“The truth is, I probably would be dead if I had become a star, because at that point I was so closeted and so afraid of people of finding out I was gay. “I didn’t know who I was, but I blamed everyone else,” Mr. McAnally received a text message informing him that “ Mama’s Broken Heart,” the feisty Miranda Lambert single he helped write, had reached No. Sitting at dinner in a downtown Nashville restaurant the evening of the “We Wouldn’t Be Here,” session, Mr. 1 country singles, and numerous other fine songs, for some of the genre’s leading stars (Kenny Chesney, Luke Bryan, Lady Antebellum), legacy acts (Reba McEntire, Lee Ann Womack), and upstarts (Kacey Musgraves, the Band Perry). Since November 2010, he’s helped write seven No. Over the last few years, he has emerged as a commercial force in Nashville, a songwriter with a unique melodic and lyrical touch, and an uncommon knack for hits. McAnally distinguishes himself from his peers. McAnally’s quick work that morning was typical of Music Row pros. McAnally sang, “if you hadn’t been there.” Two hours later, “We Wouldn’t Be Here” was a wrap. The hook was one of those nifty lyrics that are country songwriters’ stock in trade: a quip that sketches a whole story line. It had a lush, limpid melody, which rose and tumbled over Mr. It was a midtempo ballad about a string of fortuities - a sudden rain shower, a stoplight avoided, a left turn taken - that led to a couple’s meeting in a bar. That morning, the session began haltingly.Īfter about 20 minutes, a song began to take shape. McAnally is a clock-puncher who maintains a strict writing regimen, a packed schedule of co-writes, which yields several songs a week, a couple of hundred a year. Commercial country songwriting is an art that leaves no room for artsy airs there’s no waiting around for the muse to strike.
McAnally was there, at 11 o’clock on a recent morning, leading a “co-write” with two close friends and regular collaborators, Josh Osborne and Matt Jenkins. McAnally prefers to work, quite literally, in his own backyard: in his recently renovated writing room, a plush aerie above a two-car garage, about a dozen steps from his home. He maintains an office on Music Row, but these days Mr.
McAnally, one of the top songwriters in country music, lives in a spacious two-story house on leafy side street in East Nashville, a few miles and a quick jump across the Cumberland River from Music Row, the heart of the country industrial complex. NASHVILLE - You can’t beat Shane McAnally’s commute.
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