It was 13 years ago that a teenaged Scotty McCreery won America’s hearts and “American Idol” with his unabashedly country voice that was mature well beyond his years.
Now 30, the North Carolina native is married to his high school crush, Gabi, and father to their son, Merrick Avery McCreery.
He’s also a Grand Ole Opry member with six No. 1 songs to his credit. His most recent two singles—”Cab in a Solo” and “Fall of Summer”—were most added to country radio the week they were released. In May, he released his chart-topping fifth studio album Rise & Fall, an artful album that reflects the depth of McCreery’s evolution as an artist, his penchant for storytelling, and his continued dedication to country music.
“It feels very me right now, and so I’m excited,” McCreery said of Rise & Fall. “I wanted to capture the feeling that we had when we wrote these songs. I’ve never had more fun writing an album than I did with this one.”
Scotty McCreery Wrote Album ‘Rise & Fall’ on a Songwriting Retreat
McCreery took a handful of his favorite co-writers to his house in the North Carolina mountains to hunker down and work on the album. He said it was as much “hanging out as it was working out butts off,” but at least they could do it sitting by the fire.
“We had our guitars, we had some drinks, we had cigars,” he said. “It felt like the old days, the old days of writing songs. It was a fun way to make it. I wanted to capture that in the studio, too.”
McCreery co-wrote 12 of the 13 tracks, staying true to his traditional country core. The men wrote nine of the songs at their songwriting retreat. Frank Rogers, Aaron Eshuis, and Derek Wells, McCreery’s longtime collaborators, produced the album. Rise & Fall is split between autobiographical songs that reflect McCreery’s life as a husband and father, as well as tracks that require him to play the role of the brokenhearted when he sings them.
“I have enough daddy and baby songs that I could have made three records full of those,” McCreery laughed. He added, “I didn’t want the whole album to be that.”
“I Have Enough Daddy and Baby Songs That I Could Have Made Three Records”
McCreery started writing “Love Like This” the night Avery was born. The album ends with “Porch,” which concludes with a note to Avery in the last verse.
“I just felt like it was a natural way for where I’m at right now in life to end this chapter and to end this project,” he said. “There’s plenty of songs in this record that are me playing the character for the first time. Some of my favorite songs in country music are the heartbreak songs. I hadn’t really had those in my catalog. And, I wanted to write some of those too.”
The challenge helped him grow as a songwriter. Since much of his music has been his story, making Rise & Fall taught him to weave real-life and creative storytelling together in a cohesive way.
“That probably put another little wrinkle in my songwriting brain as opposed to just writing from my everyday life,” he explained.
While McCreery sounded older than his years when he launched his career on “American Idol,” he laughs that he now feels that way.
“I feel much more like an old man than I do that kid nowadays,” he said. “I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and I didn’t know what the world had in store for me. At this point in my career, I’ve seen just about everything. You can easily get jaded, but for me it’s like, ‘Now, I know what to expect.’ And it still excites me.”
(Photo by Catherine Powell/FilmMagic)
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