{"id":1320064,"date":"2020-05-18T05:40:45","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T11:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cmt.com\/news\/?p=1821177"},"modified":"2020-05-18T05:40:45","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T11:40:45","slug":"brett-young-preps-for-cmhof-words-music-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/music-news\/brett-young-preps-for-cmhof-words-music-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Brett Young Preps for CMHOF Words & Music at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

by Alison Bonaguro<\/a><\/span> 34m ago<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

The first couple of country songs that hooked Brett Young when he was a teenager in Costa Mesa, California were Ty Herndon\u2019s \u201cWhat Mattered Most\u201d from 1995 and Tim McGraw\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Take the Girl\u201d from 1994.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when I really started digging into lyrics,\u201d Young told CMT.com of the story songs that ultimately lured him from California to Nashville. \u201cIt is the hardest thing in the world to tell a life story in three and a half minutes. My dad is a pastor, and his responsibility to teach through the bible beginning to end is a really long commitment.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you want to just go, \u2019Let\u2019s just talk about loving thy neighbor,\u2019 then it\u2019s like, \u2019Okay, let\u2019s go there then.\u2019 But the hardest thing about writing a song is to fit enough details in and still feel like you told the whole story of these two people.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday (May 21) at 2:00 p.m. CT, Young will be taking over the the Country Music Hall of Fame\u2019s Instagram<\/a> Live for a Words & Music at Home<\/a> session. He\u2019ll play a few songs, share some stories of his path to songwriting success, and will answer aspiring songwriters\u2019 questions and offer advice for getting started.<\/p>\n

CMT.com had the chance to ask Young some questions before the Thursday session, and here\u2019s what we learned from the man who\u2019s had six Top Five songs in the four short years since his debut single, \u201cSleep Without You.\u201d<\/p>\n

CMT.com: Instead of starting at the beginning of your singer-songwriter career, let\u2019s talk about the new \u201cLady\u201d in your life: your latest song and your brand new baby girl, Presley.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Young: We were about five months pregnant when I wrote that song. We knew we were having a girl. And I had the title in my phone, but I just didn\u2019t know my take on it. It took throwing the title out in a few other writes, and not getting anywhere. But then with Ross Copperman and Jon Nite, it worked. Jon put together the twist that made it a song to<\/em> my daughter but about<\/em> my wife. Once we nailed that down, it was the perfect direction for the song.<\/p>\n

And those subtle heartbeats at the very beginning of the song?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can take credit for that. It was from the ultrasound when Taylor was about six months pregnant. I like to think Presley was recording major-label songs when she was negative three months old.<\/p>\n

Is that your usual M.O., to find song inspiration in your personal life? And how do you get your co-writers to be on the same page?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s always different. I know some people have their formulas, but I change who I write with often enough that my method changes from song to song. With \u201cLady,\u201d I was so intent on making sure the other writers were as excited about it as I was, because if not, they weren\u2019t the right writers. Ross and Jon both have daughters, so it started with a 30-minute conversation about that. And then Jon just said, \u201cWhat if it\u2019s about your wife teaching your daughter how to be a lady?\u201d And I was like, \u201cYep. That\u2019s the one.\u201d It moved on to Ross fiddling around on piano and we felt it was the right song. Then we got to the chorus that started with, \u201cI hope you look just like your mama.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounds like that came so naturally. You\u2019re making songwriting sound easy. But other songwriters maintain that writing a song is the hardest thing to do. Where do you stand on that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written both of those songs: the easy ones and the tough ones. On my first record, my fourth single was \u201cMercy,\u201d and once Sean McConnell and I figured out what we were writing, it only took about 45 minutes. But then I\u2019ve had other songs where I\u2019m finishing one that I started ten years ago. It didn\u2019t have a chorus, and it took me getting in a room with four other songwriters ten years later to figure out how to make the chorus fit.<\/p>\n

Is it somehow more rewarding to have a song that took some serious blood, sweat and tears to write reach the top of the charts?<\/strong>
I don\u2019t know. But I do know that nobody is killing it in this business if they\u2019re scratching and clawing at it every single time. The best songwriters are the ones who are willing to keep revisiting a song that \u2014 even though it\u2019s not perfect \u2014 it could be. With a little more work.<\/p>\n

Do you remember the first song you wrote?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. It was about 15 years ago. It was called \u201cDefine Me.\u201d<\/p>\n

So you would\u2019ve been in your mid-20s. What inspired you to sit down with a blank sheet of paper?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had a crush on someone who knew I had a crush on her, and she would ignore the topic and just treat me like a really good friend. So it was this idea of, we\u2019ve been dancing around this for a really long time and you\u2019re going to have to define me.<\/p>\n

That actually sounds like solid country song. Right out of the gate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t bad, but it wasn\u2019t great. It was right down the middle. My phrasing and rhyming were so obvious, like \u201cwhile\u201d and \u201csmile.\u201d But I knew I wanted to write songs, and I hadn\u2019t tried it yet. I\u2019d bought a $100 Casio keyboard to teach myself how to play a five-chord progression, and I liked the melody so much that I put lyrics to it. Looking back, that first song\u2019s not embarrassing. It doesn\u2019t hold up to what I\u2019m putting out now, but I\u2019ve written much worse songs since. But I don\u2019t think it would be helpful for someone to write their best song ever the first time they write. It becomes like a drug: it\u2019s something you\u2019re always chasing, but you\u2019ll never catch.<\/p>\n


Mark your calendars from Young\u2019s Word & Music at Home session on Thursday (May 21) at 2:00 p.m. CT here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
Alison makes her living loving country music. She’s based in Chicago, but she’s always leaving her heart in Nashville.<\/div>\n

@alisonbonaguro<\/a><\/div>\n

via:: CMT News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alison Bonaguro 34m ago The first couple of country songs that hooked Brett Young when he was a teenager in Costa Mesa, California were Ty Herndon\u2019s \u201cWhat Mattered Most\u201d from 1995 and Tim McGraw\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Take the Girl\u201d from 1994. \u201cThat\u2019s when I really started digging into lyrics,\u201d Young told CMT.com of the story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1320064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 02:50:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}