As one of the most popular duos in country music (or country-pop crossover), Dan + Shay are known as serious romantics, to the point where they acknowledge and joke about how many marches down the aisle or first dances they’ve provided the soundtrack for. But with their new single, “Say So,” they’re making a temporary switch from wedding songs to a trying-to-prevent-a-funeral song.
“Say So,” which comes out Friday as the first single from the duo’s forthcoming album, makes it clear in the first verse just what kind of devastating event it was written in response to: “I got a call from a friend who don’t call very often / Broke it to me and I couldn’t believe that we lost him / Really felt like it came out of nowhere / But it never really comes out of nowhere / It’s crazy the pain that we carry when nobody’s watchin‘.” (Scroll down to read the full lyrics.) From there, it becomes inspirational, urging those with dark thoughts to not be afraid to burden their friends with them, and — proactively, on the other side — suggesting regular “How are you really doing?” check-ins with friends, even those who may have little or no reason to suspect loved ones are in distress.
Dan Smyers, Shay Mooney and their co-writers had one very prominent and recent prompt in mind when they penned it, someone who was a friend not just to them but seemingly the buddy of everyone in Nashville and in the music publishing world at large: Ben Vaughn, the head of Warner Chappell Music Publishing. His popularity and the warmth with which he was seemingly received in every possible circle was no shield against him dying by suicide in January 2025, a passing that is still deeply felt and mourned across many professional music circles.
In a talk with Variety just ahead of the song hitting DSPs late Thursday night, Mooney and Smyers talked about their own experiences with learning to share their most troubled thoughts with each other and in therapy, and how they hope “Say So” could be the most impactful song of their career, however big or modest a presence it winds up having on the charts.
It’s easy to tell from the first verse that this song has some personal background in it for you. Can you talk about what spurred the song?
Dan Smyers: We hit this little stretch of inspiration a few months ago and so we sat down to write one day with our good buddies Jimmy Robbins and David Hodges. We were talking about what we wanted to write that day, and we got to talking about our mutual friend, Ben Vaughn, who was the head of Warner Chappell Publishing and was big part of our career and a close personal friend. He took his own life, sadly, unexpectedly. This happened a week or two after we had been hanging out at a little party at my house, celebrating “Bigger Houses” going No. 1 and “10,000 Hours” hitting a billion streams on Spotify. It was one of those things where no one saw it coming. At least we didn’t.
Ben had just been there since the beginning of our career. He was the guy who heard us sing and made us the first offer for a publishing deal, and we’re still at Warner Chappell to this day. He was the guy who said, “You guys are more than just a songwriting duo. You guys should go meet with John Esposito [then-head of Warner Nashville].” At the time, Warner Records and Warner Chappellwere in the same building. He said, “Would you guys be willing to walk upstairs and sing for him and Scott Hendricks [their future producer?” We were like, “Absolutely. Is there beer there?” So we went upstairs and sang for those guys, and the rest is history. He was such a big part of our career, as a friend and a believer and a champion.
We were talking about him with David and Jimmy that day, and we were just like, “Man, we’ve got a lot of love songs…” Obviously that’s kind of our bread and butter, our wheelhouse, writing songs about our wives and writing songs about life and family. But this is just a topic where — and Shay can speak to this too — I’ve personally dealt with mental health stuff over the last few years, more so than ever. We battle a lot of stuff inside and outside of ourselves. And as we were talking about Ben, we were just like, “Man, I wish we would’ve known. I wish we could have reminded him that there’s always somebody on the other line.” At the time we wrote it, we were like, “I don’t know, man. It’s different than what we usually do. It’s not a love song.” But it kind of is, I guess.
Shay Mooney: Dan hit the nail on the head. We were going back and forth asking, “Man, is this song too heavy for Dan + Shay?” But I think people can look at us just as they see some of their friends and think, “There’s no way that they’re going through something. They look like they’re doing great.” That’s just a sad reality of mental health, that no matter what it looks like on the outside, you never know what somebody’s battling with on the inside. And as Dan mentioned, both he and I have struggled with that. No matter how well you’re doing, some of those lowest points were at our highest mountain top. A lot of people don’t expect people that are having success in any way to be dealing with something like this, emotionally, on the inside. Obviously we write a lot of songs about our wives, and those songs are very important and people resonate with them and we’ll continue to do that. But we felt like with this (forthcoming album) project in particular, we needed to come with this song first. We live in a crazy world right now. Obviously in the first verse it touches on Ben’s story, and it is very heavy, but I think that the rest of this song really offers hope to people.
How much about the timing in relation to Ben’s death figured into either your writing it or your decision to put it out?
Smyers: After writing that, I came home and played the demo for my wife. I get a little emotional in telling the story, especially because it’s so new. But I played her the demo and she was like, “Wow, what an amazing song and beautiful message.” She was moved by it, and she said, “Did you guys write that about Ben?” It was pretty obvious. And then she was like, “That’s really cool that you guys did that on his birthday.” We had no idea that it would’ve been his 50th birthday that day. I pulled up Facebook to confirm it, and it was like, “Would you like to wish Ben Vaughn a happy birthday?” So that to me is a song that was supposed to happen that day. And Ben was in the room with us.
We think this song sounds like a hit and is commercial, but if it’s not, if it flops, God forbid, it helps one person, if it saves one person’s life, it was worth it. We’ve got other stuff we’re really excited about, too, that sounds like quote-unquote “hits” or radio singles. we just felt like this one was meant to be written that day and is meant to be released into the world.
The inevitable tendency when someone goes like that — and many of us have had this happen in their lives — is to fixate on what was going through the person’s life. If they were really popular and extremely well-loved in their community, as Ben was, you think they could not have done it because they were unaware of that love. So then you wonder what type of reaching out you would have had to have done to become aware an emotional state was that dire.
Mooney: I don’t want to dig too deep into Ben’s personal life or situation or try to have some kind of revisionist history on it. But I think it has made me reflect on myself and my relationship with other people. I’m not placing blame on myself or anything, but I think all of us sit there when something like that happens and we just question why. And it has made me more proactive about checking in on my friends and people I care about, even if I’m thinking, “Dude, that guy’s killing it. I bet they’re doing great.” It’s just like Robin Williams: Sometimes it’s the guy that’s there for everybody else, who’s making everybody else laugh and make everybody else happy, that’s the saddest or in the darkest place inside. I’ve felt it from a couple other buddies who are like the top dogs in the industry. Sometimes those are the ones carrying the most weight. But yeah, I’ve searched for answers on Ben and these other guys, and I still think about it. It’s like, is there anything that I saw? Everybody from the outside seemed all smiles. It shouldn’t stop you from asking somebody, “Hey, how you doing?” — just checking in.
Smyers: I’m trying to take something positive away from it and be more proactive about that. I think this song is a step in that direction, and a step for us too, too break that barrier. Maybe it’s selfish, but even to break the personal barrier with our fans in talking about the anxiety that I’ve dealt with… I openly go to therapy. Porter’s Call in Nashville is an incredible organization for industry folks. As Shay was touching on, no matter if you’re the person standing on stage in front of thousands of people, or if you’re working a desk job or you’re in school, it’s a real thing, mental health, and no one is immune to (issues with it), whether you deal with it or somebody in your family or close personal circle does.
And we have always talked about maybe having a moment on stage where we break that fourth wall and say, “Hey, just so you guys know, I have anxiety. I deal with this,” to break that wall down and open myself to the fans and open the fans to us. And this song an opportunity for us to talk about it. You know, if we were promoting a love song, we’re probably not gonna be like, “Hey, by the way, I have had a panic attack before!” It would come out of left field. But when we’re out there talking about this song … This has been a learning lesson for us, and what I’ve taken away from it, man, just check on your buddies, because sometimes people you think are doing great aren’t doing so great, and we’ve gotta all look out for each other. That’s our purpose as humans, you know?
Was there a barrier there for you, in your own willingness to deal openly with mental health?
Mooney: Obviously in talking about your feelings, for women too but maybe especially for men, there’s a stigma and a little bit of a scary thing. We always think, “Well, somebody else has worse than me. I’m not allowed to feel this way. My life is good, I shouldn’t burden someone else with telling them about my stuff.” And I think that’s what we really wanna change the stigma on, is being able to know that you do need to say something. Growing up, I never saw myself as somebody who goes and speaks with somebody to get out my stuff. Now Dan and I talk about our stuff with each other, and with Chad, our therapist over there at Porter’s Call, and it’s helped so much. One of the things that I would hope for this song is that, before somebody even gets to that point, that they do feel okay that we create kind of a culture of talking about your stuff with a friend or with a family member or a therapist, whoever it is. Talking about these things can oftentimes prevent somebody from getting to that point where they do feel hopeless. It isn’t just for people who are alrady at their wit’s end. This is for people who are dealing with what they see as small anxieties in their life. It might be not be to the point of having suicidal thoughts or being in this really dark place, but it could be helping people that are at those early stages of having anxiety or letting the pressures of life and family or whatever it might be get to you.
Did you record the song fairly recently?
Smyers: Yeah, it was a fairly quick turnaround. Shay came over and we always do our vocals, just the two of us, at my house. I filmed him singing it into the microphone just because there was magic in him singing it. Even now as I hear Shay talk about it, I hear his passion in his voice. This is something that matters to both of us, and I knew it mattered to him that day when he sang that vocal on the microphone. There’s an intimacy to it in the verses, and then there’s a big dynamic jump, an octave jump between the verse and the chorus, which just explodes into this hopeful, optimistic thing.
I’m very proud of the way it sounds. I beat myself up pretty good trying to get the mix right. It’s not one of those ones where you can just slap it in there and be like, all right, , it’s done. Maybe it’s just my opinion because I’m a psycho about EQing every individual high-hat and snare and I drive a lot of people crazy. I just care about it, and the song was important and deserved all the TLC. I tried to lean on more real instruments instead of programming, like real drums right out of the gate. That’s just kind of a head space I’m in right now. I feel like if you can do it with real instruments, if you can create a back beat and make a groove with real drums, that’s gonna age well. In 30 years, you’ll hear that and be like that, “That sounds like drums,” instead of… I’m not knocking stuff we’ve done in the past. But this is fairly organic, and I think it needed to be … it needed to feel real.
If you or anyone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
The “Say So” lyrics:
I got a call from a friend who don’t call very often
Broke it to me and I couldn’t believe that we lost him
Really felt like it came out of nowhere
But it never really comes out of nowhere
It’s crazy the pain that we carry when nobody’s watchin’
If your light burns out and you’re in the dark
If you can’t pick up the pieces
If the world you trust, it falls apart
If your heart’s run out of reasons
I’ll be there every time you call
Pick you up every time you fall
If you’re going through hell, you’re not alone
If you need somebody, say so
Sometimes the words you don’t know how to say are the loudest
No one can shoulder the weight if they don’t know about it
Don’t be scared, you can pull back the curtain
Love ain’t afraid of sharing a burden
If there was a room full of people who cared, it’d be crowded
If your light burns out and you’re in the dark
If you can’t pick up the pieces
If the world you trust, it falls apart
If your heart’s run out of reasons
I’ll be there every time you call
Pick you up every time you fall
If you’re going through hell, you’re not alone
If you need somebody, say so
Hold on tight
The sun is gonna rise
So open up your eyes
Tomorrow is a brand new day
Hold on tight
The sun is gonna rise
So open up your eyes
Tomorrow is a brand new day
If your light burns out and you’re in the dark
If you can’t pick up the pieces
If the world you trust, it falls apart
If your heart’s run out of reasons
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