Dan + Shay have a new song coming out this week. The duo announces on social media the release of “Always Gonna Be,” which is the first song Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney wrote together, after their four-month separation last year.
In a hand-written note, Dan + Shay share more details about their lengthy split, and their decision to reunite and make more music.
“In March of 2022, we met to discuss the future of the band,” Dan + Shay write. “One of the most important things we talked about that night was our responsibility to our fans who had been with us through every high and low of the past 10 years. Whether we decided to call it quits, or dive headfirst into a new chapter, we felt that we owed it to our fans to make peace with the idea of Dan + Shay in our hearts. No matter the outcome, the music we created together would live on forever, and we wanted to be able to celebrate that rather than look back in vain.
“The moment that it all clicked and we knew we had to keep going was when we reflected on what our music has meant to people,” they continue. “When you’re running a million miles an hour, sometimes it’s hard to see in real time, but right then it had never been more clear. We specifically said things like, ‘Dan + Shay is always gonna be a tattoo on somebody’s arm,’ ‘Dan + Shay is always gonna be a first dance at somebody’s wedding.’ We left that night with a fresh perspective on our career, and a genuine closeness in our relationship.”
Dan + Shay also vowed to never spend so much time apart again, a promise they made good on the very next day, which resulted in “Always Gonna Be.”
“One of the goals we set was to spend more time together, like we did early on, so we decided to write the next day,” Dan + Shay recall. “We sat down with an acoustic guitar, and out of the sky fell a song called ‘Always Gonna Be.’ It was the first song we wrote for the album, and will always be one of the most special. We are releasing it Thursday at 11:00 PM CT, and truly can’t wait for you to hear it, Thanks for all the love and kindness. It means more than we could ever put into words.”
ALWAYS GONNA BE | THURS 11 PM CT pic.twitter.com/cgayk0Nuci
— Dan + Shay (@DanAndShay) July 31, 2023
In a recent performance on the Today Show, Dan + Shay shared more details on what led them to stop speaking to each other for four months, which began with the pandemic.
“That was a tough couple of years for us,” Smyers said. “We’d been a band for almost ten years at that point. You throw COVID in there, which was a crazy couple of years. And being in a duo is very difficult. It’s like a marriage. If you don’t go out of your way to work on it, and nurture that relationship, things can fall apart … It’s something that we realized we need to spend more time focusing on. After ten years, we were like, ‘We’ve got an amazing fanbase. We owe it to them to get ourselves right, personally, get our relationship right.’”
Dan + Shay already released “Save Me The Trouble,” which is the debut single from their forthcoming Bigger Houses album, out on September 15. They have also hinted they have a major tour planned in 2024. Find music and upcoming shows, and pre-order Bigger Houses, at DanandShay.com.
