Cody Johnson loves to be known as a songwriter. But Johnson has a specific way he likes to write, and it isn’t the way a lot of people write tunes.
“I’ve tried to write songs on a computer and type, and it’s just so frustrating,” Johnson shares. “I wind up with a pen and a paper. I like being able to erase and scratch out, and then later look back at the page, and you can see how the song was written. It’s just too nice and neat on the computer for me. I’d like to look back and see that product of where we scribbled out lines and rewrote lines and then wound up back at the same line. It’s pretty cool.
“I like having something tangible to hold on to,” he adds. “I’ve got all my old songs that I’ve written down in my safe, so, hopefully someday somebody will look at that and think it’s really cool.”
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Cody Johnson’s Current Single, “The Fall”
Johnson currently has a Top 40 single with “The Fall.” The song, written by Bobby Pinson, Jeremy Stover and Ray Fulcher, is from Johnson’s latest Leather Deluxe Edition album.
“’The Fall’ is one of those songs that I feel like should be on a movie soundtrack,” Johnson says. “It should be on a movie soundtrack because it paints that picture of — you can see the struggle to get to the success. And I think for me, I picture guys like Michael Jordan. You see all the work and all the tired and the angry and the tears and the blood, and you get to the successful moment. And you can even apply that to relationships too, but it has that overall movie quality about it.”
“The Fall” follows his latest No. 1 hit, “I’m Gonna Love You,” which he released with Carrie Underwood. He didn’t write “The Fall,” but it sounded exactly like something he would have written, which is why he included it on his record.
“When I heard the song, it sounded like the story of a lot of different people,” Johnson tells Billboard. “It is kind of cowboy, and it is authentic to me, as ‘The ride was worth the fall,’ you know. ‘I’d climb back on again.’ But it also has this relativity to a lot of other different people and their story. It’s a very unique thing that I couldn’t ignore.”
Cody Johnson’s Next Album
Johnson is hard at work on his next record, one he says might be a bit surprising for his loyal fans.
“I don’t want to go off the beaten path,” Johnson hints. “But I do want to do something just a little bit spicier. You’ve got to follow up. You hit a home run. Next time you come up to the plate, people are kind of expecting a homerun. And I feel that pressure. It’s a good pressure. That kind of pressure is a privilege to know that I’m in a position where I can really go hit it out of the park again. So definitely working on a new one already. I would say next year be expecting something.”
Find “The Fall” and all of Johnson’s music and upocoming shows at CodyJohnsonMusic.com.
Photo Credit: Chris Johnson