RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesDan + Shay know when they have a hit on their hands.
In their 13 years together, the duo of Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney have become one of country music’s surest bets.
Songs like “Tequila” and “10,000 Hours” with Justin Bieber (which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 ) have topped Billboard ’s Country Airplay chart, they’ve won multiple Grammys and CMA Awards, and heard their lyrics sung back at them from stages across the world.
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So when they left their writing room in Nashville with their new batch of songs for their follow-up to 2024’s Bigger Houses , they knew the feeling. The songs were hits. But there was another, more unfamiliar feeling behind it.
“We had cold feet,” Smyers admits.
Speaking after Dan + Shay played a triumphant Billboard Canada THE STAGE show in Toronto at NXNE, the duo recount a pivotal few years. After admitting they nearly broke up in 2022 , the duo released 2024’s Bigger Houses and, after finishing their tour, took an unofficial hiatus. They slowed band activity and their public presence and focused on themselves. They strengthened their relationships with each other and with their families. They went to therapy. Both fathers in their mid- to late 30s, they grappled with maturity and their new stages in life.
“We wanted to do our due diligence and not settle,” Mooney agrees. “We thought: Let’s not just find hit songs. Let’s find hit songs that really matter to us.”
The result is the just-released Young (Warner Records Nashville/Warner Music Canada), an album Dan + Shay describe as their most autobiographical album to date, “a snapshot of who we are and what we’ve gone through.” It grapples with love, loss, mental health and aging alongside classic romantic country themes that permeate their discography.
To introduce this new era, Dan + Shay led with their most personal and poignant song as the lead single. “Say So” grapples with the death of Ben Vaughn , the head of Warner Chappell Music, who died by suicide in 2025.
Mooney says his death “shook our community — not just on the business side, but as a friend and mentor.” He was the first to truly believe in them as songwriters before they were even a band, he says, signing them to their first publishing deal and championing them throughout their career.
The duo were in the writer’s room in Nashville when they started working on it. They weren’t even trying to write a song, Mooney says, just sharing stories about their friend with others who knew him. When the song poured out of them, they didn’t even know if it would be a Dan + Shay song.
“You know, we’re kind of known as the wedding song guys,” Smyers says, referring to their history of soundtracking couples’ first dances. “We felt ‘this is an amazing song, but is it a bit too heavy for what we do?’”
His mind was changed when he went home and played the demo for his wife.
“She was like, ‘Wow, that’s a beautiful tribute to Ben,’” he recalls. “‘It’s so nice you could do that on his birthday.’ We had no clue it was his birthday that day. I pulled up Facebook and, true enough, it would have been his 50th. That moment to me said, okay, this is more than a coincidence. This song has to come out.”
“Say So” has been a way for the band to tell their fans if they’re going through something, they’re not alone. They’ve received countless letters and DMs talking about how the song has helped them.
“They say ‘Dear Dan + Shay, comma,” he says, saying the punctuation out loud, “and then a long narrative about their own life and how the song has helped them. And man, that’s the ultimate fulfillment for us as songwriters and artists.”
The experience influenced their philosophy for the whole Young album: They wouldn’t include a song unless it felt “inevitable.” It needed to feel like it had to exist for them to put it into the world.
That involved a mind-set change for the duo, who cop to being extremely competitive — something Smyers says he’s working on in therapy. They may find validation from their fans and other sources, but they do look at the charts. They do show up to awards shows hoping to win. They take it hard when they don’t. So do many of their peers. They are just willing to admit it.
“I think being competitive is one of the reasons we’ve been successful,” Mooney says. “But I think maturing and getting older and wising up a bit is really being able to let yourself redefine what success looks like to you, because if you’re not careful, you’ll let other people define it for you. That can make you a very depressed, sad individual. We’ve been there. When you win, it feels great, but you’re not always going to win.”
He cites a podium speech by NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo, who gave an enlightening monologue when a reporter asked him if he viewed the season as a failure after getting eliminated from the playoffs. Michael Jordan played 15 years and won six championships, he said. Does that mean the other nine years were a failure?
“We have so many songs that never even cracked the top 40, were never even singles. But if that’s someone’s favorite song, to them, that’s your most important song,” he says. “If I say, ‘Oh, that’s only got a couple million streams. Nobody likes that song,’ that’s just not the reality of the power of music.”
But changing your approach isn’t easy, especially for a long-established act like Dan + Shay. Country music is an old-school genre, one with very well-defined institutions — especially for an act living and working in the industry hub of Nashville. Until recently, an established act could rely on heavy radio airplay to drive streams...
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