Cody Johnson is now tearing into hearts with his powerful new duet with Carrie Underwood, the lead single from his highly anticipated album Leather Deluxe. But if you want Johnson to talk about the song on the just-released album that tugged at his heart the most, he’s more likely to mention an entirely different cut — one that made even the self-described “rough around the edges” cowboy cry.
But then, how could this proud daddy of a girl not get mad at “C’mon, Cowgirl”?
At a recent media roundtable in Nashville, Johnson poignantly described the moment he first shared the story song — which follows a long-standing father-daughter relationship in just 217 exquisite words — with his wife of 16 years, Brandi, and their daughters, Clara Mae, 9, and Cora, 7.
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Shortly after learning the song as a possible addition to the album, the 37-year-old artist recalls practicing it in a barn office on his Texas ranch when his girlfriends dropped by. “And I said, ‘Sit down, I want to play this song,'” he recalls.
He admits he didn’t look girls in the eye just to get through it – but then his wife walked in and he knew he had to start over.
“I’m reading the lyrics,” he says, “and tears are running down my cheeks… and I look up and everyone’s crying and smiling.”
At that moment there were curtains. Johnson stopped the song, put down his guitar and gathered his family in a tearful embrace, which was soon followed by a firm decision. As he puts it: “How are you? not cut that song?”
“C’mon, Cowgirl” is just one of 13 new songs awaiting his fans on what is now effectively a double album — a baker’s dozen of tracks joining the original 12, which were released almost exactly a year ago. While many other “deluxe” albums contain a handful of songs equivalent to gravy ladles, that was never Johnson’s plan. He was going to serve – to put it in cattlemen’s terms – a side of prime beef.
Putting a year between two releases was a lesson Johnson says he learned from it humanhis 2021 double album which contained 18 songs.
“A lot of that album was skipped because there was so much content,” he reflects.
This time, his label manager suggested a split, and Johnson set about creating two different halves of the whole: “I had to dive into each song and see which ones were similar in tempo? Let’s separate them. Okay, topic? Let’s separate them somehow. Maybe in the same key or close to the same melodic structure? Let’s separate them.”
What holds the entire project together is Johnson’s rich voice and his impeccable taste in song selection, starting with “I’m Gonna Love You,” his fiery duet with Underwood that’s now climbing the charts.
Johnson reveals that he always had Underwood in mind for a duet. “It’s like Carrie Underwood or nobody,” he says. “I just heard her voice.” But he also reveals that their first cover of the song – with parts recorded separately – failed to hit the mark it was aiming for.
Cody Johnson and Carrie Underwood.
Jason Stoltzfus
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“He didn’t slap you in the face like I thought he would, and I’m like, man, I don’t want to waste this,” Johnson recalls. “And she’s like, ‘I think we should sing it live.'”
The artist enjoys recalling the magic of their voices as they came together in the same studio space. “I watch her mouth and I can see where every breath is going to be,” he says. “We’re just staring at each other, we’re kind of crazy. It was weird because it was the first time Carrie and I sang together, and it was a perfect family harmony. And I think that speaks to the caliber of singer that she really is.”
Cody Johnson and Carrie Underwood
Now Johnson hopes the song will work its magic on the charts. “I feel like it’s big enough that it could even be a pop crossover song, like a big iconic thing,” he says. “I want it to be for myself.”
Johnson co-wrote three songs, including one, “Georgia Peaches,” which he says “came out of thin air.” Inspiration: The “big old jug” of 80-proof Georgia peach juice he keeps in his tour bus.
“It’s delicious,” Johnson says. “He’s also very, very crafty. You have to be very careful because it’s so good.”
One night after a show, Johnson and bandmates Jake Mears and Jody Bartula were fueling a drinking session, and after a few drinks, Johnson just belted out the first line of what is now a song: “Georgia peaches, they’ll tear you all apart / one time you pass them through the copper line.”
Fortunately, Johnson was sober enough to press “record” on his phone, and the resulting song—about an outlaw—eventually earned a presence on the album.
Johnson is also a co-writer on “Mustang,” which he considers one of his favorites in the project. The credit, he says, is actually a gift from collaborator Wes Bayliss after Johnson changed some of the tunes.
“I do that all the time on songs and nobody makes me a writer, just so you know,” Johnson says. “But Wes did.”
The song uses the life of a domesticated wild mustang to tell a human story, and although Johnson says he had no connection to the lyrics, he immediately saw himself in them: “I used to run like a mustang / with my head down in the wind / at a pace too fast to recognize / places on which I was.”
“That song came to me at a point in my life and career — and, I’ll be honest, in my marriage, too — when I felt like I’d hit a very low point,” he says. “I looked in the mirror and thought I really don’t like what I see. … At that moment I wondered if I was even worthy to pray? Like, does God even hear me when I pray?”
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Cody Johnson’s Leather Deluxe.
Chris Douglas
Johnson actually owns a stubborn horse that tends to run away, so he easily understood the link in the lyrics between a skilled rider and a higher power.
“As a reining guy, I have certain parts that I can put in his mouth and that will stop him,” Johnson says of his horse. “When you apply it to your relationship with God, it’s like he lets us run away sometimes – and he let me run away in my younger days. Like, ‘Okay, fine, go ahead. You’ll come back anyway, because when you get hungry, I’ll feed you.’ And that metaphor somehow remained.”
The message, he says, “did something for me.”
Today, Johnson says he’s in a much better place — one that allows him to embrace the career highs he’s enjoyed since his breakthrough 2021 blockbuster “Until You Can.”
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“This year marks 18 years of playing live music for a living, if – at first – you can call it a living,” he says. “I’ve been preparing for this my whole life… I’ve been waiting for this my whole life, so I’m happy.”
Later this month, he’ll find out if he’ll reap more of the fruits of this career success: He’s up for five CMA Awards, including Album of the Year (for Skin), single of the year (for “Dirt Cheap”) and male vocalist of the year. It also picked up two nominations, for “Dirt Cheap” and “The Painter,” for Video of the Year.
Cody Johnson
Johnson admits he wasn’t even paying attention to the news the day the nominations were announced. “When I go home, I completely log out,” he says, “and so my phone explodes and there are 48 missed calls and 107 text messages, and I’m like, who died? And I pick up my phone, and it’s all congratulations.”
A previous recipient of six nominations, including wins for music video and single of the year, Johnson says he works to keep these new careers in perspective.
“I think if you want one thing too much, you’re probably going to be disappointed,” he says, but “I’m really grateful that I’m finally being recognized in those areas, because you have to remember, I’m a guy who 18 years ago they said, you’ll never make it in Nashville. The cowboy hat doesn’t work and your music is too country for the radio. So when you’re nominated for so many CMA Awards, it’s a little bit in the back of your mind.”
Of course, there’s no such thing as resting laurels in Johnson’s makeup. He spent most of the year on the road, taking his Leather Tour to arenas and stadiums, and in January he will launch the Leather Deluxe Tour. And he’s already talking about going back into the studio to “start over and really try to top it Skinif possible.”
He says he’s thinking about another duet with Jelly Roll (“Whiskey Bent” is their collaboration on Skin) and possible duets with Lainey Wilson and country upstart Post Malone, who was an overture to Johnson.
“I thought, well, when you’re done doing duets with everyone else in Nashville, let me know and we’ll do something!” Johnson says.
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Another hit, he knows, could already be sitting in the rich bank of material he’s constantly adding to, including one song he and his wife, Brandi, wrote during their down years.
“I played her the first verse and she was like, you know, the second verse should be from a woman’s point of view,” Johnson says. “And I said, ‘Well, tell me what she would say.’ … And we sat there and wrote that song together, and it’s beautiful, but it was never on the album.”
Johnson recently got reacquainted with her, letting her on his tour bus just to pass the time, and says he realized, “This is actually pretty damn good. Like, this is really good.”
It’s sickening to think that fans might one day find out for themselves.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education