Singer-songwriter Troy Cartwright has quietly become one of Nashville’s most intriguing emerging voices, pairing Texas-rooted storytelling with the craft-first mindset of a seasoned songwriter. Raised in Dallas, Cartwright began writing songs as a teenager and later studied songwriting and music business at Berklee College of Music before eventually relocating to Nashville to immerse himself in the city’s creative community. Over the past decade, he’s steadily built a reputation for thoughtful, melody-driven country songs, earning record deals and recognition from outlets like Warner Music Rolling Stone and signing publishing deals that placed him among a new generation of Music Row writers before the pandemic.
While Cartwright continues to grow as a recording artist, he’s also carved out an impressive parallel career as a songwriter. His catalog includes cuts recorded by artists such as Cody Johnson, Nickelback, Ryan Hurd, and the Josh Abbott Band, and he co-wrote ‘Killed The Man,' the current single from Lee Brice. Alongside his own releases—which now generate more than a million streams each week—Cartwright hosts the podcast Ten Year Town, where he sits down with fellow songwriters and artists like HARDY, Luke Laird, Jessi Alexander, and Ben Rector to talk about the craft behind the music. With a steadily expanding audience and a writer’s instinct for detail and emotional clarity, Cartwright has positioned himself as one of the more quietly compelling singer-songwriters working in Nashville today.
With ‘Etc. All the Rest,' Troy Cartwright delivers a compact but emotionally rich collection that leans heavily into heartland rock storytelling filtered through modern country songwriting. Across five tracks, Cartwright sketches scenes of travel, heartbreak, and late-night reflection, building a cohesive narrative about loss and the stubborn memories that linger long after a relationship ends.
The EP’s cover art feels like a visual prologue to the music inside. The imagery—mountain roads, neon glow, motel loneliness, snapshots of travel—looks like fragments from a singer-songwriter’s life on the road. It mirrors the tone of the record perfectly: restless, reflective, and steeped in the romance and solitude of the American highway. Musically, Cartwright draws from the lineage of heartland rock icons like Tom Petty, John Mellencamp and Bob Seger while aligning himself with contemporary country-rock storytellers such as Kip Moore and Ryan Hurd. The result is a sound that feels both timeless and modern—heartland rock with a Nashville songwriter’s ear for melody and detail.
The EP opens with ‘That’s Alright,' a driving, road-ready anthem that feels like Kip Moore-lite American rock at its most immediate and uplifting. Built around a propulsive rhythm section and ringing guitars, the track taps into the classic heartland rock DNA pioneered by Petty, Mellencamp, and Seger. Lyrically, Cartwright sets the narrative tone for the project—leaving, moving on, and refusing to dwell on what’s broken. “Ain’t gonna look over my shoulder, if you want to let it die, that’s alright.” The song’s optimistic energy disguises the heartbreak at its core, making it an ideal opener and establishing Cartwright’s ability to balance melancholy storytelling with stadium-sized momentum.
If the opener is about leaving, ‘How Missin’ You Sounds' is about everything that follows. The song leans even further into that Petty-esque guitar-and-drum drive, blending middle-America rock with contemporary country-pop sensibilities. The influence of Ryan Hurd’s melodic style is particularly noticeable, but the production still carries echoes of Mellencamp and Petty’s classic sound. Cartwright’s rich, warm vocal delivery becomes the centerpiece here as he catalogues the different ways absence manifests in everyday life. Nostalgia and regret ripple through the track as it builds steadily toward a triumphant guitar solo in its final stretch. The song’s most memorable line sums up its emotional and sonic blueprint perfectly: “It sounds like old Tom Petty, I’m one heartbreaker from calling you, babe!”
A classic songwriter’s whistle opens ‘Whiskey Ginger,' immediately setting a laid-back but emotionally loaded tone. The mid-tempo groove sits comfortably between country-pop and Midwest rock, with Cartwright once again channeling shades of Ryan Hurd—particularly the latter’s more rock-leaning material. The song carries a sense of barroom reflection and quiet jealousy, as Cartwright imagines his former lover moving on with someone else. “I wonder whose heart you’re breaking now… He’ll be wrapped round your finger.” Driven by pounding drums and a steady rhythm section, the track is catchy, evocative, and quietly anthemic. Cartwright’s vocals do much of the emotional lifting, turning what could be a simple breakup song into a portrait of loneliness in motion—another night, another drink, another memory that refuses to fade.
The EP’s emotional centre arrives with ‘You’ve Got a Way,' where Cartwright pivots into a stripped-back arrangement that allows the songwriting to take the spotlight on a track with some playful wordplay in the title. Tasteful electric guitar lines intertwine with plaintive pedal steel, creating a sparse and atmospheric backdrop for a song about emotional vulnerability and the lingering pull of someone you know you should forget. “You’ve got a way of making it seem easy, pulling me in like you’d never leave me.” The lyric captures the song’s essence: the disorienting power of someone who made love feel effortless—and the devastation when that illusion collapses.
The title track closes the EP with its most cinematic and haunting moment. Set around a late-night phone call from a hotel in Palm Springs, ‘Etc. All the Rest' plays out like a miniature film. Cartwright delivers the line that gives the song its name almost offhandedly: calling just to say “I love you, etc. all the rest.” The ambiguity of the phrase is powerful—half confession, half emotional shorthand. The arrangement remains sleek and atmospheric, again recalling the deeper, more introspective side of Ryan Hurd’s songwriting. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear the call may be too late. In the song’s final third, Cartwright reveals that she’s already gone, leaving him stuck in the limbo between memory and acceptance. The track closes the EP on a reflective note, completing the emotional arc from defiant departure to quiet realization.
Across the five songs on ‘Etc. All the Rest,' Troy Cartwright proves himself to be both a skilled wordsmith and an expressive musician. The EP unfolds like a travel diary written in neon motel light—five snapshots of heartbreak, highways and the ghosts of relationships that linger long after the goodbye. What stands out most is how far the project leans into heartland rock rather than mainstream Nashville polish. There’s very little Broadway in the traditional Music Row sense here; instead, Cartwright draws from the wide-open emotional spaces of middle America rock, blending those influences with the melodic instincts of modern artists like Kip Moore and Ryan Hurd.
The result is an EP that feels timeless yet contemporary, rooted in classic songwriting traditions but delivered with modern sensibility. More than anything, ‘Etc. All the Rest' feels like a shop-window glimpse into a writer on the rise—and a compelling re-introduction to Troy Cartwright as an artist in his own right.
Tracklist: 1. That's Alright 2. Missin' You Sounds 3. Whiskey Ginger 4. You've Got A Way 5. Etc. All the Rest Release Date: 20th March Record Label: Independent Buy / Pre-order ‘Etc. All the Rest' right here
