One thing you immediately learn upon following artists is that they record a lot of songs. Sometimes, they're just rough sketches of songs that they add to or take bits and pieces of later. However, other artists can flesh out entire records in fast succession because their vision is so firm. Ultimately, it's really just about exorcising the idea rather than let it fade in the abysses of their minds. As you could imagine, Luke Combs has been recording a lot of songs for that lauded album he's calling his best. However, it seems like the narrowing down process is going to be an arduous one. He's currently sitting on a wild amount of songs to pick from his vault.
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Luke Combs Says He's Sifting Through Dozens of Songs for His Upcoming Album
Recently, Luke went on the MeatEater podcast with Steve Rinella to talk about hunting and fatherhood. Obviously, though, people want to know about the music and he's happy to oblige. Combs reveals that he's sitting on plenty of material. It's just about picking what's worth keeping at this point. "I'm at the point now, I'm about to go in the studio for the first session on cutting my next record. So I'm trying to cut probably, anywhere from like, in a worst case scenario four or best case six," he explains.
"I would say right now, songs that are in serious contention to make the record, I mean like forty to fifty? You got to whittle it down," Combs adds. "Then you're getting into like, it's like heavyweight fights because all the songs you really like all of them."
Thankfully, Luke won't be taking the Morgan Wallen approach, making his audience sift through 30+ songs to try and find where the goods are. Ultimately, he feels like 15 is the sweet spot for a proper album. However, Combs does understand why artists are bulking their projects up in the streaming era. I think country is the first genre that has really started putting out these BIG hit records where there's a bunch of songs on them," he says. "[Morgan Wallen's] next record is 37 songs I think... I think Zach Bryan did 36, you know, and it's a brilliant strategy because your album sales are based off of stream equivalents.
