Ashley McBryde has a hit single at radio, with “What If We Don’t.” The song, from her forthcoming new Wild album, is written by McBryde, along with Terri Jo Box and Randall Clay.
“What If We Don’t” says in part, “What if we don’t? What if we don’t? / What if we stop fighting what we know we both want? / We might regret how far we let it go / What if we don’t?” It’s a song that, for McBryde, feels personal.
“For me, this song brings about being at peace with answers you’ll never get,” the singer explains. “And whether you chose to do this or that, the other decision, the one that you didn’t make, you still live with those consequences. Things that hurt don’t just stay. Things that hurt turn into a lyric. The lyric turns into a melody. The melody turns into a song. The song goes on a record. And now, we have created a bridge from hurt to heal. And it did it for us to write it, and it did it for us as a band to record it. And now it gets to do that for other people when they listen to it.”
The video for “What If You Don’t” is based on a real-life moment McBryde experienced, one that still haunts her today.
“The moment when you decide to take a risk or not take a risk, or make the left or make the right, that moment can be expanded,” McBryde says. “We can hold that feeling for three and a half minutes. And whatever your decision is, you have to live with the consequences either way. But, more about that later. Right now, it’s just the question: what if we do, what if we don’t. For this long, everything is [that] anything can happen.”
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Ashley McBryde Talks About Her ‘Wild’ Album
Wild, McBryde’s fifth record, is produced by John Osborne. It’s also the one that she is the most proud to have created.
“We brought an entirely new approach to the studio every day, where we cut what spoke to us in that moment. No plan for an album, no timeline, no pressure – just me, John, the boys and a feeling,” McBryde explains. “These songs that have lived with us for years, and new songs that found their way to us and immediately felt like mine, they all started to outline the shape of a story I knew too well. They fell together to tell my story; I think that’s what happens when you let the Wild back in.”
Ashley McBryde’s ‘Wild’ Tracklist
1. Rattlesnake Preacher (Randall Clay)
2. Arkansas Mud (Ashley McBryde, Jessie Jo Dillon, Chris Tompkins)
3. Water in the River (Randall Clay, Blue Foley, Roger Hodges)
4. Creosote (Ashley McBryde, Lisa Carver)
5. Bottle Tells Me So (Ashley McBryde, Shelly Fairchild, Terri Jo Box)
6. What If We Don’t (Ashley McBryde, Terri Jo Box, Randall Clay)
7. Lines In The Carpet (Lauren Hungate, Caroline Watkins, Lori McKenna)
8. Behind Bars (Jeff Hyde, Jessie Alexander, Jon Randall)
9. Hand Me Downs (Ashley McBryde, Jessie Jo Dillon, Laura Veltz)
10. Wild (Jeremy Spillman, Makayla Lynn, Matraca Berg)
11. Ten to Midnight (Ashley McBryde, Travis Meadows)