 Multiple GRAMMY nominee Kelsea Ballerini delivered an incandescent performance on the 2024 Academy of Country Music Awards, merging her “Mountain With A View” with "Best New Artist" GRAMMY nominee Noah Kahan and his breakthrough “Stick Season.” The pairing of the genre-blurring singer/songwriters demonstrated so much chemistry, their collaboration suggested that the two distinct vocalists should explore a song of their very own.
And as usually the way with creative forces who use songs to explore the dynamic of the human condition, it wasn’t long before Kelsea, Kahan and producer/songwriter Alysa Vanderheym were crafting a languid midtempo song that allows for the full range of emotions for the toughest of all men. The rambling, fiddle-threaded, dobro-enhanced “Cowboys Cry Too (with Noah Kahan)” offers a moment of genuine vulnerability and embrace. Listen HERE. Two of American music’s most recognizable vocalists, it’s worlds colliding. Whether Kelsea's ethereal alto rising or Kahan’s pure confessions, the vocalists come together to express why honesty is such a powerful – if intimidating – reality. Each sings of a reality being in love feels like from their perspectives, the weight of expectations and flood of letting go. "In our world and culture and echo chamber of highlight reels and pretty things, sometimes real feelings start to feel like something you just set aside or push down to keep up." Kelsea begins. "Especially the way so many men grow up, that kind of toxic masculinity mindset of 'saddle up, brush it off'. I wanted to write my perspective and essentially celebrate the vulnerable men in my life, and Noah adding his really unfiltered perspective into it just brought it to life in a more meaningful and beautiful way." Kahan continues, “It’s the writers who are willing to go to the awkward places that inspire me. Kelsea is one of those, and I knew if we could find something we both believed to sing, it would expand how we look at the way we live, what society decides and we should reject. ‘Cowboys CryToo’ is everything I believed our collaboration could be.” With a bridge that converges their realities with “Blame it on their fathers/ the ones that said they’d stay/ Or blame it on the songs that tell you they all ride away/ But mine ain’t that way,” the ethereal harmonied song delivers both healing and (self)compassion. In a world of faster, tougher, meaner, the notion of refuge and support arrives with a quiet strength. Both have been major New York Times profiles, Saturday Night Live guests, TIME Magazine’s TIME100 Next and all-genre GRAMMY "Best New Artist" nominees. A new wave of songwriter/vocalists, they seek to strip away the artifice and reveal the crux of the human condition with a strong reliance on melody, musicality and their own emotion-forward performance skills. Co-produced by Kelsea and Vanderheym in Nashville, with Kahan’s vocal produced by Gabe Simon, the track features lead electric guitar from John Osborne, of GRAMMY, Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music Award winners Brothers Osborne. With banjo, steel guitar and enough atmosphere to let the track spread out, “Cowboys Cry Too (with Noah Kahan)” provides space for real men to own and honor their emotions with the self-possession worthy of their heroic legacy.
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