Riser House/Columbia NashvilleMitchell Tenpenny‘s debut album, Telling All My Secrets, arrives today, as its first single, “Drunk Me,” sits at the top of the chart.
The newcomer admits his breakthrough hit was ripped from the pages of his own life.
“It’s something I’ve personally dealt with,” Mitchell explains. “You try to drink ’em off your mind and that never works out.”
The Nashville native recalls it was close to two years ago when he had the idea for “Drunk Me,” but something was missing.
“I remember wanting to write that song and we didn’t have the title,” Mitchell tells ABC Radio. “We finished up the verse, got all the way through the chorus. It was like, ‘When I’m drunk, I can’t get over you.’ And it just didn’t hit right.”
He continues: “And my producer, who also co-wrote it with me, went to the restroom. He came back and he goes, ‘I got it. It’s drunk me.’ And there was something so simple about that. The answer was like ‘Drunk me can’t get over you.’ And it was like, ‘That’s it!'”
Initially, Mitchell didn’t think he’d sing “Drunk Me” himself.
“I thought someone else would cut it,” he reveals.
In fact, he says the demo was so good he hesitated to record it himself.
“I was scared to sing it, because my co-writer did such a good job on it,” Mitchell recalls. “He sounded so good on it. So anyway, we put our own version on it.”
“When I heard it back, I was like, ‘Yeah, this feels authentic. This feels like something I want to present.'”
Mitchell wrote more than two hundred songs for his debut, before narrowing it down to 56 he played for his label. In the end, he co-wrote all eleven songs on the record.
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