OUT NOW: NATE SMITH’S DEBUT, SELF-TITLED ALBUM + DELUXE VERSION (CUT X CUT, AUDIO & VIDEO)
“I actually didn’t write If I Could Stop Loving You. So that song was it was kind of funny because I was talking with Rusty Gaston who’s at Sony publishing, I was saying, hey, I’m looking for songs. And he was like, have you gotten our list of it was something like 2021’s most favorable songs to be the biggest songs of the year or something crazy. Like that was like I actually haven’t had that list. I haven’t taken a look at it. So he gave me that list. The song was on there. I loved it so much and asked if I could cut it because it’s really special.“
“Alright, Alright, Alright is another song and they call it an outside song when you don’t write the song and that was one that got sent to me by a guy named Daniel Ross and I listened to it and I just thought it was just a fun vibe, party summer song. I love the melodies and it’s really catchy. Like it’s one of the songs that like you could sing along. After hearing it one time, you know?“
“One Good Girl I wrote with Lindsay Rymes and Jonathan Singleton. Jonathan Singleton has done a lot of stuff with Luke Combs, produced a lot of his stuff and everything. He brought the title in One Good Girl and it just seemed fun. So we just kind of went for it. And I was like, I kind of want to go for sort of like a wizardry kind of like summery kind of fun vibe anthem, kind of like so I love the way that the song starts off just like really like, you know, just like really fun. So that’s the that’s the idea behind that song. So another summer song.“
“Back At It Again is an outside song that was written by Adam Doleac, Trannie Anderson and I really really really dig that song so much. It got sent to me the day before we were cutting songs and I listened to it and I just absolutely loved it so we had to cut it.“
“I wrote You Ain’t Been In Love with a few of my friends. I had the melody, like the thing in my phone. And I showed Andy Albert and he was like, he just sort of like, he took my melody and just start adding words to it. That made sense. And it was like, oh my gosh, this is like coming together. So it started with just a melody. So sometimes on my phone, I’ll, I’ll have random melodies in there and I’ll bring those into writes and start that way. So that’s kind of how that song came about. And it feels really great.”
“Better Boy that is another outside song so that song came to me by absolute chance. So Taylor Phillips and Hardy wrote the song. Taylor texted me the demo- there wasn’t even a demo it was a work tape, it was a voice memo on the phone. You could hear the hum of the bus in the background and it was just really like, you know, like low quality kind of thing. But like listening to it Hardy sang the work tape and he sounded great, but the song just resonated with me and I don’t know I just felt like a deep connection to it. So I’m excited for that one to get out there. I always tell everybody when I play that song live I’m like, I’m preaching to myself on it because it’s a song it’s like you better boy, but I’m just I’m talking to myself first.“
“You Only Want Me When You’re Drunk was an interesting song because we had, me and Seth Alley had the chorus idea. And we kind of sat on it for a while I was I was worried that it was going to be to pop. But Lindsay jumped in on the song and really helped transform it into like a really country/pop/rock kind of a song. It starts off sort of poppy and everything. It’s- I love that song so much. It makes me want to move, yeah.“
“Bad Memory I wrote with Lindsay Rymes, Emily Wiseband and James McNair. It was one of those writes where it just kind of fell out. Like I don’t really have a reason how it happened but it brought it we talked about like, you know, our relationships that didn’t work out and stuff like that and how we felt in those processes and stuff and we flipped out when we wrote it because it just felt so good.“
“Oil Spot is an outside song written by a couple of my friends that got sent to me probably a year and a half ago and I got it and I just instantly was like this song puts me in a place. There’s a song on this on my album called Sleeve and it kind of feels like it’s in that same world of like driving down the highway and like feeling like that vibe, you know, and it sat in my files for like a while, but I would always go back to it and I realized that’s probably, I probably really love the song if I can’t stop listening to it. So then I asked if I could put a vocal on it. And then I just liked the way it sounded. So I just asked Jared just to be the producer and we’ll just mix it and that’s what we did.“
“Wreckage. That song is one of my favorites on the album. I wrote it with Chris Sligh, Marry Kutter, and Paul Wrock over at Chris’s place. And my favorite songs to write with Chris like, are like piano ballads. Like that’s kind of what we do. It’s our bread and butter together. I don’t know, I had a couple lines that I brought in for the song about Wreckage. And he helped me really transform, him and them helped me transform the hook of it and stuff. But it was one of those ones where like, I really fought for it, because melodies to me are really important. And like the melodies on that one had to be perfect for you know, what I thought was the best we could do, you know, and the back half of the chorus wasn’t quite, it wasn’t lifting enough. So me and Chris went through like 20 different variations of melodies to come up with the “layin’ in this” like that took forever to get there. And once we found it, we were like, this is it. And that’s what we landed on. That’s what you’re hearing today. Oh, and the other thing too about that song, the end of the song used to say- so that the new version is “and it wrecks me that you stay.” The old version was “and you make it beautiful.” And so it was almost like a totally different song. So I sent it over my team and they were like the hooks not strong enough. So then we reworded it and that’s what happened.“
“LFG, okay. That was a fun- I remember that write because we were having a storm that day in Nashville that was like it was like, I’ve never seen rain like, it was a monsoon and it was like right in front of me. But I remember I wrote that one on zoom with a couple of my buddies, and it was just a party song and then we just went completely that way with the song. So it’s a really fun to play live. And you know, obviously it means let’s freakin go for sure it doesn’t would never mean a cuss word in a song. So that’s what we got there.“
“Whiskey On You. Some of you guys have already heard this story and stuff. But it was written a couple days after my breakup down at the lake house, here in Tennessee. And it just literally just fell out. I don’t really have a answer for it. But I wrote from my personal experience, and then we just kept working on the demo throughout the night. We just kept going back and adding a couple little things here and there just to perfect it, you know? And the demo, that you the song that you actually hear right now on the radio and everything is that demo mixed. That’s basically the only difference so we didn’t really change anything. TikTok really helped build the story for Whiskey On You by getting the listener super engaged with it. There was a trend on there with this kick and this girl named Demps was helping me out with that and that got that kind of going and stuff but it really helped take the song to another level because when it came time for pre saves and all that stuff, everybody got really involved with it. So it was kind of a bit of pioneering I’d say in a lot of ways. Yeah, just just lucky that it reacted the way that it did.“
“You Shouldn’t Have To, I was at a writer’s retreat. Can’t remember the name of the town that I was in. But we were all super tired. We’d been writing for like two days straight. We’re just like, ah, written so many songs. And I remember me and one of the other guys were like, let’s just get out of here. And then the third co writer was like, well, they said, we’re supposed to stay till such and such time. We’re like, ah, that’s cool, man. And he’s like, well, just give it one more second, and we stayed in that’s when we wrote, You Shouldn’t Have To, because it was the weirdest thing, but we wrote that song and it felt good. Yeah.“
“Sleeve is my favorite song I think I’ve ever written or been a part of. I tell everybody that because it’s true. Because it’s a true story about my past and everything and every lyric in that song is 100% my life, it seems like people gravitate towards that.“
“I Found You, so that writer’s retreat that I talked about earlier with You Shouldn’t Have To that I wrote that one when I Found You there as well. And I found he was one of those songs that we never did a demo on it either. And we lost, I pretty much lost the song. I didn’t even remember it. And Chris Gelbuda, who is one of the writers on the song, went ahead and did an acoustic demo on it and then one of my friends over at Curb send it over to me I’m like, how did we almost forget this song? It’s so good. Like it’s so special and it’s, it is one of my favorite songs for sure to sing live and perform but it’s just one of those- it’s one of the songs is just so humble and like and just basically like I needed you, you know, to come and save me. I love a good rescue song.“
“Backseat. I heard- I think I heard it on Instagram from one of the songwriters was doing an acoustic version of the song. And I was mind blown by it because I remember like growing up, and I remember going to Fort Bragg in California, that’s where we would go and see the sea lines and do a little ocean hanging out. I remember like because we grew up in a town that had pine trees, so there’s a lyric in there says pine trees into palm trees and it was kind of like this weird thing or like reminded me of growing up in the backseat and stuff and just felt really connected to lyric. So that’s why we cut it.”
“Name Storms After was a fun one. I wrote that with Seth Alley and Trannie Anderson two of my favorite people. They’re amazing. And Trannie had that idea name storm- like someone you could name storms after and I was like, that’s so tough. I love that, you know, and that’s where the song started. And we really leaned into the rock thing on that one. And, you know, I grew up listening to a lot of rock so it felt felt right at home.”
“Raised Up. I wrote that song with Jonathan Smith and Trannie Anderson again. And it was there’s only been two songs I’ve written where I was like crying during the process and that was one of those ones I bawled my eyes out because I just missed home. I missed the way things were when I was littler and stuff had less responsibility and everything but um yeah, just made me miss miss home and it also makes me think of the way I was raised up I was raised up going to church and stuff so it definitely came back for me during that that write I was remembering all that little stuff like that. It was special moments I had growing up.“
“Under My Skin was a song that almost didn’t happen. Also, I feel like that’s a current thing sometimes you hear about these songs like, we almost didn’t record it, but I almost didn’t finish writing it. I had this girl named Trysette who sang, sings backup for John Fogarty. She’s, she sent, we were working on songs together through Instagram and stuff. We’ve never, I still haven’t met her in person. She was pitching me ideas and stuff. And one of them she sent over to me this called Under My Skin, and she actually released the song so it’s out. If you look it up Under My Skin, Trysette. And I just felt like the chorus didn’t feel right. But I liked the melody of the verses. So I asked with her permission, if it was okay if we’d like tweaked it and made it kind of into my own thing. And so I obviously changed the chorus completely. And then we kept some of those similar melodies, but we worked on it. And then I had my friend Larry McCoy step in and helped me out with that one as well. And then we ended up cutting it and it’s now it’s my second highest streaming song, which is crazy, because and then my buddy Nate was like, you need to finish it. You need to finish it and was always on me. I’m like, I’ll get to it. I’ll get to it. And then finally I did but I mean, every little thing that happened to make that song happen, it’s crazy.“
“I Don’t Wanna Go To Heaven. So the irony here is I do want to go to heaven, just not today. I always say that live because it’s true because some people were confused by that. But that song I wrote with Dan Fernandez, just the two of us at his place, and we just kind of started humming melodies and talking about relationships and what we’ve experienced and that’s kind of how the song sort of started. And it was a scary one because I was scared to put out a song called I Don’t Wanna Go To Heaven being that I’m a Christian, like, I’ve grown up in church. I didn’t want people to get the wrong idea. But it felt like it was kind of like I’m appreciating life now. You know, and so that’s, that’s why I went ahead and went forward with it, but I was nervous, definitely putting it out. And it’s touched people in a lot of ways. Some people have used it for their weddings and then other people for inspirational courage and stuff like that.“
PLEASE CHECK BACK FOR STORIES BEHIND THE SIX DELUXE TRACKS