Cole Swindell has had loads of milestones up to now decade: eight No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, together with being a author on a number of hits for different artists together with Luke Bryan and Thomas Rhett, whereas garnering a popularity as a dependable hitmaker and live performance headliner who is aware of methods to assemble private songs that convey a pointy emotional affect.
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His 2022 album, Stereotype, additional elevated his profession, due to the four-week No. 1 Nation Airplay smash “She Had Me at Heads Carolina.” On his fifth Warner Music Nashville album, Spanish Moss, which releases Friday (June 27), the Georgia native continues balancing songs which are deeply private, whereas not abandoning Swindell’s intuition for business hits.
The album’s namesake is a tune that nearly wasn’t written. Whereas {golfing} within the 30A space of Florida with writers together with Jordan Minton, a query from Minton sparked a selected reminiscence for Swindell, and a tune that might form the album.
“Jordan requested me what that stuff was hanging from the bushes was,” Swindell tells Billboard. “After I informed him it was Spanish moss, it jogged my memory of this reminiscence of my dad. After I left his place in Savannah [Georgia], and I later observed one thing hanging from my truck’s gasoline cap, and it was Spanish moss. I believed that phrase was a cool concept for a tune and a title. The tune ended up not being about that second, however extra of a love-type tune, but when Jordan hadn’t requested that query, we’d have by no means written this.”
Appropriately, Minton additionally took the picture — a snapshot of the Spanish moss that was on the golf course that day — that finally grew to become the album’s cowl.
The previous two years have been a whirlwind of change in Swindell’s private life. He proposed to longtime girlfriend Courtney Little in 2023, and so they wed in June 2024. The couple is anticipating their first baby, a daughter, this fall. “I’m excited to be a dad. I’ve at all times wished to be a dad,” he says. “She’s not right here but, and I’m already wrapped.”
The brand new album’s lead single “Eternally to Me,” written by Swindell, Greylan James, and Rocky Block, already reached No. 2 on the Nation Airplay chart — and originated throughout a spontaneous writing session two years in the past.
““I wasn’t positive if I might get to put in writing a tune like this,” Swindell says. “I referred to as Greylan, and he requested if he may carry Rocky. I’d by no means written with Rocky earlier than, however I stated, ‘Let’s go.’ We had been speaking and somebody requested if I had a marriage tune. I stated, ‘Not but.’ Then they requested how I felt about Courtney, and I informed them, ‘She’s without end to me.’ Instantly, they had been like, ‘That’s the hook.’”
Wanting again on his marriage ceremony to Little, he remembers how they wed in a personal venue in Sonoma, California, the identical venue that they had beforehand attended an occasion collectively earlier than they grew to become engaged. “I bear in mind asking the employees again then, ‘Do y’all do weddings right here?’”
The 21-song Spanish Moss has been within the works for over two years, as Swindell briefly took a while away from writing and recording to deal with his marriage and private life.
“I’m glad I had type of a break free from issues, to get pleasure from that point collectively,” he says, including that ultimately he knew it was time to proceed engaged on the brand new mission. “We ended up with so many songs that we love and so, we determined to place all of them on right here.”
Whereas songs reminiscent of “Eternally to Me” have a look at his present season of life, different older songs on the album, reminiscent of “Dale Jr.” and “Heads Up Heaven” are nods to Swindell’s late dad and mom.
“Dale Jr.,” fittingly positioned because the third monitor on the album, is a deeply private tribute that honors each Swindell’s late father and the legacy of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Sr. The tune, which Swindell wrote with James and Matt Alderman, additionally speaks to Swindell’s significant friendship with Dale Earnhardt Jr., as the 2 have related on a profound degree by way of their shared grief and the lasting affect of shedding their fathers.
He says Earnhardt Jr. reached out after Swindell launched his 2016 hit “You Ought to Be Right here,” which he wrote after shedding his father in 2013, sparking a friendship between the 2.
“That is considered one of my favourite songs I’ve been concerned in writing,” Swindell stated, including, “That was what first related us — we every misplaced dads fairly early on. My dad was a Dale Earnhardt Sr. fan, and was on the race when Dale handed away [at the Daytona 500 in 2001]. I despatched [the song] to Dale Jr. after we wrote it and I believe it meant lots to him, simply having that reference to somebody who is aware of what you’ve been by way of.”
Songs like “99 Issues” discover the 20/20 hindsight of maturity, and the way youthful issues that after felt enormous now appear small. However there are additionally loads of up-tempo, arena-sized grooves reminiscent of “Kill a Prayer” and “We Can At all times Transfer On.”
He simply wrapped a run of worldwide reveals in Australia and New Zealand, opening for Cody Johnson, and within the coming months, he’ll be determining methods to stability tour buses and child cribs, however he’s up for the problem.
“I wish to preserve getting higher — higher as an artist, higher as a songwriter. However now, I additionally wish to deal with being dad and husband,” he says.