“I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” Drew Holcomb says, which is usually how people talk about watching The Bachelor, not waking up with viral meningitis. “Pain at a ten. Eight days in the hospital. Worst weekend of my life.” And this was all just in time to derail a family trip to New Orleans for his parents’ 40th anniversary. So yeah, happy holidays.
But if there's one thing Drew Holcomb knows how to do—besides release gorgeously earnest Americana—it’s turning chaos into catharsis. He came out of the whole ordeal with a new album, Souvenir, and a haunting new single, “New Year,” which he calls one of his favorite songs he’s ever written. “It felt raw,” he says. “Personal, but also universal.”
The song isn’t your classic Nashville plug-and-play. “It’s not verse-chorus-verse,” he explains. “It’s more like...a meditation. Kind of spiraling.” Inspired by the annual New Year’s party at his house, it turns flickers of joy, loss, and reflection into something communal. “It’s about the fire on our breath, all the people at the party, and how life keeps changing. Some things get better, some worse. It just keeps going.”
Holcomb’s always had a way of distilling the big stuff without sounding like he’s writing from inside a candle shop. But here, he leans all the way in. “The great mystery,” he sings—then pauses when asked about it. “It’s that constant wrestling: What is life? What’s the meaning? I was raised conservative Christian, and I don’t see things the way I was taught anymore,” he says. “That was hard for my mom. But I just don’t know. And that weighs heavy on me—all the time.”
That existential sprawl spreads throughout Souvenir. There’s the title track, the smoldering “Fight for Love,” and “Wild World,” where he offers, “Love is all we’ve got to give away.” Sound like a theme? “Yeah, it’s a mantra,” Holcomb admits. “These are songs written through the lens of this particular American story we’re all living right now. I see it as tragic, but also...necessary.”
And speaking of timing: all three of those songs were recorded during the 2016 election cycle. “Wild World was done the morning of the election. New Year was that night. Souvenir was the next day,” he says. “We had planned to record them then anyway, but it just...hit different.”
The songs did, too. “You try to be honest in all your writing,” Holcomb says. “But some things, some times, just come out more honest than others.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
