You know that feeling when you just need some caffeine to get through your to-do list? Thomas Rhett is familiar.
When the songwriting ideas aren’t exactly flowing, he’s learned to get up and move around.
“Maybe I need to go take a lap around the bus, maybe I need to go pace, maybe I need to get a coffee,” he says. “I don’t know, whatever it is just to kind of change up the vibe and the energy. And most the time man, somebody will be like, ‘Oh, I had this title that I forgot about.’ And then they say it and you’re just like, ‘Yes!’”
He says he can sense when a good idea is floating through the air — “especially if you’ve been kind of working on something for an hour and nothing’s happening. I think you kind of realize, OK, these people that I’ve surrounded myself with, we do this for a living. And these people are the best songwriters that I know, so something is about to happen,” he says.
Even after all of his success, he admits he’s still stunned by the songwriting process.
“Every time I finish a song, all the songwriters always look at each other and go, ‘Can y’all believe that this is even possible? Like, how did we come in here, not having one thought or one idea and we left with a song?’” he says.
“It is so hard to describe how it actually happens, but it is one of the most rewarding experiences that you can ever receive, to me, in the music business, is when you walk in and you’re like, ‘I don’t know what we’re gonna say,’ and then you say it, and then it ends up on a record, and then it ends up on the radio, and then you hear people singing it. It’s like the most full-circle, amazing thing ever.”
