Brantley Gilbert writes every song that he records and he says each of his albums are chapters in his life. So one has to wonder, when he writes more songs than he needs for one album, or one “chapter,” do the songs that don’t make the album fall by the wayside, or can they be carried over into other albums, or other “chapters” in his life? Brantley explains, “You’ve got songs that tell the story [of that specific time frame in my life] and then we’ve got songs that are in there just good timin’ songs that are kind of timeless. They fit my whole life. There’s some songs that are just repetitive things that they could fit any chapter of my life,” like his latest single, “The Weekend,” which is a good timin’ song that could fit on almost any of his albums, because celebrating the weekend will always be a part of his life story.
The other thing is, Brantley doesn’t believe in writing filler songs just for the sake of having something to record. So even if a song doesn’t make it onto one album, the sentiment could still be appropriate for a future project. He says, “That’s one of the upsides to writing with the writers that I write with is we don’t write throwaways. You know what I mean? Like if there’s something that, and this is something I’ve always been all about and I think the majority of the people that have written with me over the past say five years will tell you, if we get a verse and a line into the chorus and I’m not feeling it, it’s just done. If it’s not good it’s not good. But if I’m feeling something we’re going to rock that thing on through I don’t care if it takes 10 hours or 10 weeks or 10 months, you know, we’ll figure it out.
With 26 songs on the deluxe edition of The Devil Don’t Sleep, Brantley’s latest album, 25 of which Brantley wrote (one is a Hank Jr. cover), it would seem Brantley was able to figure a lot out since releasing his last album.
Brantley Gilbert – extra songs :44
“That’s one of the upsides to writing with the writers that I write with is we don’t write throwaways. You know what I mean? Like if there’s something that and this is something I’ve always been all about, and I think the majority of the people that have written with me over the past say five years will tell you, if we get a verse and a line into the chorus and I’m not feeling it, it’s just done. If it’s not good it’s not good. But if I’m feeling something we’re going to rock that thing on through I don’t care if it takes 10 hours or 10 weeks or 10 months, you know, we’ll figure it out. You’ve got songs that tell the story and then we’ve got songs that are in there just good timin’ songs that are kind of timeless. They fit my whole life. There’s some songs that are just repetitive things that they could fit any chapter of my life.”