Songwriter Parker Welling Shares the “Secret Sauce” to Penning Hits for Luke Bryan, Russell Dickerson, and More (Exclusive)

With parents who met at the Bluebird Cafe, it’s no surprise that Parker Welling became a professional songwriter.

“I always joke, like every good country song, they ended in D-I-V-O-R-C-E and I became a country songwriter,” Welling quipped in an interview with American Songwriter.

The Bluebird connection and the fact that she’s a rare Nashville native essentially fated Welling’s career into existence. She began songwriting and playing guitar in middle school and attended Belmont University for college. It was there that she met two of her future collaborators, Russell Dickerson and Casey Brown.

The trio formed a “magical combo” of sorts, and ended up writing their first number ones together. Flash forward nearly a decade, and Welling has five No. 1s to her name, four of which are with Dickerson.

Most recently, Welling, Brown, and Dickerson struck gold again with “Worth Your Wild,” which is currently climbing the country charts.

Despite the trio’s past success together, Welling never thought the song would be a single, due to its “overt” rock and pop punk influences.

“We weren’t thinking about anything except for what would sound fun live and what sounds like Russell to us,” Welling recalled of the writing retreat where she and the others penned the tune. “My husband is a publisher, and he was there and he was like, ‘That sounds so cool, I love what you’re working on.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I love this song. I just feel like it’s never gonna be a single, which is fine.’ We weren’t writing it for that purpose. I love that it’s gotten to be a single.”

Parker Welling’s Songwriting Success

Dickerson isn’t the only artist with whom Welling has found success.

She scored a No. 1 with Thomas Rhett’s “What’s Your Country Song,” and has gotten cuts from Keith Urban, Kelsea Ballerini, Tim McGraw, Luke Bryan, and others. The latter artist is one with whom Welling currently has a song on the charts, “Country and She Knows It.”

A very pregnant Welling penned the tune with Matt “Drag” Dragstrem and Josh Miller. About halfway through the write, Welling had an epiphany.

“I was like, ‘Am I crazy? Does this sound like a Luke Bryan song?’ And Drag was like, ‘No, I was just thinking that,’” she recalled. “We finished the song with Luke in mind and Drag sent it to Luke and he loved it. He wanted us to like change a couple of things in it, and so we did that.”

From there, it was full steam ahead. The song became one of the quickest turnarounds in Welling’s career.

“By the time I was off of maternity leave, it was out,” she said. “We wrote it in November and by the spring it was out.”

Parker Welling Discusses the Importance of Songwriters

With hit after hit, one may think that Welling had developed a fool proof formula to songwriting.

In one breath, Welling insisted that that’s not true at all—”If I knew what made a hit I’d probably have more of them,” she quipped—but in another, she shared the method she’s developed over the course of her career.

“The secret sauce is just chasing the magic in the room. I don’t sit down thinking about what’s going to be on the radio,” she said. “I try to write the song that’s in front of me that day, the idea that wants to be written.”

“It’s about an idea, something that lives outside of me. It comes to you and tells you what it wants to be and shows itself to you,” Welling continued. “Your job is to listen to it and follow where it leads you. For me, the magic of songwriting and the fun of it is doing that. All of the other stuff that comes after is gravy.”

Songwriting isn’t how Welling spends all her time, though the craft does influence her other hobbies. For one, she’s made a name for herself advocating for songwriters, as issues surrounding royalties and AI persist.

“I think there’s this magical thing that songwriters do. We can show up with nothing and come out with a song,” Welling said. “The way that songwriters relate to each other and support each other, there’s just so many wonderful things about the songwriter community. I really care about protecting and preserving that and leaving something for future generations of songwriters that they can carry on.”

What’s Next for Parker Welling

She’s also been vocal about the importance of elevating other women in the field. After winding up at an all-female writing retreat with her friend Lydia Vaughan, the two women realized what a special experience it was.

Together, Welling and Vaughan began organizing more such retreats centered around music and friendship. That eventually inspired their new podcast, Women’s Writes.

“The first season of our podcast is all female collaborators, but then future seasons will just be collaborators of any gender,” she said. “… The first season we really wanted to preserve that magic where Lydia and I first had the realization of how friendship does affect creative preference.”

With her eyes on getting a cut from Miranda Lambert, Eric Church, or “the ultimate” George Strait, Welling has big plans to keep making her dreams come true through hard work and a little Nashville magic.

“I can’t make an artist cut a song, I can’t make their label want to single it, I can’t make radio want to play it, and I can’t make fans want to listen to it,” she said. “All I can do is write what I think is best that day, especially if I’m with an artist. It’s like, ‘How can I help you tell your story in a way that you haven’t told it before?’”

Photo by Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images