current single: “OVER WHEN WE’RE SOBER” featuring Ashley Cooke

Brantley Gilbert writes most of the songs he records, which is one reason he’s able to sing them with a lot of emotion, because they come from a personal place.  But the other thing that drives Brantley to sing songs with so much conviction and emotion is because he knows how he feels when he hears a song that sounds like the artist was just going through the motions.

Brantley Gilbert – singing with emotion :45

“I write songs about things that I don’t have conversations about, right? And if there’s angst in somethin’, I try to record it that way. But for me, I feel like I listened to records in the past, and I remember Corey Smith did a song called ‘When Angels Cry.’  And at one point towards the end of it, he screams. And it’s a melody, but it’s a scream. And I was like, that’s a different kind of energy. That’s a different kind of emotion. That is just an embattled soul, and I felt like it translated so well, like I heard it. Oh, okay, I get it. We’re not just meandering through lyrics here. If I hear a song that’s got great lyrics that somebody half-assed sung, it pisses me off and I don’t get anything out of it. Like oh, okay, you’re just checkin’ boxes. You can write a song with the best lines in the world but if you just sing ‘em like you’re checkin’ boxes it doesn’t mean anything.”