Jackson Dean is in love. The 25-year-old is working on new music, the follow-up to his 2024 sophomore On the Back of My Dreams. This record, Dean says, will be different than his previous two projects, in part because of his love life.
“We got this whole new chapter of music coming out, hopefully this spring,” Dean hints. “This record is about my country boy dreams being realized and living them. I got a woman and a dog in a cabin now, and they’ve been my muse of late. And it’s really a love record, honestly. It’s a lot more laid back than On the Back of My Dreams and Greenbroke, so it’s a little bit different. And this record’s for anybody that has ever been in or is still in love and all the goodness and all the other things that it brings as well.”
The Story Behind Jackson Dean’s Latest Single, “Heavens to Betsy”
Dean likely just wrapped up his On the Back of My Dreams chapter, with a chart-topping single. Dean just celebrated his second No. 1 hit, with “Heavens to Betsy,” a song he wrote with Benjy Davis and Driver Williams. It was Williams who first threw the line out, “Heavens to Betsy,” although Dean now admits he had no idea what it meant.
“That line has never been used around me growing up or anything,” Dean tells Billboard.
Instead, the writers took the phrase literally, drawing inspiration from two separate heartbreaking events.
“Both of my best friends growing up slept on my couch for probably two years, on and off,” Dean recalls. “I remember Dylan’s dad never being in the picture until we were 16, 17 years old, so I had that little bit of connection with it. And I’ve seen so many situations like that.”
“I lived next to a family with some kids, and one day, the dad’s truck stopped showing up,” adds Davis. “Over time, it became obvious that they were having some sort of issues. But [pink rain boots], that’s a really, really specific image. But that’s kind of what I had.”
Why Jackson Dean Released “Heavens to Betsy” As a Single
Dean didn’t originally think of “Heavens to Betsy as a single. But when he saw how much fans gravitated towards the song, he had a change of heart.
“’Heavens to Betsy’ is like the little song that could,” Dean shares. “We wrote it, and never thought it’d see the light of day. But I started playing it on radio tour to get it out of my head… and kill time, and I saw a grown man break down and cry to it. That’s an image that will hit you like a ton of bricks. So we started incorporating a bigger version of it into our live shows and I thought the Live At The Ryman version would be the only place it lived.
“But once again,” he adds, “this song exceeded my expectations… night after night people tell me how it’s helping them through their grief – which is such a beautiful thing.”
Photo Credit: CMA