From June 16–20, Brett Young is bringing “romantic slow burn with a side of feels” vibes and the stories behind his songs to Backstage Country, co-hosting alongside Elaina Smith. Whether you’ve cried into your coffee listening to “In Case You Didn’t Know” or belted out “Here Tonight” like you were shooting your own music video, you know Young has a PhD in Tugging at Our Heartstrings.
Brett Young Songs
“Drink With You”
Smith acknowledged how hard it might be for Young to choose a single for his upcoming album. Young shared his reason for choosing “Drink With You” to represent the new era. “It's kind of strange every time you pick a new single,” Young said. “The first one off a new project is always like this big decision because it feels like it's gonna shape the way the entire project goes. ‘Drink With You’ for me is, it was very intentional. I'm at the stage in my life where I'm married and I've got two young children at home, and I feel like the really obvious and easy thing to do would be keep writing songs and sending them to radio because that's what I'm going through.”
He added, “But this song is an opportunity for me to connect with people that aren't necessarily newly married with young children running around the house, but people that are at a stage in life that I spend a lot of time in and that I still connect with and that’s something we wanted to do with this whole album. ‘Drink With You’ is just that story about how hard it is to move on from a relationship when you let maybe a night by yourself and an alcoholic beverage give you bad advice and tell you should reach out to that ex. No, at first, we said maybe some people were late, maybe some go through breakups like this, and then as we started playing the song with people, we realized, no, that's just every breakup.”
Brett Young - Drink With You (Lyric Video)
Smith agreed with him emphatically. Young chuckled, “So the goal would be that if you are somebody that tends to call an ex after you have a drink, maybe you can listen to this song, realize that would be a bad idea, and avoid making that mistake. We're not sure if that works yet, but that's what we were going for anyways.”
“Who I Do It For”
A collaboration with Lady A, Smith asked what it was like writing the song since the song is sweet and lovely, but also kind of sad. Young said absolutely where the song was born: “It's hard to be away from your family. And then when you have kids, it's harder. Then, when they get old enough to really understand that you're gone, it gets even harder.”
He continued, “One thing I like about the country music community is there's so many moms and dads out there touring that can relate, right? I wanted this time [to] write a song for artist parents that I felt like this would resonate with. We had just an awesome opportunity on a flight back from playing a charity event with Charles Kelly to share the song with them. I told him, ‘You know, I was thinking maybe another solo act would get on this song with me, but there are three of you that can all relate. In one band, this would be perfect, how perfect.’ He listened to it and landed, and sent it to Dave and Hillary, and that was all she wrote. They just bring this song to another level. They're so great.”
