Country hitmaker Ashley Gorley talks to Nile Rodgers about his songwriting career on the latest episode of ‘Deep Hidden Meaning Radio' on Apple Music 1.
The songwriter takes listeners behind the curtain of Nashville songwriting to reveal how the hits are made and discuss some of the key songs of his incredible career, written for artists like Wallen, Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan and Chris Stapleton.
Read on for some key quotes from the episode and make sure you head on over to Apple Music to hear Gorley talk about his 10 biggest hits…
Ashley Gorley tells Apple Music about his anonymity
That's so fun. Being in the pit at a show or in a bar or whatever, and nobody knows you're, “I made this up,” and you're just sitting there watching them all sing along. Writing somebody's favourite song is always a great challenge. It's just a great feeling.
If I go to a show and I'm like, oh my gosh, this person has this lyric tattooed on their… who knows! Just crazy stuff. I'm like, “What?!” We forget that sometimes. I love going to shows, and I love seeing that live show because you just see the fans. This is their, maybe, vacation. This is what they spent their money on, to come sing along with these songs that we made up. And that never gets old. That's always mind-blowing to me.
Ashley Gorley tells Apple Music about pitching songs
In Nashville it's so great because people, even if they're a great writer, they'll still usually take outside songs. When I first moved here nobody knew who I was, and if they loved the song they would be like, “Hey, who are these people? It doesn't matter, I love this song, I want to record it.” The first few recordings I had would be on Brad Paisley, or Carrie Underwood, or George Strait, or whatever, but they don't know who I am. It's not like I'm in with them at all.
The number one song I have right now on the radio was not written with the artist, so it was a pitch. Way over 50% of any sessions I have are just like “Let's try to make something up today and make it so great that somebody unexpected wants it.”
Ashley Gorley tells Apple Music about writing with Post Malone on his F-1 Trillion album
I've always wanted to work with Post in some capacity. I did not foresee it being on a country project five or six years ago. I didn't know him. I just had learned from Charlie Handsome, who's one of the producers who goes way back with him, and we've worked on a lot of things together for Morgan Wallen and things like that. And so Charlie, thankfully was just kind of going through different writers, bringing him into the sessions that Charlie trusted to meet Post. And this wasn't very long ago, the end of last year actually. And then for whatever reason, I guess I did okay, and he invited me back to be a part of some of the other sessions.
[It was] so stressful. I'm like, “Don't sound stupid. Don't sound stupid.” You're sitting in your car like, “Oh, this is going to be either great or who knows what's going to happen.” But we hit it off. He's one of the nicest, most respectful artists I've ever been in the room with, honestly. And he really set the tone and set everybody at ease. And he sent me amazing, nice texts after the first night that we wrote and we wrote all night. The first night I was there, I left at 11:15 AM which was crazy. That's a lot later than the Nashville hours usually are.
He has such a respect for country music and really knows it inside out. So it was fun. It was like no beats, no 808s, no drum stuff, a lot of the things kind of coming up in country now. He's like, “No, no, we're getting a band and we're doing it this way.” So I was blown away with that.
You can listen to ‘Deep Hidden Meaning Radio' on Apple Music 1 on-demand at apple.co/_DHMRadio
