When Riley Green was putting together his latest album, Different ‘Round Here, his latest single, “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” was a last minute addition to the album because of his fans’ passion for the song. It turns out his fans weren’t the only ones loving the song, which Riley found out last year when he was on tour with Brad Paisley. Riley says, “Brad comes up to me one night after a show and asked me if I knew who Mike Trout was. And I said, ‘Yeah, the baseball player?’ He said, ‘Well, he sent me a text message and asked if you had a recorded version of this song ‘Grandpas’ cause he’s tired of watching it on YouTube,” which is the only place the song existed for a while, thanks to fans who recorded Riley performing the song every once in a while during his live shows.
It was thanks to Mike Trout asking about the song that Brad heard it, and he must have liked it, because Riley says, “We sat down after a show one day and talked about it and Brad even made the joke of saying he was gonna write a song called ‘Immortal Grandpas’ and play it at a show,” almost as if to say if you don’t do something with the song, I’m gonna steal the idea and put out my own song.
In fact, Brad even put up a video of himself singing “I Wish Grandpas Never Died” on Instagram, which Riley says, “was a really awesome thing for him to do, help out a new artist like me. But when you got guys like that, you know Brad’s got however many hits, that even remotely likes a song that I wrote is a pretty cool thing.”
Riley’s fans have loved the song so much that it’s already in the top 20 on the charts and steadily climbing toward the top.
Riley Green – Brad response to Grandpas :42
“One really cool thing that kind of was a hint to me that it might be a big song was, Brad comes up to me one night after a show and asked me if I knew who Mike Trout was. And I said, ‘Yeah, the baseball player?’ He said, ‘Well, he sent me a text message and asked if you had a recorded version of this song ‘Grandpas’ cause he’s tired of watching it on YouTube. And I guess that’s when Brad heard the song for the first time. And we sat down after a show one day and talked about it and Brad even made the joke of saying he was gonna write a song called ‘Immortal Grandpas’ and play it at a show, you know. But he’s that type of guy who’s always cutting up. And I don’t know if y’all saw, Brad actually did a cover of it on Instagram which was a really awesome thing for him to do, help out a new artist like me. But when you got guys like that, you know Brad’s got however many hits, that even remotely likes a song that I wrote is a pretty cool thing.”