Hootie & the Blowfish are apparently big fans of Scotty McCreery‘s new single, “Bottle Rockets.” The song, already in the Top 30, features the rock band’s debut single, “Hold My Hand,” in the song.
“We’ve got the summer anthem of 2025,” Hootie & the Blowfish write on social media, sharing what appears to be clips of a forthcoming new video.
It was McCreery who reached out to lead singer Darius Rucker, to see if they wanted to be part of “Bottle Rockets.” Not only did Rucker say yes, but Hootie & the Blowfish also went in and re-recorded their vocals for the song. In fact, the band was so eager to do their vocals, that they asked to record “Hold My Hand” for McCreery before the American Idol alum even had his part recorded.
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“Mark [Bryan], Dean [Felber] and Soni actually called us while we were in the studio tracking for the new EP and said, ‘We’re all together right now at the studio. Can we just record right now?’” McCreery recalls to Billboard. “We hadn’t even recorded the song yet. So, we got our band together real quick to find a tempo and a key, gave that to them, and they recorded their parts for ‘Bottle Rockets’ before ‘Bottle Rockets’ was ever even recorded.”
McCreery and Rucker are good friends, but McCreery admits he was still nervous to ask his fellow Grand Ole Opry member about Hootie & the Blowfish singing with him on “Bottle Rockets.”
“I knew I loved how the song came out, but I obviously couldn’t be sure what they would think until they heard it,” McCreery reveals. “I was very glad to hear each one of the guys loved ‘Bottle Rockets’ and were very open to the idea of getting back in the studio and being on this song with me. You should have seen the smile on my face when I got that text back.”
McCreery was on a writing retreat, presumably writing for his next project, when he originally had the idea for what became “Bottle Rockets.”
“We had a lot of songs started going into that retreat, but this song came out of a conversation,” McCreery remembers on Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen. “This was us reminiscing on previous summers, like ‘I remember my last summer of no job, no responsibilities and school was out. That was such a fun summer.’ And for me in the Carolinas, and I think for everybody worldwide, Hootie & the Blowfish were huge. It was just talking about those soundtracks of summer. I forget who played into it first, but the chords were kind of matching, and we were like, ‘Man, that’s kind of cool,’ so we just ran with it.”
McCreery, who is expecting his second child with his wife Gabi this fall, is already performing the song live, with his band taking over the parts of Hootie & the Blowfish for now. Find the song, and all of McCreery’s music and upcoming shows, at ScottyMcCreery.com.