By Trusting Their Instincts, Dan + Shay Rediscover the Creative Spark That Has Fueled One of Country’s Most Successful Partnerships

Even after musicians earn enormous commercial and critical success, the path forward isn’t always clear. Such was the case for Dan + Shay as they set about creating their sixth studio album.

The duo—vocalists/multi-instrumentalists Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney—have released more than a dozen platinum or gold-selling country and country-pop singles, including “Tequila,” “Speechless,” “10,000 Hours” ( featuring Justin Bieber), “All to Myself,” “Glad You Exist,” and many more. All of their studio albums have been commercially successful; their last one, Bigger Houses (2023), reached the Top 10 on the American Country Countdown chart.

When they started crafting their next batch of songs, though, their successful run seemed to suffer a major reversal. “It’s interesting, because we made an album that we ended up scrapping,” Smyers says during a call from his Nashville home. 

Smyers says he and Mooney reached that conclusion because the new material “didn’t quite feel authentic. As mid- to late-30s men who have been doing this for a while, it just felt like we were maybe chasing something. We had cold feet about it. We were making these songs that just didn’t feel inevitable—I like to use that word with songs, like, ‘This song can’t not exist in the world.’”

Fortunately, new inspiration soon struck. As they were discussing AI and how it could potentially have a catastrophic impact on human songwriters, they realized that AI can’t genuinely capture the human condition. From there, they decided to write songs that were deliberate snapshots of their own experiences.

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“For all of these songs, they all started with something that had inspired us recently about everyday things, about looking around in our lives,” says Mooney, also calling from his Nashville home. “Most all of them started with conversations about what’s impacting us at this very current moment, whether it be the dogs”—Smyers and his wife work with the nonprofit Wags & Walks rescue organization in Nashville—“or our kids or our wives or our friends. To me, it was such an easier process because of that.”

The songs poured out of them so quickly that it took them less than a month to write enough material to fill an album. The result, Young, was released in August via Warner Records Nashville. 

“Every single one of these songs makes me feel something, whether it helps me grieve or reminds me how lucky we are to have our wives in our lives, and our dogs and our friends,” says Mooney. “It was just an amazing process, and I think the album as a whole was a very different writing process than it has been in a long time because it was coming from a place of true inspiration, rather than sitting down and being like, ‘OK, it’s time for us to write an album now.’ It was just a truly inspired album, and it was very intentional, so we’re grateful for that.”

They are fine with the fact that their candidness in these lyrics might startle some longtime fans. “I just think tackling these real things was maybe a bit shocking for our fans or for people to hear, because they kind of expect wedding songs from us,” Smyers says, “and there are a few [like that] on there, obviously, but it’s just where we are in our lives, and we wanted to just be authentic and real. I can’t emphasize enough: we wanted to make real songs written by real humans and performed by real humans on real instruments. I’m proud of the fact that we did that.

“At this point in our lives, we’re growing up, [so] we’re not writing songs about meeting a girl at the beach or whatever, like we were when we were younger,” he adds. “Those songs are still fun—we still love singing them, and they timestamp that moment in our lives. But I think as we get older, we grapple with the reality of mortality and aging, and our parents getting older, or people that we love leaving our lives. I think one of the main throughlines of this album, and it ties into the title Young, is the concept of time.”

Beyond feeling good about their creative choices, Mooney says that working on these songs also strengthened the bonds he and Smyers share as songwriting partners and as friends. “For this new album, every single song, Dan and I wrote together, which I think was a cool thing that we had never fully done all the way through on an album,” he says. “Obviously, we wrote most all of our [previous] songs together, but this was every song together.”

“I think I speak for both of us when I say we’re having more fun now than we did back in 2012 when we first met,” adds Smyers.

That fateful first meeting happened at a party Smyers threw at his house in Nashville. They had each moved to town not too long before—Mooney from Arkansas, Smyers from Pennsylvania—and they both had arrived with plenty of experience already under their belts from joining bands and writing songs from an early age.

“This whole journey that we’ve been on just happened in such a natural way, and it was pretty clear to us that it was supposed to happen. There was a reason that I showed up to his house that night on December 7, 2012—mainly because we were both broke and I heard he had beer,” Mooney says, laughing.

Within hours, they were writing songs together, and it was obvious that they had hit on a very special musical chemistry. “We were like, ‘Man, these are the kind of songs that we’ve been trying to write separately for a long time that had never quite hit the mark,’” Mooney says.

They also realized they were creating something unique. “Blending all of our influences and backgrounds, that’s kind of where it landed, in that pop country-leaning music space,” Smyers says. “There’s always the purists who will say, ‘That’s not country.’ But if you look back at the history of country music, a lot of artists who broke through, when they came out, it was polarizing. We just did our thing organically, and that’s the sound we created.”

Mooney agrees: “It was just kind of a natural magic, and the songs spoke for themselves. There was something that was happening, both of our collections of inspirations or whatever it was coming together, that was the secret sauce, if you will. We couldn’t explain it, and didn’t know why we worked so well together; it just kind of happened.”

Their notion that they were on to something was confirmed when they started playing shows around Nashville, and very quickly drew an enthusiastic audience. That success also convinced them to remain a duo instead of expanding into a more conventional band lineup.

“I think being in a duo is one of the most interesting configurations in music, in the writing room and outside of the writing room,” Smyers says. “I think when things are split 50-50, you really have to rely on open communication. You’re in a trio, you’ve got a tie breaker; you’re a solo artist, you make all the decisions—but being in a duo is literally 50-50.”

Amused, Smyers admits that this dynamic can sometimes look alarming to others; however, “I think people who write with us for the first time are like, ‘These guys are crazy—they hate each other!’—which is not the case at all. I just think we both bring such a different thing to the table, and that’s what makes it special. I think that push and pull is really healthy.”

Their 2014 debut album, Where It All Began, went all the way to the top of the U.S. country chart. They had a major hit with their very first single, “19 You + Me,” which has earned double platinum sales. Their successful streak has continued ever since.

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“The most success has been when we really just try to make the music that we love,” Mooney says. “If both [Smyers] and I are stoked on it, every single time that’s been the indicator of us having something special. If we have conviction about it, those songs are always our biggest, and the ones that resonate with our fans the most. I think if we’re affected by it and it moves us, it’s going to move the people that fell in love with us to begin with, because that’s how we started: writing songs that moved us.”

They were reminded of this as they wrote the songs that ended up on Young, and Mooney says it’s the way they will work moving forward. “I think we just have to answer the question, ‘Does this make us happy? Does this move us? Do we love it?’ That’s the only question that I’m really interested in answering,” he says.

They will also, Smyers says, make sure that they continue to evolve as songwriters and performers, even as they stay true to themselves. “We want to challenge ourselves and raise our bar and do something we haven’t done before,” he says, “but also, we don’t want to alienate our fans who have given us a career. It’s an interesting balance.”

As they build on their legacy with Young, they both agree that they are grateful for the opportunity to keep doing what they love. “To be able to do this for a living is incredible,” Mooney says. “It’s just an unbelievable thing to be able to continue to do this, and I think I’m more inspired musically than I ever have been.”

Photos by Robby Klein