Shane McAnally is reflecting on his success. The songwriter was the latest guest on American Songwriter’s Off the Record podcast, and told host Lisa Konicki how being openly gay has been one of his songwriting superpowers.
“What happens is the universal language of love, of heartbreak, of loss, that’s everyone’s story, gay or straight. But I do think it gave me an empathy that has been a bit of a secret to success for me,” McAnally said. “That is really turning something that I thought would keep me out of country music into something that I think put me square in the middle of it. I was afraid for a long time that wasn’t the case.”
Videos by American Songwriter
“I realized it was a superpower. It is a superpower to be vulnerable and to be honest. It’s really hard. We’re not given those things naturally,” he added. “Especially as a gay man, there was a wall, secrets. When I finally realized that that was going to be something that I had to come to terms with before the rest was going to happen. That’s what happened.”
McAnally’s success was far from an overnight one. He started out as a Nashville-based artist, even signing a record deal and recording an album.
When that didn’t pan out, McAnally feared it was “the end of a dream,” and moved to Los Angeles to transition from country music to the singer-songwriter genre.
“Nothing really happened there either,” McAnally said of L.A. “… I came back to Nashville mostly because I ran out of resources. I lost my house there. My car was repoed.”
McAnally began taking trips to Nashville to write with past collaborators. During one visit, he penned “Last Call,” a song that Lee Ann Womack wound up recording. With that, McAnally’s career kicked off in earnest.
Shane McAnally on Working With Kacey Musgraves
He began co-writing with the likes of Kacey Musgraves and Brandy Clark, which led to hits like Miranda Lambert’s “Mama’s Broken Heart.”
“I have a little sister who grew up in Texas like me and it was very much a world of you present that everything is fine even if everything is not fine,” McAnally said. “… I went in to write with Brandy Clark and Kacey Musgraves and I just was sharing that with them and they both just instantly were like, ‘Oh yeah, we know this story.’ They took off.”
That wasn’t the last time McAnally and the women teamed up. Later, he was at a songwriting retreat with them and others when “Merry Go ‘Round,” a Musgraves song that went on to “define” his career, came to be.
“My mom is the one who sort of sparked the idea for it,” McAnally said. “… The next-door neighbor had all these cars in the yard, which is very Texas. And Josh [Osborne] asked my mom, ‘What are all those cars doing in the neighbor’s yard?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know, Josh. They’re selling Mary Kay or Mary Jane or something.’ That was where the lightning first hit.”
Shane McAnally Talks Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert’s Collaboration
McAnally found lightening in a bottle again with Lambert’s 2016 song “Vice,” which was borne out of his first songwriting session with the singer.
“That was one of the most honest songwriting sessions I’ve ever been in,” he said. “… She came into the room and she was carrying a rollable ice chest and she goes, ‘Guys, I’m getting a divorce and it’s going to be publicly announced today and I’m going to be drinking.’ The world was watching and the fact that she showed up, I was like, ‘This girl is the real deal.’”
McAnally’s relationships with both Musgraves and Lambert have continued in the decade since. In fact, he feels he “manifested” their recent collaboration, “Horses and Divorces.”
The song made headlines for putting an end to the so-called feud between the women. For McAnally, it was more about “two of the best” artists combining their powers for the sake of music.
“I would always tell them, ‘You should write with Kacey.’ ‘You should write with Miranda’ … It wasn’t, no… they didn’t run for it,” McAnally said, before recalling how Musgraves eventually came to him with an idea for a collaboration with Lambert.
“She didn’t want to feel stupid. It’s just like asking someone on a date. I said, ‘Honestly, I think she’ll love it.’ And she did,” he said. “… I do think it helped having me with them because I am friends with both of them… Luckily, Miranda said, ‘I think we have to write this with Shane or he’ll never forgive us.’”
Shane McAnally Reflects on His Success
All of those hits—as well as McAnally’s work with Sam Hunt, Tucker Wetmore, and others—led him to being named one of the 30 greatest living American songwriters by The New York Times.
“It was shocking,” McAnally said. “I knew it was happening because we took a picture, but I didn’t know who else was on the list. When I saw it was Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift and Mariah Carey. I mean, the list goes on and on. I was just like, ‘Wait, what?’ I couldn’t make sense of it.”
“I’m not trying to be modest,” he continued. “I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I do think that God has blessed me with a way to use my talent and my gift, but I certainly did not expect to be on a list like that.”
With more than 50 No. 1 hits, as well as four Grammys and multiple CMA and ACM Awards, it’s no surprise that McAnally found himself on the list. He accomplished all of that, he said, not by chasing the accolades, but by striving for the best songs.
“I had to finally get to the point of writing songs for writing songs. It took me 14 years of active work, moving to Nashville at 19, having my first song recorded at 33,” he said. “I did it because I had to. I did not have to win a Grammy. I did not have to make a lot of money. I had to write songs.”
“If you’re doing it for any other reason than that, you’re going to be disappointed. What’s happened for me is so rare in the commercial success and the accolades,” McAnally added. “… I still would have done it even knowing those things weren’t coming because I had to.”