Dan + Shay have spent ten years as one of the biggest acts in country music, but they admit they still get starstruck by other artists. The duo, made up of Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney, reveals that there are a few artists that can make them lose their cool, including — perhaps surprisingly — Cody Johnson. But when asked who they would like to have entertain them for a private concert, they both put the “‘Til You Can’t’ singer at the top of the list.
“We’re huge Cody Johnson fans,” Smyers tells Audacy’s Katie & Company. “Getting CoJo in the living room, jamming on acoustic guitar, and playing some deep cuts would be pretty sick. We’re big fans. I went to his show in Nashville when he was here. I was just fan-boying out. I didn’t even tell him I was going to the show; I just went as a fan, bought tickets, and I was out there singing every word.”
Dan + Shay are back in the studio, working on a new album. Both Smyers and Mooney vow that the record, their fifth, will show their evolution, both as musicians and friends.
“We’re in the best place personally, as friends, as brothers, more so than we’ve ever been,” Smyers tells Audacy’s Rob + Holly. “We’ve just connected on a level that we’ve never been on before. Especially in the writing room, we’re just writing the best songs of our career. That’s what we’re focusing on…. You’re gonna hear that in the music when it comes out. Hopefully this year we’re gonna start rolling out some of that music.”
While both of the men are grateful for long string of successes, they admit they are a bit nostalgic for the beginning of their career, before their life began moving at a frenetic pace.
“We were having so much fun in those early years – the pressure builds,” Mooney says. “There’s a lot of pressure on you to be able to come out with great music and you don’t have time. You’re not being able to sit down and write songs like you were in the very beginning. We’ve had that time in the last couple of years. And that was just, I think, the biggest blessing that we’ve had in our careers is just a little bit of time and to just breathe.”
“You,” Dan + Shay’s current single, is in the Top 20. Written by Smyers along with Dave Barnes and Jordan Reynolds, the song is from their Good Things album, released in 2021.
“I think the original hook was ‘You and Only You,’ which was really cool, and something to write down in the phone, as like, ‘Hey, what about that title?’” Smyers recalled on The Bobby Bones Show. “We threw that out, and we didn’t reinvent the wheel. Dan + Shay, we do love songs. That’s kind of what we do. We’ve been fortunate enough to have a bunch of songs that have become people’s wedding songs. ‘Speechless,’ ‘From the Ground Up,’ that kind of thing. That’s just what works for us. That’s kind of our lane. That’s what we do.”
Find music and tour dates at DanandShay.com.
