Scotty McCreery knows he shows up carrying a lot of baggage. This is American Idol The kid, the pre-teen, shocked redhead who, at 17, won the reality singing competition back when it still mattered, and dropped the unmissable debut single 'I Love You This Big'. That reputation, polished and squeaky clean, tells some cynical country fans all they need to know about the kind of music he makes. Surely, Scotty McCreery can't do it hard Country.
McCreary, drinking a Michter's bourbon, two shots, shakes his head. Straightening into his chair at the bar of the Virgin Hotel on Nashville's Music Row, he says he's heard it all before.
“They think, 'Oh, I know this kid,' but they met me when I was a teenager,” he says, letting some rare warmth escape his cool veneer. “Hey, little Scotty's all grown up and he's a man and he likes to go for a cold beer on Friday with the boys.”
McCreery is 30 now and on his new album, Rise fall, this week, makes a convincing case that he can do traditional country — from barnyards to ballads — as well as some of the greats. Over 13 tracks, the North Carolina native sings about the rough passage of time, crises of conscience and faith, and drinking a lot of beer. It's a country album just as legit as Jamey Johnson's This lonely song — McCreery's favorite — or Garth Brooks' In piecesor by Randy Travis Storms of Life. McCreery just wants you to give him a chance.
“There are a lot of layers to me that people don't know about,” he says. “I hope they hear this record and get to know me.”
Rise fall, with 12 of its songs co-written by McCreery, offers more possibilities for that than an interview. Sitting down with McCreery, it's obvious that the stern American Idol Media training still holds its grip, at least when talking about the peaks and valleys implied in the album's title. He cites 2016, the year he left Universal Music Group Nashville, as the “worst year of my life,” but doesn't offer much about the past until we start bantering about his favorite time-killers—cigars and golf—and begins to relax.
“I don't like a cigar—I love a cigar,” he says. McCreery keeps a few hundred “sticks,” as he calls them, in a humidifier at his home in Raleigh and a smaller cache in a small desktop humidifier in his Nashville apartment. “My grandfather was always smoking a pipe and he had a book about birds, and I would sit next to him and we would look out of his hide and look at birds while he smoked. That'll be old Scooter one day, sitting in the den smoking my cigar.”
He also plays a lot of golf (he's a six handicap) and got an idea for one of those Rise fallThe most boring tracks while on the course with friends. 'And Countin' came from an offhand remark he made when asked what number of beers he was crushing: “Four and counting!” he called back and immediately thought, “There's a country song.”
“And I count,” as Rise fallThe rollicking opener “Little More Gone” and the irresistibly clever “Can't Pass the Bar” all have elements of Brooks' “Ain't Going Down” in their DNA. They're irresistible, good-time-drinking songs, and McCreery delivers them with a natural ease.
That wasn't the case in 2015, when he released what would be his final single for Mercury Nashville, the skinny sibling to “Southern Belle.” It was definitely not a Scotty McCreery song, and it was awkward.
“It was rock bottom there for a minute,” he says, nodding back to that worst year of his life.
“Before I had a Number One, it was like, 'What's the trend? Who are the hottest writers in town? How are we going to achieve radio success?' he says of the uncertain road that led to “Southern Belle,” a song he didn't write. “I think back to what was hot on the radio when I wasn't very successful and it wasn't stylistically what I do well. I could try to go that route to get a little more edgy, but man, I just want to sing a country song.''
McCreery did this by signing with Nashville indie Triple Tigers, doubling up on songwriting and releasing their 2018 album Change of Seasons, which included the country ballad “Five More Minutes”. It became his first Number One and eventually paved the way for Rise fall.
He sees the new album as coming at the perfect time, when country music and its storytelling tradition are flourishing. McCreery says he likes what both Beyoncé and Post Malone are doing to expand country audiences.
“There are more eyes than ever on country music, and if someone goes to listen to Beyoncé's new album — which I think is great — and somehow through the algorithm they find out who George Jones is or Merle Haggard? How cool is that?” says McCreery.
He's equally optimistic about the new AI-assisted song by Randy Travis, who recently joined him on stage to introduce McCreery as a member of the Grand Ole Opry. McCreery is concerned about unregulated AI voice technology and says he supported Tennessee's new ELVIS Act to protect musicians from unauthorized AI voice clones, but admits he cried when he heard Travis' “Where That Came From.”
“I think there should be limits today to AI and what they can do,” he says, “but for a unique situation…[that lets] Randy Travis got his voice back and he was there in the studio and he put his stamp on this song and he believes in the song, so by God, let's do it.”
The standout from his new album, “No Country for Old Men,” is a track that Travis himself could have recorded. Taking its title from the Cormac McCarthy novel and subsequent Coen Brothers film, it centers on a husky dude in a bar, drinking red label Bud and wondering where all the real country songs have gone. In lesser hands, it could be trite and frenetic, but McCreery imbues it with a certain sadness and disdain: “Those days are gone and they ain't coming back again/Ain't no country for old men,” he sings.
McCreery isn't quite the lyrical old man yet, but he often feels that way when he hangs out with his peers on the road. He started his career when he was 16 years old, which makes him a veteran among singers who may have recently become stars on TikTok.
“It's a strange feeling,” he says. “I'm the guy who, professionally at least, does it most of the time, but I'm also the new guy.”
As Rise fall suggests, he's also the confident one. Draining the last of his bourbon, McCreary prepares to return to his nearby apartment to watch the Carolina Hurricanes play on television. Maybe even smoke a cigar.
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/scotty-mccreery-sings-real-country-on-rise-and-fall-1235018234/