Jordan Davis - EP

“I'm going to sing about the things I want to sing about, and produce them the way that I want to produce them,” Jordan Davis tells Apple Music. “We have a fanbase that is showing that they love it. So now it's just kind of made me dig my heels in more to who I am as a writer and where I stand with my style of music.” Working with the same producer who steered his 2018 debut full-length, pop-rock guitarist turned Nashville player Paul DiGiovanni, Davis subtly threaded a theme of patience through this six-song EP. “It's kind of looking back on the things that I thought were huge roadblocks or things that weren't supposed to be happening and just kind of being upset about it, whether it be relationships or whether it be moving to Nashville. It took me a little bit longer than I'd hoped to kind of get my feet planted as a writer in town. As I've gotten older, I've kind of realized that I'm not in control. I just need to rely on my faith.” Here Davis talks through the stories behind each of the project's six songs.

Almost Maybes
“I wrote that with Jesse Frasure and Hillary Lindsey. We were talking about past relationships, and instead of looking at them as bad things, they taught us something about ourselves, either good or bad. I feel like you learn from every kind of tough situation, and I think that's kind of why we wrote it the way we did. It's a song that feels good. It's not a deeply sad song. It's just kind of a look back on those relationships that led you to where you're at now.”

Church in a Chevy
“‘Church in a Chevy’ took a little bit longer, because for me, the worst feeling in the world is hearing a title that you love and knowing where the song could go and what it could be, and seeing it slip away. Or finishing it and realizing that it could have been better, but maybe you sacrificed a little bit on some things. The first day, I think we got two lines. And we just said, ‘Let's sleep on it. Let's think about it.’ We came back the next week and finished that song. To me, church isn't a building. Church isn't something you do on Sundays or Wednesday nights. I think it's a relationship. For me, I feel closer to God when I'm by myself, if I'm hunting or fishing or doing something like that, where I'm just kind of quiet and can talk and listen. And I also believe that good Lord wants to talk to us. He doesn't just want to talk to us two days a week. I think it's a constant conversation, a constant relationship. So that song to me is just kind of my relationship with him. And I hope that other people kind of have that same feeling around it.”

Ruin My Weekend
“I wrote that with the Jenkins brothers, Josh Jenkins and Matt Jenkins, two of my favorite writers in town. What caught my eye on the title was that it sounds like such a sad thing. When Josh explained the idea, I thought that was pretty cool, because I do feel like we've all been there with somebody where it didn't matter where you were at, what you were doing, if you got the phone call from that someone, you were there. So we just kind of wanted to capture that early stage of a relationship, or, shoot, it could be the late stages, I guess. Really just anytime you would drop the ball for anybody and take off. And also make it a song that's fun and something you want to listen to a little louder than the other ones.”

A Little Lime
“Somebody said that when I write songs about trying to get girls, I'm always very polite. So yeah, that's just another one that I wrote with Jacob, my brother, and Josh Kerr. Josh had that vibe going, and they brought me that idea. I feel like we've all been in that situation—I know I have—where you meet somebody new and you kind of want to let them know that you're into them, but don't want to come off as a creep. So we kind of tried to keep that ‘nice guy’ but also ‘hey, I like you’ kind of feel.”

Detours
“‘Detours’ is one that is one of the more personal songs I've ever written. Just kind of diving into me as the guy I was before I met [now-wife] Kristen and kind of how I changed after meeting her, because I realized that there was something special. I cared about her more than I'd ever cared about anybody else, which meant I had to change some of the things that I was doing. It took us a long time to finish it.”

Cool Anymore (feat. Julia Michaels)
“I met Julia a long time ago. We wrote a song together, and I don't really remember the song, but I do remember just being really inspired by Julia as a writer and as a person. She's just very confident in who she is, and very honest in her writing. And when that idea got brought up, I knew I was looking for a collab with her, and that title just screamed ‘Julia.’ We wrote the first verse, and then wrote the second verse as kind of her response to it. I knew that if Julia did want to be a part of it, she was going to make it her own, and I was totally cool with that. That's exactly what happened. She obviously changed the second verse to make it exactly what she would say, and she made the song so much better.”