switching things up, getting to play in the theater, and then when the show’s done, I get to go up to my room, and go nighty night.

The post Carrie Underwood talks about her new single, her creative process and her questionable driving skills with Kelleigh Bannen appeared first on Entertainment Focus.