When I got on the phone with Parker McCollum, he had literally just stepped out of the deer stand, grabbed some cookies and milk, and was getting ready to head right back out. That pretty much set the tone for our whole conversation: a mix of football talk, hunting season, and some very real music nerding over what has quickly become one of my favorite country albums of the year.
I’ll be honest, I am usually a “hits over albums” girl. I live in a world of singles and radio moments, and while I listen to a ton of full projects, I rarely connect with an album start to finish the way I did with this one. With Parker’s latest record, I found myself listening from top to bottom and realizing he’d structured it like a true story about his life, with a clear arc from the first track to the last. Parker told me he didn’t want to just record songs this time; he flew to New York, teamed up with a new producer and a live band he’d never met before, and went in specifically to “make a record.” You can hear that focus in every track.
I’ve also been loudly, unapologetically campaigning for “Big Sky” to be the next single. When we talked about it, Parker shared that the band recorded it by following a simple chart on paper without ever hearing a demo or knowing the lyrics, and when they finished, guitarist Nick Bockrath walked into the control room and immediately said it was a hit. From the first time I heard it, I had that same “first-listen smash” feeling—especially with that line about heading up to Boston and standing in the cold, which hits extra hard for my Boston listeners. It’s soulful, it’s swaggy, and it shows a different side of him that I absolutely love.
We also got into “Killing Me,” which fans keep calling a sexy song even though Parker admitted he wasn’t sold on it at first. He felt like some of the black dress imagery had been written a million times, but as they cut it, he realized that sometimes a simple, familiar picture works when the melody and production still feel fresh and honest. Now it has its own music video and has turned into one of those songs people really react to.
Of course, I couldn’t let him go without talking about Christmas. Parker laughed that he once swore he’d never record Christmas music, but CMA Country Christmas and Apple Music convinced him to cut a new version of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.”
As a dad, he admitted there’s something special about coming home from hunting to a lit tree and a fully decorated house, even if he’s not always the one hanging the ornaments. Between time on his ranches in Texas and Oklahoma, where he says melodies and lyrics just come to him naturally, and a winter tour that’s already on the books, it feels like Parker is in a season where he’s more creatively locked in than ever—and as someone who gets to play these songs on the air, that’s insanely fun to watch.
Hear the full interview with Parker McCollum here.
