Blanco Brown is taking one of the most harrowing experiences of his life and turning it into a song about self-love with “I’ll Never.”
Videos by American Songwriter
In August 2020, Brown was riding his motorcycle in Atlanta when he was struck head-on by a truck. The life-threatening accident left him with broken wrists, arms, legs, and pelvis and surgery that took more than 12 hours. He’s been on the road to recovery ever since, one that’s included extensive physical therapy and bouts with depression.
“All it takes is one second to change your whole life,” Brown professes to American Songwriter. “I did a lot of digging in my soul.”
Music has provided consistent solace for the multi-genre hitmaker, who’s written and produced songs for Pitbull, 2 Chainz, Fergie and more throughout his career. In 2019, he made his mark in country music as a solo artist with the release of his single “The Git Up,” which landed at the top of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and gained attention for its viral dance video.
He’s continuing to tell his story with his latest single, “I’ll Never.” The fiddle-tinged tune is centered around the theme of love wherein he sings I’ll never stop loving you. While the lyrics find someone professing their love to another, the song is actually a message of self-love that Brown wrote to himself while he was recovering.
“When I wrote out ‘I’ll Never,’ I was speaking of myself–even when I’m going through depression, I’ll still love you,” he explains of how the song had him “looking in the mirror.”
Love is a theme that often arises in Brown’s music, as he and Parmalee also explored the topic in their chart-topping 2019 single, “Just the Way,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart and became Brown’s first No. 1 hit on said chart. For Brown, the tender-hearted “Just the Way” is about “loving you just the way God made you,” while “I’ll Never” is about learning to love someone in the way they need to be loved.
“I’ve always been fascinated with love because it doesn’t have a formula, there is no rulebook there’s no guidelines,” he observes. “You can take two people in the worst position in their lives and they can become the most positive thing being together… So there’s really no guidelines in what the heart wants and what the world needs.”
The video for “I’ll Never” captures the concept of love by showcasing a variety of couples across generations, cultures and sexual orientations set to sweet lyrics like, remember doubting myself / I felt empty / Then you told me I was the best part of your history. Brown cites the couples in the video as examples of “real love.”
“It’s about finding somebody that you want to love forever and never to stop loving them, but learn to love them the way they need to be loved, because everybody requires different ways of being loved,” Brown explains of the song’s meaning. “I went through a journey where I had to learn to love myself before I could love anybody properly. So I felt like it was the right time to write about a song that felt so close to home.”
Brown cites the opening lyrics of “I’ll Never,” you’re like a warm glass of my favorite childhood memories / You feel like a perfect summer day / Breezing on a 10 speed, as his favorite lines in the song, as they conjure up comforting feelings of nostalgia. It also symbolizes how Brown tries to start his day on a positive note, believing that even if the day’s events don’t “align” with what you have in mind, “you can find the positivity in your day,” he asserts.
For Brown, self-love equates to inner happiness, which he found when he discovered his purpose through music. “When I found my purpose, I realized the journey that I had to take required me to be whole and I searched for it until I found what whole felt like, what joy was,” he proclaims. “There’s no substitute for happiness, it has to start within you.”
Photo Credit: J. Kaviar/Courtesy of BBR Music Group
