Morgan Wallen took home two awards at the 2021 Nashville Songwriters Awards presented by NSAI.
The country superstar took home two awards in the highly-coveted ’10 Songs I Wish I’d Written’ category, a category that is voted on by Professional Songwriter members of NSA and one that NSAI Chief Operations Officer Jennifer Turnbow said is “the award that means the most to them because it represents pure validation.”
According to Music Row, “songs eligible for the aforementioned award must have a Nashville connection and charted in the Top 20 of the Billboard Airplay chart in the Christian, country, mainstream top 40, and/or rock genres during the eligible period.”
“The top 10 vote getters take home the prestigious title,” Turnbow added.
Wallen earned two winning spots in the category as his songs “7 Summers” and “Chasin’ You” both made the Top 10 list.
“7 Summers” was co-written by Wallen alongside Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne.
Following the announcement of their win, Wallen, McAnally and Osborne shared how the song came to fruition. McAnally came up with the idea of “7 Summers” while he was at the beach with his kids one day, as it was their seventh summer together, and he presented the idea to Wallen, who says the song then wrote itself.
“Where the title ‘7 Summers’ came from originally was I was down at the beach with the kids and I was thinking this was our seventh summer with the kids,” McAnally said.
“Shane had said I got this idea and said I don’t really know what it means but I got a title,” Wallen explained. “He said ‘7 Summers’ and I was like ‘It sounds cool’ and I kind of had an angle of where to take the song and this song kind of just wrote itself from top to bottom. When you hear this song, it just feels young, it feels like young love that you’re talking about. I had a girlfriend in High School and it just I tried to think about some of the things she said to me. It’s bittersweet. Of course it’s a little bit sad but then it’s got some parts in it that will make you smile. So, I think that it seems to be a little bit of both and that seems to be the way people have received it.”
“Of all the awards in our industry, I know that ’10 Songs I Wish I’d Written’ is the one that probably means the most to all of the songwriters,” Osborne said. “So to have this song picked by our peers, it really does mean the world to us.”
“Chasin’ You” was co-written by Wallen alongside Jamie Moore and Craig Wiseman.
“‘Chasin’ You’ is one of the first songs I ever wrote in my life,” Wallen said. “I had just moved to Nashville in July of 2015, met these guys shortly after that and we wrote it in December 2015.”
The other 8 songs that won an award in the ’10 Songs I Wish I’d Written’ category can be seen below.
“Ain’t Always The Cowboy” – Written by: Brandon Kinney, Josh Thompson
“Die From A Broken Heart” – Written by: Taylor Dye, Maddie Marlow, Deric Ruttan, Jonathan Singleton
“Hell Of A View” – Written by: Casey Beathard, Eric Church, Monty Criswell
“I Called Mama” – Written by: Marv Green, Lance Miller, Jimmy Yeary
“I Hope” – Written by: Gabby Barrett, Zachary Kale, Jon Nite
“I Hope You’re Happy Now” – Written by: Luke Combs, Randy Montana, Carly Pearce, Jonathan Singleton
“One Night Standards” – Written by: Nicolette Hayford, Shane McAnally, Ashley McBride
“Starting Over” – Written by: Mike Henderson, Chris Stapleton
Watch the full awards show HERE.
