Former Hall & Oates member John Oates recently released a collaborative single with young Nashville indie-rock artist JT Loux, a dreamy, soulful tune titled “Never Change My Mind.” The song is available now as a digital single, and you also can a music video for the track at Loux’s official YouTube channel.
Videos by American Songwriter
Oates and Loux recently chatted via Zoom with American Songwriter about their collaboration, which, as they explained, was a fulfilling experience for them both.
Loux (whose name is pronounced “lucks”) told American Songwriter that the recording came together after he was introduced to Oates “a little over a year ago” by his manager at East Iris Studios in Nashville.
“I had fallen in love with his music so much throughout my childhood, and it had a big influence on me growing up,” JT noted. When he met Oates, Loux said John told him that he liked his voice, which gave JT the courage to ask his manager if he could arrange a writing session with the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer.
The session was arranged, and Loux said he started preparing a song idea a couple of weeks before he was scheduled to meet with Oates, but wound up discarding it at the last minute.
“The day of, in the morning, I completely changed it, and I started from scratch,” JT shared. “I had something come out of me right at, like, 9 a.m., and I just kind of went with that feeling that … maybe this is … the direction that the song should go.”
Oates on Working with an Artist He Was Unfamiliar With
Oates told American Songwriter that working with Loux was interesting to him because he wasn’t very familiar with JT’s music. According to John, this type of collaboration often leads to pleasant creative surprises.
“[I]t’s always interesting when you’re collaborating in general, but it’s even more interesting when you’re collaborating with someone you don’t know,” Oates explained. “It’s a blank slate, which is great. I think that’s really exciting for me.”
John also noted that he finds working with younger artists to be exciting.
“I think they … bring an energy and a point of view and a style that I don’t have,” he said. “And then I bring a certain level of experience and … a certain, you know, older more, I guess, classic-rock approach.”
Putting the Music for the Song Together
According to Oates, the song started to come together around an initial chord progression created by Loux.
“[JT] had some really cool chord ideas, and I love … unusual chords and stuff like that,” John explained. “So I threw out a couple unusual chords that he wasn’t familiar with. He showed me a couple that I wasn’t familiar with. And I think that’s … kind of how we … started, with the chord progression, before the melody even began to form.”
Loux then recalled, “Yeah, it was a lot about the chords. And [John was] showing me a bunch of chords that I had never seen before. … And the hardest thing about writing a song with complex chords is making it sound non-complex, if you [know what] I mean.”
Oates added, “The chords are really unusual in this song, and … they are complex. They’re kind of jazzy, and they’ve got a lot of … moving bass notes and substitutions and things like that. So on that level, the chord progression is pretty sophisticated for a pop song, I would say, especially in today’s world.”
On Writing the Song’s Lyrics
Loux told American Songwriter that he and Oates also collaborated closely on the lyrics for “Never Change My Mind.”
“I … basically came into the room with a chord progression, maybe four or five chords, and then I came with the first line,” JT shared. “And then, I didn’t know where to take it from there. And John helped get through that, and within the hour we had pretty much … all the lyrics for the whole song.”
Oates said he was thrilled at how “effortless” it was putting coming up with the lyrics with Loux.
“I’m thinking back on it, [and] we just wrote it,” John pointed out. “It’s great when that happens. … I just love the fact that the songwriting process is … really making magic. It’s really creating something from nothing, which is really cool. You know, I’m a big magic fan. So … I like to think that that’s what happens … when you’re writing, you know. You just really kind of create something [from nothing]. It’s so, so amazing.”
On Oates Recording the Song with Loux
Loux explained to American Songwriter that when it came time to record “Never Change My Mind,” he initially planned to just hit the studio with his own band. Oates had other ideas, though.
JT noted that a couple of days after their songwriting session, “John texts me and says, ‘I’d love to be a part of the recording,’ which was super cool. … He came in, and he was there with us all day. Even after he recorded his parts, he was just hanging around. … It was like having another friend in the studio and … it felt like we had known each other for a long time, you know.”
Oates added, “I felt so good about the collaboration on the song that I wanted to see it through. And … if I could be an asset to the record, then I wanted to try to make it as good as it could be, you know. … I’m really proud of it. I think we clicked on something that … I never expected, [that] I don’t think either of us expected.”
Oates ended up adding guitar parts and vocal harmonies, but Loux thought John’s voice should be a more prominent part of the recording.
“I didn’t feel like it was a true collaboration at that point,” JT noted. “And so we agreed … that John would sound great [singing lead] on the second verse, and … [he] knocked it out in, like, less than an hour. And we sat back and we’re like, ‘Yeah, this really works,’ you know. Like our voices sound really cool together. And so, I was really happy when that moment came together.”
Reflecting on the Collaboration and the Finished Track
Looking back on the experience of creating a song with Oates, Loux told American Songwriter, “This is one of my favorite moments so far that I’ve been able to do.”
He added, “No matter what happens in my career, I can say that I was able to accomplish this. And so, it’s a big accomplishment for me personally.”
Oates, meanwhile, said, “I thought it was so effortless and fun. … I think we created something unique. … [It definitely] doesn’t sound like necessarily something I would do, and I don’t know a lot about JT’s earlier work, so I hope it sounds fresh for him as well, you know.”
JT agreed that “it felt really fresh.” He added, “I think when I can walk away from a session learning a lot too, like that’s kind of fulfilling to me, because I can walk away with new information to kind of use in my next songs and … adapt to sessions in the future.
Loux plans to include “Never Change My Mind” on his next studio album, which he’s expecting to release in 2026.
Meanwhile, both Oates and Loux said they’d love to write with each other again.
(Courtesy of East Iris Studios, Ryan Adelman, and JT Loux)
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