Thanks so much for listening to Big Machine Radio. Hey there, I'm Becca, and I can't believe it.
Brett Young's brand new album. It's his sophomore album called Ticket to L.A.
It is finally here. I feel like I've been talking to Brett for a long time about this album,
getting little drips and drops about how the album was coming along, what we could expect.
But now we've got Brett telling us about everything you want to know about this album.
He'll take us inside the writer's room. We're going to hear some of the behind the scenes
stories, and we are going to play the entire album now on the Ticket to L.A. album release
special. And I say we dive right in. So, you know, first of all, Brett, your first album,
I know that it was a lot of ballads and there were a lot of songs about broken hearts because
it reflected where you were at. So tell people what they can expect on this second album.
I think the first album was a really good way for me to introduce myself to people.
I think that it was extremely honest, personal and vulnerable.
And I think it's unfortunately a little bit easier to do that when you're sad,
when you're at that place in your life. And I was. Me and my girl were broken up and I was
also new to Nashville and hadn't built a huge friend base yet. And so I think that made it
really easy for me to go a little bit dark and be a little bit extremely vulnerable, really.
And so I think when you go there, when you get that personal and that honest, I think it's a
really good way for people to start to get to know you. You know, the risk you run is that
as they're getting to know you, they think, oh, I'm going to get to know you. I'm going to get to
think that that's who you are as a person, that you're always that way. And for me, it just reflects
a place in my life. And so that's why it's going to be so nice, you know, with this second record
to have it reflect where I'm at now, which is a very uplifting, happy place in my life. And with
the second record, we're doing the same thing. I made sure that it's vulnerable and it's honest.
It's just coming from a completely different stage in my life.
Well, by the way, I want to say congratulations on your wedding. You married your longtime
girlfriend, Taylor Mills. And I can tell you, for anybody who has not heard the album yet,
you're about to. But one thing you're going to notice, there's a lot more uptempo stuff on this.
I know, Brett, for a while, people were kind of thinking of you as the ballad guy.
So talk to me about the fact that there is a little bit more tempo to this second album.
The ballads are the easiest. That's my wheelhouse. And with the first record,
you know, it's always about picking the best songs. So I think rightfully so when we're
picking from every song that I've ever written, 90 percent ballads probably picking for the first
record. And luckily, there were just ones that worked at Country Radio. With the second one,
only am I getting in the room with experienced, successful writers and me being in this happy
place in my life. Yeah, there's a lot more tempo, not intentionally. It just happens naturally.
But also even some of the like down tempo or sad songs have this like peppy feel to them. And I
don't think that's anything that you could like seek out intentionally. It's just it's hard to
hide that in a song when that's where you're at in your life. And so, you know, it still sounds
like a Brett Young record, but I think there's a very different feel to it. There is indeed. And
you know what I say? Let's go ahead and start playing the songs on the album. We're going to
the title track, Ticket to L.A. And I understand there's something kind of interesting about this
song and how it unfolded. So tell me about writing Ticket to L.A. with Zach Crowell and John Knight
and why you chose to make it the title track for your new album. The first thing is that John Knight
and Zach Crowell were on their way to meet me on the road on the Lady Antebellum tour to write with
me. And their layover in St. Louis got delayed a long time. And so they were sitting there talking
and they had this idea. Essentially, every like meet cute is about a bar, it seems like.
They're like, why is there not a song about meeting a girl in an airport? So they had that
idea and I loved it. But the other thing was the idea of if you get delayed, you're held captive,
like you're stuck there. And I told them and we all agreed if we're going to do this,
it's going to be an undertaking. We're not going to write this one in three hours because this is
going to be a very specific story and it's going to be hard to cram in three and a half minutes.
And we all agreed. And before we even started putting words to it, we really had to narrow
down exactly what the story was. And I think the place that we got that made me excited to start
but he never told her that the whole time. That was the part of it that made me excited. Like,
this girl is going to assume the whole time that this guy is sitting here talking to her because
they're both delayed on their way to Los Angeles. And she's not going to realize they're not until
she gets up to go get on the flight and he doesn't go with her. And that's what made me excited to
write it. And you know, there are a lot of like really cool details. Obviously, we picked L.A.
because I'm from Southern California. But that flight from New York to Los Angeles,
every businessman in the world does that way more than they'd like to admit. And I don't know,
there were so many reasons why I wanted to write the song. And when we finished it, it was really,
one of my favorites on the record. And you know, the first record was self-titled. So
for the first time, we're naming an album and we've made it so much about who I am being from
Southern California and how that's affected my music. It just seemed like the right fit for the
title track. Makes sense. This is the title track from Brett Young's brand new album.
It's Ticket to L.A. on Big Machine Radio.