New music is here from Walker Hayes! The singer just dropped “Trash My Heart,” which in many ways launches a new musical chapter for Walker –– one where he thinks less and focuses on having fun more.
“I did a writer’s retreat, and here’s the reason: I just spend too much time on writing for songs for albums and radio sometimes,” Walker told Everything Nash. “I really wanted to just think less. I’m a real OCD writer. I’m not a fun person to write with. I just exhaust every line. ‘Here’s my 12 options for the line, just in case, one might be better.’ I’m really careful with my songs. And I think that’s good. I think my true fans, my diehards, they just appreciate that so much.
“But that doesn’t help me on the radio front,” he continued. “And so what I did is I took four of my favorite writers in town who really kill it in the radio game that I know well, and that knew what I did as well. I didn’t want you to hear this song and go, ‘Who wrote that?’ I wanted you to hear these songs and go, ‘Oh, only Walker could have written that line.’ We wrote three songs a day for three days. That’s the fastest I’ve ever completed that many songs ever. I didn’t go back and edit. All these songs, they sound as much fun as we were having when we wrote them.”
Walker has been open about his Christian faith, especially now. While he had no idea of everything that would be happening in the world right now, from the coronavirus pandemic to the heartbreaking death of George Floyd, the Alabama native has had enough trials and struggles to know that sometimes focusing on the positive really is the best form of healing.
“Every day as I went in, I just prayed that the Lord would use this material, even though it had nothing to do with Him,” Walker said. “It had nothing to do with where I was in life. It had nothing to do with addiction or loss or recovery, none of those things. I just wanted to have a good time. This song was slated for this time, regardless of what was going on in the world. It’s almost laughably divine; I feel like this is exactly what people need right now.
“I couldn’t be happier,” he added. “I’ve noticed when I play it, it makes me feel better, so I know if it’s making me feel better with the hopelessness you can feel right now with everything going on, I know that other people are experiencing that.”
There’s a line in “Trash My Heart” that says, “Trash my heart like a hotel room,” which is why Walker, quite literally, trashed a hotel room for the video.
“If they had said, ‘Hey, you can really trash it. Here’s a sledgehammer. Here’s ketchup squirted everywhere,’ that would have been more fun and easier to do.’ It was, ‘Trash it, but also know that we’re going to have to clean this up.’ So, I couldn’t throw the mirror through the sheetrock or drop the TV out the window. If you notice when I’m trashing it, I’m very delicate.”
Walker has talked about some serious stuff in his music, including “Beer in the Fridge” about his struggle with alcoholism and “Craig,” about the man who changed the course of his life. Still, the father of six is learning that sometimes it is OK to release music with a sole purpose of making people smile, at least for a few minutes.
“That’s just a lesson that I continually am being taught by music that touches me and that I write that touches other people,” Walker acknowledged. “It’s baffling to me how inspired sometimes music is. You think when you sit down and you write this novel that you put to music, ‘I just said so much and it’s just gonna reach people’s heart.” And then you sit down with your friends, and you can really have a good time relating with one another and laughing.
‘Trashed My Heart,’ it draws people together, and it touches people’s souls, and it meets them in their car on a sunshiny day and they roll the windows down,” he concluded. “That’s power.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Sony Music / Robert Chavers