In a recent interview, Parker McCollum discusses the difficulty in writing songs with a happy ending, and who in the industry does it really well.
“The whole record is super vulnerable. But ya know, Hallie Ray was always asking me, ya know, are you ever going to write songs that end happy? Which I’ve never liked those songs. And so there’s a couple on this record, this one included [“What Kinda Man”], that, you know, kind of have a happy resolution. So but they’re not cheesy, or, you know, I think it’s said in a way that still allows a song to have quite a bit of integrity. So I think the songwriting is good. And that goes a long way being able to– That’s a hard thing to do, have a happy ending and still have the song, Ya know, Tyler Childers does it really well. And so there’s a way to do it. It’s not as easy, I think, as making it go terribly wrong.“
