Scotty McCreery sounds like a man who’s learned to stop flinching at the word comeback. When you’ve been famous since you were seventeen, dropped by your label before twenty-two, and somehow still managed to claw your way to the top of the country charts without a label—well, that word starts to feel less like a bruise and more like a résumé bullet.
“I kinda bet my whole career on ‘Five More Minutes,’” he says with the calm of someone who already knows how the story ends. “Thank God it worked. Otherwise I might be looking for another job.”
It’s the kind of self-deprecating line that only lands if you’ve survived the fall. McCreery did more than that: he turned the face-plant into a stride. His 2018 album Seasons Change wasn’t just a return—it was a statement that the squeaky-clean Idol kid had grown into a songwriter who could carry his own narrative. Every track bore his name in the credits, a quiet rebellion in a Nashville that still prefers its singers separated from its songwriters.
“There are a lot of incredible songwriters in town,” he says, “but after seven years, I kinda figured out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.”
That voice—steady, warm, and more weathered than his 30 years would suggest—comes through even clearer on The Soundcheck Sessions, a stripped-down acoustic EP re-recording highlights from Seasons Change. “Anytime I can just get a guitar out and sing, you get something different,” he says. “A little more intimate.”
He’s not kidding. “This Is It,” written about proposing to his longtime girlfriend Gabi (now wife), was already sentimental enough to make Hallmark blush, but in its bare-bones version, the song becomes almost voyeuristic—just a guy and his guitar, replaying the moment he decided to gamble forever. “When we first put it out, I thought, ‘Man, this is so personal—how’s anybody else gonna relate?’” he says. “But you find out real quick we’re all a lot more alike than we are different.”
Fans apparently agreed: “This Is It” became their wedding song. “It’s awesome,” he says. “Folks use it for their first dance, walking down the aisle. It’s wild.” If Gabi ever minds sharing the moment, she’s not saying. “We both love it,” he insists.
McCreery’s songwriting philosophy has settled firmly in the “write what you know” camp. “I don’t wrestle with being universal anymore,” he says. “I just write what’s real. That’s what worked for me.”
Reality, for him, is refreshingly uncomplicated: a young marriage, a life on tour, the push-and-pull between faith and fun. His song “In Between” puts it bluntly—“I ain’t holy water and I ain’t Jim Beam.” “People put me on this pedestal when I was seventeen,” he says. “Like I was perfect or something. But I’m just a guy who likes to hang out with his buddies, go have a beer. I used to worry—‘don’t post that on Twitter.’ Now it’s like, nah, that’s me. It’s who I am.”
It’s an oddly subversive stance in mainstream country, where authenticity is choreographed and rebellion comes pre-approved. But McCreery has always been a little out of sync with his genre’s rulebook. When the label dropped him, he didn’t chase the next big songwriter or radio trend—he doubled down on himself. “We pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps,” he says. “Figured out how to get the song out there.”
The gamble paid off: “Five More Minutes” went to No. 1—the first independently released single ever to do so on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart—and earned him a new deal with Triple Tigers. Then “This Is It” followed suit. Validation achieved.
That experience reshaped how he works. “Now we do it during all the free time we have,” he says, laughing. “Which basically means Mondays and Tuesdays between tour runs.” He actually loves the chaos. “You walk into a studio with nothing, and you leave with a piece of art. That’s the best part of all this.”
He’s writing again—about love, naturally, but from a new angle. “Seasons Change was all about looking ahead to marriage,” he says. “Now it’s about reflecting on it—what it’s really like a year and a half in.”
Even his autobiography—Go Big or Go Home, recently re-released in paperback—has taken on new meaning. “I almost didn’t write it,” he admits. “I felt too young. But now I’m glad I did. When you get older, you forget the details. Having that record of where I was—it’s cool.”
That’s the through-line for Scotty McCreery: remembering where he’s been without letting it chain him down. He’s still the polite southern kid with the low voice that stopped America in its tracks, but he’s also the guy who learned the industry’s favorite word—no—and answered with a song that said yes.
As he puts it, “You start with nothing, you end up with something you’re proud of.” It’s as good a description of a studio day as it is of a second act.
Listen to the interview above and then check the videos below.
