Inside Joe Nichols’ Music: The Stories Behind 3 Songs
Joe Nichols is joining Kelly Ford as co-host of Backstage Country to celebrate the upcoming release of his eleventh album, Honky Tonks and Country Songs, on October 25. Nichols will be offering a behind-the-scenes look at his creative process. He will also share the stories and inspirations behind his songs, like how he thought to do a duet with Annie Bosko, which of his songs he considered to be “very pop,” and how awesome one of his music producers was.
“Better Than You”
“Better Than You” is Nichols’s first single from his new album, Honky Tonks and Country Songs or as Ford called it, “future number one.” Nichols joked, “Well, first I’d like to say, thank you for jinxing it.”
A duet with Annie Bosko, Nichols shared that he loved the song because it’s written to be a duet and there’s an opportunity to make it special, with the right singer. “When I heard this song, I was like, ‘This is going to be great.’ We just got to find the right girl for this.” He added, “And so a lot of the acts we thought about were pretty young. I’m not a young guy anymore.” He chuckled, “And I had to be kind of creepy to sing with a 20-year-old.”
How did he end up doing the song with Bosko? “So, we looked around and I happened to have labelmates. And they said to me, ‘What about Annie?’ I heard some of her stuff. I saw her play live. And I thought, ‘Man, she really engages the crowd.’” Joe Nichols also believed that the song was more believable with the two of them. “Her voice sounds great. She was very open to doing it several times to make sure it blended just right. I think that’s what you got to have, you got to have dedication and make sure it’s done when it’s done. And she was willing to do that.”
“Good Day for Living”
“Good Day for Living” is the title track of his 2022 album. He admitted that on the last day of tracking for the album, they still didn’t have a working title for it. After cutting songs, ballads and tempos, he felt there was still something missing aside from the album name.
“We were missing one thing, and it was something really fun, something not too serious, but something like, what’s a guy got to do to get a girl in this town?” He added, “So trying to cover all bases, we kind of went through the pile of songs that were top of our list the day we cut them, and we came across a song ‘Good Day for Living,’ that the producers had already played for me.”
Nichols admitted the song sounded “very pop,” but he was willing to try it. “The funny thing about my voice is that even if it’s super pop, my voice kind of brings it back to country a little bit.”
“The Impossible”
Joe Nichols shared that many artists were interested in “The Impossible,” but he knew as soon as he heard it that it could be a really special song. “We had no idea what to be my first single until we heard it finalized out of the studio and thought, ‘Man, what a great introduction.’”
He also gave credit to the song’s producer, Brent Rowan. “He is such a good producer about not making anything that sounds dated.” He admitted, “’The Impossible’ was such a well-produced song that I think it still stands up 20-something years later.”
Joe Nichols’s latest album Honky Tonks and Country Songs is coming out on October 25. Pre-save it now at joenichols.com.
