Multi-Platinum superstar, Parker McCollum, has released his self-titled fifth studio album, PARKER MCCOLLUM, out now. The 14-track album sees McCollum at his most authentic and artistically unhindered. Produced by Frank Lidell and Eric Masse, each track pushed McCollum to create with a depth and at a pace that challenged him to be at his absolute best.
“I would hang my hat on this record seven days a week…” -Parker McCollum for Associated Press
LISTEN HERE: PARKER MCCOLLUM
The album was recorded in a seven-day period at the famed Power Station recording studio in New York City. McCollum set out with the intention to let this album reflect the most raw and authentic version of himself as an artist. The collection includes a varied but cohesive selection of material – revisiting his “Permanent Headphones” which he wrote at 15, digs deep into dark storytelling with “My Blue,” and calling on his friend and fellow Texan Cody Johnson for a cover of Danny O’Keefe’s “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues.” Top to bottom the album is Parker McCollum on full display.
“[PARKER MCCOLLUM] is permeated with Lone Star State soul and grit, an album with not only the potential to further scale McCollum’s career, but to peel back new layers of his personality and artistry.” – Billboard
PARKER MCCOLLUM Track Listing:
1. “My Blue” (Parker McCollum, Scooter Carusoe)
2. “Big Sky” (Parker McCollum, Charlie Magnone, Jarrod Morris)
3. “Solid Country Gold” (Parker McCollum, Jon Randall, Brad Warren, Brett Warren)
4. “Watch Me Bleed” (Parker McCollum, Lori McKenna, Mat Kearney)
5. “Killin’ Me” (Parker McCollum, Monty Criswell, Randy Rogers)
6. “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” featuring Cody Johnson (Danny O’Keefe)
7. “Sunny Days” (Parker McCollum, Tony Lane, Lee Miller, Randy Montana)
8. “Permanent Headphones” (Parker McCollum)
9. “New York Is On Fire” (Parker McCollum, Nick Bockrath, Adam Wright)
10. “Come On” (Parker McCollum, Hillary Lindsey, Lori McKenna, Liz Rose)
11. “What Kinda Man” (Parker McCollum, Natalie Hemby, Jeremy Spillman)
12. “Hope That I’m Enough” (Parker McCollum, Jessi Alexander, Matt Jenkins)
13. “Enough Rope” (Chris Knight, Austin Cunningham)
14. “My Worst Enemy” (Parker McCollum, Wade Bowen)
AUDIO CUT X CUT:
“My Blue is a song that I wrote in 2019 while possibly under the influence. And I actually wrote the very, very last verse about looking out the window pane “with an apple in his sack.” It just completely fell out of me and made it up. And then the rest of the song kind of happened the same way. I don’t know who Jackie is. I don’t know where this story came from. It just kind of fell out of my head one night when I had been having probably too good of a time and was sitting around picking on a guitar trying to write a song and this song came out and ended up being really dark and really emotional and turned out to be a really special story song which is something I hadn’t done in a while.”
“Big Sky is a song I wrote with my keys player Charlie Magnone and a good buddy of mine Jared Morris who was out on the road with us, just kind of hanging and writing and creating and jamming during the day when we weren’t on stage. And man this song kind of again just kind of fell out of us and you know we just kind of started trying to write that story that you know was a little bit abstract and didn’t exactly give away what it was all about right away and the longer we wrote, the weirder we tried to get with it. So that’s Big Sky.”
“Solid Country Gold I actually wrote where I’m sitting right now with John Randall and the Warren Brothers and just sitting around, you know, trying to write songs here at the ranch. And I didn’t have a title for Solid Country Gold, I didn’t have anything like that. John Randall was just kind of picking on guitar and started, you know, spitting out a couple lines. And then, you know, we started talking about Guy Clark and Rodney Crowell and John Prine and all these, you know, guys I’ve looked up to since I was just a little kid. And I hate name-dropping artists and songs, but this one felt so cool to do it, I just couldn’t pass it up.”
“Watch Me Bleed, me and Lori McKenna wrote that when I was on tour in Boston in a little tiny green room backstage. And we’d written a song, and then we were kind of sitting there, and the first song was okay, we were just kind of messing around. And I started playing in the tuning of DADGAD, which is a certain style that the guitars tune to, and she always plays in, and she kind of showed me the one, the five, and the four and everything. And we just started playing around and started singing that melody to the chorus and loved the melody, so we kind of tried to write just a terribly desperate heartbreak love song.”
“Killing Me actually I wrote here at the ranch as well. I had Randy Rogers and Monty Criswell out here just kind of running around hunting, driving fast, BS-ing around and writing songs in the evenings. And we were actually in the middle of another song, and I started playing that melody just kind of out of nowhere, and I stopped both of them, and I said ‘this melody, I just don’t know where this just came from but we got to chase it.’ And so we kind of got into the “every move you make is Killing Me,” and just loved whenever that just kind of fell out of my brain and chased that whole idea and turned out to be a great song on record.”
“Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues is one of my favorite songs ever. I love Danny O’Keefe, I used to listen to that song on real, real late nights back in what we call the van days before we had tour buses. It’s a song that’s always stuck with me. For several years now, I’ve always wanted to hear Cody Johnson sing that song. I think he’s such an incredible vocalist and I love his voice. I think it’s so unique and it’s so authentic to him. I was actually pretty nervous. I texted him one day when I was driving back home to Houston. And I just said, screw it, I’m gonna text him and ask him if he’ll sing on the song with me. And man, he shot right back and said he’d love to do it. And so now we have a feature with Cody Johnson on the record.”
“Sunny Days is a song, really, that I wrote just kind of sitting around thinking about some of the greatest times and days of my life. Some days that I look back on often. And every time I realize that they are absolutely never ever coming back, breaks my heart into a million pieces at least once a day. I’ve always been trying to write a song kind of around that idea and you know, it just so happens one day it popped out and it’s called ‘Sunny Days.”
“Permanent Headphones is a song I wrote when I was 15 years old. I’d cut it very, very early on in the first recordings that I ever did in my career when I was about 19 or 20 years old living in Austin. Man, it’s one that fans always ask about and always ask me to recut. And so we were recording this album and my producer, Frank Liddell, just kept begging me to record that song. And it was from so long ago, I just kinda, didn’t really wanna go down that road and take my mind there. And finally he talked me into it, and we cut it. I think it turned out great.”
“New York Is On Fire is really cool how that song happened. I was flying into New York City to cut the album, and it was October and the leaves were just, I mean, electric. It literally looked like the Central Park was on fire. And my hotel was right across the street from Central Park, so I was right out my window every day that I was in New York. And I had kind of said it like, “man, it looks like New York is on fire.” And so we were in the studio the second day and me and Adam Wright and Nick Bachroth were kind of toying with an idea, and I started singing this melody, and then it just kind of happened. We were sitting on the floor and wrote ‘New York Is On Fire.”
“Come On’ is a song I wrote with the love junkies: Hillary Lindsey, Lori McKenna, and Liz Rose – three of my favorite songwriters in the history of country music. All so incredibly talented and have had so much success, so anytime I get to write with them, it’s quite an honor for me. And they were at my house in Texas, and you know, were writing a few songs and just kind of messing around jamming on guitars, and I started playing this little guitar lick that kind of led us to this melody of the chorus and then once we had the chorus, we kind of wrote the verses. I take a lot of inspiration from my wife, Hallie Ray, and how incredible of a woman she is and what she does for me in my life, and I feel like this song is a pretty good representation of that.”
“What Kind of Man is a song I’d actually written the first verse and the chorus just kind of freestyle, and it just kind of fell out exactly how it is in the song is how it was the first time I ever just spit it out. I just kind of felt, you know, like an honest feeling, certainly the way I feel about Halle Ray whenever I was first kind of chasing after her a few years ago. I’d written kind of the first half of it, and I had Natalie Hemby and Jeremy Spillman over at the house one day and I said, ‘hey guys, I wrote this. If you guys want to help me finish it, I’d love to have you on the song.’ And they just knocked it out of the park, that second verse. And I’d just been turkey hunting in Kansas and found this old picture of this Union Valley church I’d taken on my phone. And it just kind of all morphed into one thing. And it wasn’t very intentional, which a lot of the time the best songs aren’t.”
“Hope That I’m Enough is another song I wrote about my wife Halle Rae. We were actually laying on the couch at our house, and our dog Ruger was laying next to her and she said out loud, ‘Ruger, I can feel you breathing.’ And I was sitting there playing guitar, and I just started singing out loud, “I can feel you breathing, sleep cause you’re so tired.” And just that song just kind of, you know, immediately felt like it was something that needed to be written. So I’d written quite a bit of it, and then I had Jesse Alexander and Matt Jenkins over at the house, and I kind of played them the first, you know, little verse and hook for them. And you can just see their brains kind of be like, ‘oh yes.’ So, it didn’t take much effort to finish that song, and just the good ones kind of make it easy on you.”
“Enough Rope is a song that Chris Knight wrote very early on in his career. It was a song that from the time I was in junior high, I was absolutely in love with. And when I was very, very first started out playing songs and trying to write songs and playing little open mics and stuff, I would always play ‘Enough Rope.’ I’ve played that song a hundred million times. I’ve played it at a thousand shows back in the day. And it’s a song I’ll still, if I’m around a campfire or just sitting at the house or whatever playing for somebody, I’ll always play ‘Enough Rope.’ It’s one of my favorite songs of all time. We actually cut that song, messing around, kind of on a random day. They just so happened to be recording, and then when we put the record together, they made it.”
“My Worst Enemy is a song I’d actually been sitting around trying to write a song for one of my best buds, Koe Wetzel. And me and him kind of have a lot of the same feelings about, you know, what we’ve been doing the last several years in the music business and kind of the self reflection of it all. And I kind of started to write it with him in mind, and then I was like, ‘man, this is actually pretty good. I think I’ll save it for myself.’ And Wade Boehm was actually on his way to my house when I wrote that first verse or first couple of verses in chorus. And he walked in and I played it for him and he just kind of, ‘you just wrote that right now.’ And so we sat down and finished it, and it seemed like the perfect way to end the record.”
This past week McCollum returned to New York to promote the album with performances on The Kelly Clarkson Show, TODAY Show with Jenna and Friends, and Fox & Friends.
Recently, McCollum kicked off his PARKER MCCOLLUM Tour on June 26th in Virginia Beach. He is joined on this tour by fellow Country hitmakers including Ashley Cooke, Corey Smith, Hudson Westbrook, Kameron Marlowe, Laci Kaye Booth and Vincent Mason.
Visit, ParkerMcCollum.com for additional information including upcoming show dates and tickets.
About Parker McCollum:
Singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Parker McCollum has reached the ranks of a bona fide Country music superstar by connecting with fans and critics alike through his relatable and authentic sound. His most recent album, Never Enough (released on May 12, 2023 via MCA Nashville), is a statement collection of music that cemented his status
as one of Country’s strongest new voices. His massive Burn It Down Tour throughout 2024 saw McCollum performing at some of the most iconic venues around the nation and appearing at Country music’s top music festivals. McCollum has been named an ‘Artist to Watch’ by Rolling Stone, Billboard, SiriusXM, CMT, RIAA, and more with American Songwriter noting, “The Texas native teeters on the edge of next-level superstardom.” Music Row listed McCollum as their 2021 Breakout Artist of the Year and Apple also included him as one of their all-genre “Up Next Artists” Class of 2021. A dedicated road warrior, McCollum made his debut at the famed Grand Ole Opry in 2021 and has sold out major concert venues around the U.S. In March 2022, McCollum made his debut at RODEOHOUSTON to a sold-out crowd with over 73,000 tickets sold. In 2025, McCollum played his third consecutive sold out show at Houston’s signature event. In 2022, McCollum earned his first ACM Award for New Male Artist of the Year, took home “Breakthrough Video of the Year” (a fully fan-voted honor) at the 2022 CMT Music Awards and scored two back-to-back CMA Awards nominations (2022 & 2023) for New Artist of the Year. He was nominated for a CMA Award for “Song of the Year” (2024) for his explosive Platinum hit “Burn It Down” – marking his third straight nomination. McCollum scored his second ACM Award for “Visual Media of the Year” for his music video for “Burn It Down.” The hit single marks his fourth consecutive #1 –
following his other chart toppers “Pretty Heart,” “To Be Loved By You,” and “Handle On You.” McCollum has just released his self-titled fifth studio album, PARKER MCCOLLUM, which is an artistic achievement for this legacy making Country superstar that shows him at his best. PARKER MCCOLLUM is available now.
Media Contacts:
Marcel Pariseau – Marcel@truepublicrelations.com
Taylor Bailey – taylor@truepublicrelations.com
Cindy Finke – Cindy.Finke@umusic.com
