Riley Green's career in country music has exploded. He is a young superstar. Green has the voice, the looks, the charm, and the songwriting chops. There is a bit more to his philosophy of crafting tunes than just putting the words and the notes together, per Country Now. He was a guest recently on the Zach Sang Show and he talked about this topic.
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Green Harkens Back to Classic Singers Like George Jones and Merle Haggard
He clarified his songwriting process like this. "The storytelling to me, I listen back to Merle Haggard and George Jones and all that and there's not a lot of complicated stuff in there. They're just telling a story and that's what I always did early on. So now I think that when I'm in a writer's room and I'm with a couple of the guys, I'm kind [of] stingy about that. I go, 'well, this is how I would say it. This is how that old guy sitting at the Chevron right there down the road from my farm would say it in the morning when my Granddaddies were playing dominoes and smoking cigarettes.'"
That is why people easily relate to Green's songs. They have straightforward themes and messages that reflect their everyday lives that they can identify with. Nothing fancy or complex.
One of Green's Hits Was "There Was This Girl"
He discussed that track. "Well, when I signed a record deal, the amount of excitement that the label had for 'There Was This Girl' told me that it might could [go No.1].. And there is a little bit of that song that sounds like a radio song. I always think about something that sounds like a hit to me as something that makes you want to roll the window down and turn it up. You're driving down a road on a nice day and that song has that, whatever that thing is."
The Reception of a Song Can Be Unpredictable
"But then there's also songs that I didn't think was going to be a big song. 'I Wish Grandpas Never Died.' Just again, I wrote as a tribute to my granddaddies and to see the response to that song, still every night, it's the biggest moment in my show, and it wasn't a number one at Country Radio, I think it peaked at 11, but it's triple platinum today. So it's crazy. You measure it that way and you want every song to go number one. But also what really matters is what fans think of it."
