Brett Young Hosts Backstage Country Featuring Dad Energy

Brett Young is taking over Backstage Country with Elaina Smith from June 16 to 20, and this time, he's swapping heartbreak anthems for heart-melting dad songs. If you’ve been keeping up with Young, you know he’s a proud girl dad, and fully embracing it. On Backstage Country, he gets real with Smith about how fatherhood has changed him, especially when it comes to songwriting.  

Smith admitted that “Full House” is her favorite, and that it almost made her weep listening to it. Young shared, “It was interesting to write this one because when I wrote [it], this is obviously for my youngest daughter, Rowan. When I wrote Presley's song, ‘Lady,’ my wife was still pregnant, and I wanted to have this song wrapped up for kind of like a baby gift when we had our first child. I didn't know how you write; you've never been a dad before. There's no experience to draw from. You've never met your daughter before. So, I was kind of stumped. John Knight, me, John, and Ross Copperman wrote this song.” 

He continued, “John and I had the idea that you write a love letter to your daughter, but you make it about your wife. And he's like, ‘Dude, you double dip in here. You're going to get credit with your wife today. And then when your daughter's old enough to realize you're going to credit all over again.’ He was a genius, and it worked. But when it came time, there was always going to be a song for Rowan, but by the time I got around to writing it, she's like a year, a year and a half old.” Young chuckled, “So we can't use Presley's trick. I can't write another love song about Taylor to Rowan because now I've got an 18-month-old maniac running around the house that I've gotten to know.” 

The California native also shared that he and his wife, Taylor, initially wanted to have four kids. But after their second child was born, he felt they were done having kids: “I don't know why. I just felt like [we were done].” He clarified, “She wasn't like a crazy baby that was up all night. It was the first day. We just walked into our house, and I went, ‘I think our family's full.’ My wife had a really rough labor, and she's just walked in the door, and I'm not going to share this news with her because if she still wants four kids, I'm ready to be the bad guy, not in this moment anyways.”  

He chuckled, “So I kept to myself, but it was about a week straight of me not just feeling the same, but feeling more and more strongly that way, and I finally shared it with her and she was like, ‘You know what I kind of feel the same way.’” 

He continued, “I'm having this memory, and a light bulb went off, and I went, how could her song not be that she completes our family? And so that's where ‘Full House’ came from. And I think Presley getting to have her song that came in a completely different context than Rowan's sets them, makes them different in a way that they can each have their own thing.” 

Backstage Country with Brett Young and Elaina Smith from June 16 to 20 is going to be a sweet, funny, and downright precious ride. Catch the 2.0 album here and be the first to listen to “Full House” when it drops on June 20.