Dylan Marlowe has already achieved success as a familiar tunesmith earning credits on songs such as Jon Pardi’s No. 1 hit, “Last Night Lonely.” And while he’s an artist in his own right, having earned his first RIAA Gold-certified single with “Boys Back Home” — a duet with Dylan Scott — he is introducing himself to an even broader audience with the release of his highly awaited debut studio album, Mid-Twenties Crisis.
Dylan Marlowe Debut Album, Mid-Twenties Crisis
Out today (Friday, Sept. 27), via Sony Music Nashville, Mid-Twenties Crisis serves as a fitting album title as the collection finds Marlowe showcasing his vulnerable side and revealing the highs and lows that led to this point in his career. Marlowe set up the album with Side A and Side B, with the project totaling 15 tracks, all of which he co-wrote.
Notably, the Georgian, who made his Grand Ole Opry debut in 2023, admits that he didn’t have a title for the album until he wrote the title track. Interestingly, the unplanned song became one of his originals and most personal songs of his career, to date.
“It was the last song on the record… and there was probably a week left until everything had to be officially turned in,” Marlowe recalls during an interview with Music Mayhem. “I think we might’ve even pushed the record back a week, so I could fit that in there.”
“I just wanted the title of the record to be meaningful, and that was just something I was going through probably from March to June,” he added. “It felt really bad, so I just felt good to get it off my chest and put it on paper. It turned out to be everything I wanted it to be for the first record from the title and just the way that it tied the whole record together.”
Marlowe Talks The Theme Of Finding Maturity On The Title Track
“Mid-Twenties Crisis” is an acoustic-driven track that plays into the theme of finding maturity, with Marlowe wondering whether or not he’s going through a phase that he calls a mid-twenties crisis. In the second half of the emotionally charged ballad, he faces a dilemma between touring and feeling guilty about being away from home and the person he loves the most.
“This life on the road keeps me gone from home / I hate it for the one I know it hurts the most / ‘Cause I know that she would probably be / Better if she wasn’t living there with my ghost / Oh, oh lately that’s what keeps me up at night / Oh, oh so baby I apologize,” Marlowe sings in the self-penned track.
At 27 years old, the singer/songwriter is happily married to wife Natalie Barber. But when it comes to balancing his professional life and his personal life, he admits he is still trying to figure that out.
“Time management is the hardest part, but it’s tough to have a routine at home and on the road because I feel like when I’m on the road, it’s so cliché, it’s like the Parker McCollum song, but when I’m on the road, I’m having a blast, and I’m missing being home. But then when I’m home, I can’t help but want to be out on the road,” he shares. “I’m having a blast out there. So it’s hard to balance. I’m still learning how to figure that out. I’m still in the process of figuring it out.”
Several Songs Are Inspired By His Wife Natalie
With a penchant for writing, and a love for his wife, whom he says helps to slow him down at times when it seems necessary, it’s inevitable that Marlowe would include a track dedicated to Natalie. And he does that with several songs pointing to his relationship, such as “Shop Radio” and “The Fence.”
“I think she definitely saved me from going buck wild and crazy,” Marlowe shares of his wife. “I couldn’t imagine where I’d be doing this career without having her because I was kind of a little loose cannon there for a while. So she definitely slowed me down in a good way. I know sometimes that can be a bad thing, but it was a great thing for me to slow down and focus on the right things and have a good, safe place to fall at the end of the day.”
Mid-Twenties Crisis saw Marlowe previewing a handful of songs leading up to its release. But as a body of work, he says he strategically put together the collection with the intention of fans listening to it from top to bottom.
“Everything was really planned to be glued together….singles don’t really have to have a direction, or they don’t have to mesh,” he explained. “I tried my best to make sure that the album had this glue that held it together, chaotically different, but still the same thing.”
Duets With Riley Green And Dylan Scott
Marlowe was driving through Alaska when he ordered his track list, which includes two collaborations — “Stick To My Guns” with Riley Green and the previously released “Boys Back Home” with Dylan Scott.
Of working alongside Green, Marlowe says, “I knew immediately if I was ever going to ask somebody to feature on that song, it’d be Riley. And we sent it over, and he was quick to hop on it and say ‘yes.’ So I’m thankful to him for that.”
As for Top 30 and climbing “Boys Back Home” with Scott, which makes for country music’s first-ever Dylan-Dylan duet, he says, “We became buddies really quick when we met, and he brought me on my first tour and that’s where I showed him the song. And it was actually his idea to be a Dylan-Dylan duet. He asked me to show him some stuff, and then he asked if he could hop on it. And I was like, ‘yes.’ And he’s kind of just turned into an older brother that I never had. So I call him for a bunch of stuff probably once a week, at this point he probably gets tired of me calling him.”
The Project Leans Heavily Into His Pop/Punk Influences
From a sonic standpoint, Mid-Twenties Crisis takes listeners back into the nostalgia of early 2000s pop/rock, with Marlowe leaning heavily into his pop/punk influences, and blending that with the modern country sound. Marlowe, who is no stranger to the 2000s music, despite being in his mid-twenties, credits his dad for helping built his tastes in various genres.
“Growing up, I used to listen to a bunch of rock with my dad driving in the truck if he was taking me to school or if I was going to work with him. So it was a lot of Lincoln Park, Foo Fighters, Nickelback, Blink 182, Incubus, and Pearl Jam — all those meshed together really just stuck in my brain,” he says.
“You Did It Too” Finds Marlowe Getting Vulnerable
Elsewhere on the album, Marlowe gets even more real, highlighting the dark side of the internet. On “You Did It Too,” inspired by a negative comment he received on social media, he shares his point of view as someone who has dealt with unwarranted remarks.
“I think with that song particularly, I just was a little frustrated at the time, and I think that the beauty of songwriting is that you can write what you’re feeling at the timeout, and it’s kind of like a journal when you look back on it,” Marlowe explains. “I can say that during that time I was frustrated about that, and I think Boys was the first song I had that did anything good. So I was riding a high with that. And then to see just some pretty negative stuff about it because of how simple it was, frustrated me. So I just took my feelings on the paper. And with Dallas, they helped me. They calmed me down and contained the song from where I was originally taking it. But it’s still one of my favorite songs on the record. And it’s fun to play live at our headline shows. Our fans know it pretty good. So it’s fun to play that one out and everybody knows the backstory of it.”
“You Did It Too” Sparked Conversations With Fans
Dylan, who has toured alongside HARDY, Brantley Gilbert, Cole Swindell, Dan + Shay, and others, adds that playing the song live opens up the conversation with fans — some who have shared their personal stories of criticism.
“[I] definitely had a few,” he says of his fan base. “And I think [the song] is just a message, it’s kind of like you can’t judge a book by the cover. You can’t judge somebody by one song or by one thing. We all have a lot of life that we’ve lived before and a lot of life that we’ve lived that nobody else knows about.”
“All these songs are authentic to me, and I’m not trying to be somebody that I’m not, or I’m not trying to look for validation with the songs,” he says. “I want people to be able to relate to them, but also know that they’re listening to something that is from a real spot.”
Dylan Marlowe’s Mid-Twenties Crisis Track List
- Heaven’s Sake – Dylan Marlowe / Seth Ennis / Joe Fox
- Deer on the Wall – Dylan Marlowe / Zach Abend / Seth Ennis
- Mid-Twenties Crisis – Dylan Marlowe
- Heart Brakes – Dylan Marlowe / Jordan Minton / Lindsay Rimes
- Stick to My Guns (feat. Riley Green) – Dylan Marlowe / Benjy Davis / Abram Dean / Joe Fox / Reid Isbell
- Hungover in a Deer Stand – Dylan Marlowe / Trannie Anderson / Ryan Beaver / David Garcia
- Hang It Up – Dylan Marlowe / Tyler Chambers
- Shop Radio – Dylan Marlowe / Tyler Chambers / Johnny McGuire
- Devil on My Shoulder – Dylan Marlowe / Beau Bailey / Rocky Block / Kyle Fishman
- I Never Miss – Dylan Marlowe / Rocky Block / Mark Holman / Blake Pendergrass
- There Goes That – Dylan Marlowe / Seth Ennis / Joe Fox
- Boys Back Home (feat. Dylan Scott) – Dylan Marlowe / Seth Ennis / Joe Fox
- You Did It Too – Dylan Marlowe / Dallas Davidson / Joe Fox
- Bat Outta Hell (With a Boat on the Back) – Dylan Marlowe / Jessie Jo Dillon / Kyle Fishman
- The Fence – Dylan Marlowe / Jimi Bell / Tyler Chambers / Benjy Davis / Seth Ennis / Mikey Reeves
