Chris Young is headlining a ten-day songwriter festival. The Tennessee native has just been announced as the headliner for Island Hopper Songwriter Fest, kicking off on September 19, and running through September 28. Young will join numerous other talented songwriters, including Danny Myrick, Sarah Buxton, LOCASH and more, for the event, which takes place at various locations around Fort Myers, Florida.

It’s fitting that Young will headline a songwriters festival, since he has written several of his own hits, including “Gettin’ You Home (The Black Dress Song),” which also became his first No. 1 hit. He’s also penned “I’m Comin’ Over,” “Losing Sleep,” “Looking for You” and more.

One song that Young didn’t write is his current single, “‘Til the Last One Dies.” Instead, the song was written by Ben Hayslip, Seth Mosley, and Jordan Walker. Still, Young didn’t need writing credit on it to know that it was a big hit.

“I just thought the message on this one was so perfect,” Young tells Audacy . “I went to every single one of my friends, male, female, whatever, that were married or in a relationship, and they were all just blown away by this song, so I was like, ‘Okay, we gotta go with this one first. It’s just too perfect.’”

It was one of Young’s friends who sent “‘Til the Last One Dies” to Young.

“I had a friend pitch me the song,” Young recalls to iHeart. “This is one of the few that’s on the record that I was not a co-writer on, but got a chance to sing it and produce it with my buddy, Andy [Sheridan]. I think if I was going to say why I was drawn to this song, not only is it a very new way to say ‘I love you’ to somebody in song form,. My favorite line is the line leading up to the hook, saying that he bought  ‘A dozen roses …11 real ones, one fake one, and I’ll love you ’til the last one dies.’”

“‘Til the Last One Dies” is the debut single on Young’s new album, his first on Black River Entertainment. A talented songwriter, the Grand Ole Opry member hints that there are other songs on his new record that he didn’t write as well.

“It’s not the only one that’s going to be on the project that I wasn’t a writer on,” Young tells Country 102.5. “I’ve had songs before that have been singles that I wasn’t a writer on. I obviously sang and produced this one. But I found it. Someone played it for me right after these guys wrote it, and I was just like, ‘Oh God. That’s really, really good. I gotta cut that.”

Young’s new album is very much a new chapter for him also, after spending the first almost two decades on RCA Nashville.

“I think this is really just about having a whole lot of freedom,” Young tells Audacy. “The ability to, if I wanna do a song where I’ve just got steel guitar all over it, that’s totally fine. If I want to do something where I’m standing in the studio with two of my good friends, stomping with a mic set up next to our feet to get part of a track that we want like a stomp clap thing, and all of us just like laughing, telling jokes and goofing off, that’s totally okay.”

“You get to just make art,” he adds. “It’s never perfect. It’s always abandoned, but you work as hard on it as you possibly can.”

Tickets for Young’s performance at Island Hopper Songwriter Fest will be available beginning on Friday, June 27. More information about the vent is available at IslandHopperFest.com. Find “‘Til the Last One Dies” and all of Young’s music and upcoming shows at ChrisYoungCountry.com.