Chris Stapleton has been in this game for quite some now. That being so, he has collaborated with all the best. Post Malone, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Luke Bryan, George Strait, the list goes on and on and on. However, one collaboration of Stapleton’s that has sat on the back burner is his one with Carlos Santana on the song “Joy.”
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Released in 2021, “Joy” is a song written by Stapleton and Santana for the album, Blessing and Miracles by Santana. The song is a fusion of Stapleton’s country vocals and Santana’s staple Chicano guitar licks. In short, it’s a match made in heaven. However, what might be better about the song is the process it took to make it.
The Distance Between Chris Stapleton & Carlos Santana
In an interview on The Howard Stern Show, Stapleton discussed all of his collaborations with the infamous moderator. When the two started talking about Santana, Stapleton immediately uttered, “You know I’ve never met him in person.” Now, you might be scratching your head, but it all comes together when you realize that the two musicians wrote the song in the heat of the pandemic.
“I got on a phone call and I’m not even sure how the phone call came about” and “I feel like he wrote me a letter. Carlos is the most interesting dude, he’s so spiritual and he speaks that way and you get off the phone with him and it feels like a religious experience,” Stapleton added. Given the limitations of the time, Chris Stapleton and Carlos Santana simply bounced ideas back in forth to each other via different types of technology.
Stapleton concluded, “A lot of lyrics of [“Joy”] and the things that he wanted to do, all of those things were his idea.” “So I tried to instill his thought of what he wanted to do, the two of us to do” and “I kinda made some of that up and sent it back to him…So we kinda whipped back and forth,” added Chris Stapleton.
This is certainly not the prototypical way a song is written. However, When phone and Zoom calls ruled the world, it was their only option. With the backstory in mind, one can fully grasp just how talented both these musicians are. No need to hold hands and guide, as the two could simply say what they wanted and deliver. The story is an exemplary moment of masterful musicians at work.
Photo by NDZ/Star Max/GC Images
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