“Nobody’s Gonna Sing This” – Ernest Reveals Why It’s Important To Be Brutally Honest During Writing Sessions

Keeping it real.

Despite having an undoubtedly successful solo career as an artist, there’s no denying that Ernest’s biggest strength is his songwriting ability. Being a frequent collaborator with superstar, Morgan Wallen, over the past few years, the Tennessee native has co-written some of the biggest smashes of his career with the likes “I Had Some Help,” “Wasted On You,” “You Proof” and “Heartless.”

It doesn’t stop there, however. His presence can be felt all throughout Wallen’s I’m The Problem, which recently spent its 13th frame at #1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart last week, co-writing its #1 hits, “I Got Better,” “Smile,” “Just In Case” and the title track.

Of course, this doesn’t even mention the other dozens of successful deep cuts from Wallen’s most recent albums or the plethora of tracks such as “Losers,” “Wrong Ones” and “What Don’t Belong to Me,” all of which appear on Post Malone’s hit country debut, F-1 Trillion.

In a recent appearance on The Net Positive Podcast with John Crist, Ernest opened up about his career both as a songwriter and artist.

While discussing the balance between the two, the “Flower Shops” singer would ultimately admit that his career as an artist has been a bit neglected over the years due to his success and overall proficiency as a songwriter/co-writer for aforementioned artists such as Wallen and Post.

“I know that I have neglected my artist career to be the songwriter that I am and to be in the ‘service industry’ of songwriting. I’ve also sacrificed weeks of my time where I could have been working on x, y or z as a songwriter to go out and grind as an artist.

My artist career is not where my writer career is, and I have to try to fight the ‘what if.’ But I wouldn’t trade what I’ve built as a songwriter to be this as an artist because I think that the whole genre has been affected by our upbringing as songwriters.”

Immediately after, Crist would ask the 34-year-old singer/songwriter how he handles bad co-writing sessions. Hilariously, he would allude to himself being “kinda good” at being an a**hole, joking that if a session is going nowhere, he’ll simply suggest the group go to Losers instead and come back with fresh ideas.

“I’m good at kinda being, not an a**hole. [I’m like], ‘Nobody’s gonna sing this. Wouldn’t you rather go to Losers right now instead of trying to figure out why Jimmy cracked corn?'”

Expanding on this more, Ernest would note that in his experience, the best songs of his career haven’t taken very long to write. In fact, he’d drop the bombshell that “I Had Some Help,” which went #1 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 and became its 2024 Song of the Summer, was only written in a staggering 24 minutes.

If we’re all honest with ourselves and we’re all good creatives, the best songs don’t take long. That’s been consistent for my career and Craig [Wiseman] would tell you the same thing… We wrote ‘I Had Some Help’ in like 24 minutes. There’s a 24-minute voice note of ‘I Had Some Help’ from start to finish.”

With so many smash hits under his belt as a co-writer, it’s pretty safe to say that Ernest has gotten the whole songwriting process pretty down pat at this point. And as he said, if no one’s going to sing a song, why cut it in the first place?

Watch the full podcast here:

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