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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\tThe result is the just-released Young <\/em>(Warner Records Nashville\/Warner Music Canada), an album Dan + Shay describe as their most autobiographical album to date, \u201ca snapshot of who we are and what we\u2019ve gone through.\u201d It grapples with love, loss, mental health and aging alongside classic romantic country themes that permeate their discography.<\/p>\n \n\tTo introduce this new era, Dan + Shay led with their most personal and poignant song as the lead single. \u201cSay So\u201d grapples with the death of Ben Vaughn, the head of Warner Chappell Music, who died by suicide in 2025.<\/p>\n \n\tMooney says his death \u201cshook our community \u2014 not just on the business side, but as a friend and mentor.\u201d He was the first to truly believe in them as songwriters before they were even a band, he says, signing them to their first publishing deal and championing them throughout their career.<\/p>\n \n\tThe duo were in the writer\u2019s room in Nashville when they started working on it. They weren\u2019t even trying to write a song, Mooney says, just sharing stories about their friend with others who knew him. When the song poured out of them, they didn\u2019t even know if it would be a Dan + Shay song.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou know, we\u2019re kind of known as the wedding song guys,\u201d Smyers says, referring to their history of soundtracking couples\u2019 first dances. \u201cWe felt \u2018this is an amazing song, but is it a bit too heavy for what we do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHis mind was changed when he went home and played the demo for his wife.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe was like, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s a beautiful tribute to Ben,\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201c\u2018It\u2019s so nice you could do that on his birthday.\u2019 We had no clue it was his birthday that day. I pulled up Facebook and, true enough, it would have been his 50th. That moment to me said, okay, this is more than a coincidence. This song has to come out.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSay So\u201d has been a way for the band to tell their fans if they\u2019re going through something, they\u2019re not alone. They\u2019ve received countless letters and DMs talking about how the song has helped them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey say \u2018Dear Dan + Shay, comma,\u201d he says, saying the punctuation out loud, \u201cand then a long narrative about their own life and how the song has helped them. And man, that\u2019s the ultimate fulfillment for us as songwriters and artists.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe experience influenced their philosophy for the whole Young <\/em>album: They wouldn\u2019t include a song unless it felt \u201cinevitable.\u201d It needed to feel like it had <\/em>to exist for them to put it into the world.<\/p>\n \n\tThat involved a mind-set change for the duo, who cop to being extremely competitive \u2014 something Smyers says he\u2019s working on in therapy. They may find validation from their fans and other sources, but they do look at the charts. They do show up to awards shows hoping to win. They take it hard when they don\u2019t. So do many of their peers. They are just willing to admit it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think being competitive is one of the reasons we\u2019ve been successful,\u201d Mooney says. \u201cBut I think maturing and getting older and wising up a bit is really being able to let yourself redefine what success looks like to you, because if you\u2019re not careful, you\u2019ll let other people define it for you. That can make you a very depressed, sad individual. We\u2019ve been there. When you win, it feels great, but you\u2019re not always going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe cites a podium speech by NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo, who gave an enlightening monologue when a reporter asked him if he viewed the season as a failure after getting eliminated from the playoffs. Michael Jordan played 15 years and won six championships, he said. Does that mean the other nine years were a failure?<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe have so many songs that never even cracked the top 40, were never even singles. But if that\u2019s someone\u2019s favorite song, to them, that\u2019s your most important song,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I say, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s only got a couple million streams. Nobody likes that song,\u2019 that\u2019s just not the reality of the power of music.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut changing your approach isn\u2019t easy, especially for a long-established act like Dan + Shay. Country music is an old-school genre, one with very well-defined institutions \u2014 especially for an act living and working in the industry hub of Nashville. Until recently, an established act could rely on heavy radio airplay to drive streams, awards and sales. Like many other genres, though, it\u2019s increasingly being driven by social media and viral success that is harder than ever to orchestrate.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBy the time they were starting the new Young <\/em>era, Dan + Shay were ready for a change \u2014\u00a0 not just in their musical approach, but their business approach as well. They parted from their management at Sandbox Entertainment and began taking meetings with other managers. It was a stressful time, they remember, because a manager is so central to every facet an artist\u2019s career.<\/p>\n \n\tThey met with many of the biggest names in the industry before walking into the office of a scrappy agency that now acts as a hybrid management firm\/record label\/publishing company. That company was The Core Entertainment, the firm co-founded by Simon Tikhman and Dave \u201cChief\u201d Zaruk with backing from Live Nation and its CEO and president Michael Rapino.<\/p>\n \n\tFounded in 2019, the company had developed a reputation for helping break new artists like Bailey Zimmerman and Nate Smith as well as rising Canadian artists Cameron Whitcomb and Josh Ross. But Dan + Shay were a little different.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey\u2019re a household name,\u201d Tikhman says. \u201cThey met with probably much bigger, more established companies than us. But when they walked into our office, they felt the culture of what we built.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThey were offered tequila and lemonade from a custom Dan + Shay lemonade stand. They entered to hear all of the employees blasting their new music, enthusiastic to talk about their next steps. They could feel that this was a company that matched their excitement and their work ethic, one that was ready to build a new playbook.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe thing that put it over the top for us was that they led with the music,\u201d says Mooney. \u201cA lot of people had a lot of ideas like, hey, you\u2019ve been on The Voice<\/em>, let\u2019s put you back on TV. They had ideas outside of the music.\u00a0But Dan and I, we\u2019ve always been about the music first. If you have great songs, everything else will follow after that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThough most of The Core\u2019s roster is comprised of acts they helped break, there was one notable act that became somewhat of a blueprint: Nickelback.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOne of the biggest bands to ever come out of Canada, where Zaruk also hails from and worked with the band as a tour manager years before starting The Core, Nickelback were at a similar point in their career when they signed there in 2022. They knew they could make hits, and they knew they had a loyal fanbase that would follow them wherever they went, but The Core had ideas they hadn\u2019t even considered.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhen we met them, they were like \u2018We\u2019re Nickelback. We are 30-plus years into our career. We have 20 No. 1 songs, we tour the world globally. What would you guys do with us?\u2019\u201d Zaruk recounts. \u201cThe first thing we said is we could tap into an entirely different audience they had never tapped into, and that was the country market.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe knew that all these young artists loved Nickelback. Morgan Wallen loves Nickelback, HARDY loves Nickelback, Bailey Zimmerman loves Nickelback, Red Clay Strays will tell you they\u2019re a band because of Nickelback. There\u2019s an entirely different audience, and truthfully, a younger audience in the country world that you guys haven\u2019t even been exposed to, and they\u2019re really just discovering your music now.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThey booked them to play one of the most important country festivals, Stagecoach, and CMT Crossroads<\/em> with HARDY. They paired them with young country artists who had been influenced by them. Most importantly, they increased their social media presence and got them posting every day. Now, Zaruk boasts, they went from 10 million monthly Spotify listeners to nearly 30 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTikhman and Zaruk saw similar potential in Dan + Shay. They\u2019re both major sports fans (as their Giannis quote will attest), and they had aspirations of doing a national anthem at a major sporting event like the Super Bowl. It just so happened that the World Cup was being played in North America this year. So they booked them to sing the \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner\u201d before the USA vs. Paraguay match in Los Angeles in June.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNowadays, when a national anthem performance goes viral, it\u2019s for negative reasons. Dan + Shay\u2019s rendition was a rare case of going viral because of how good they sounded. It was a simple reminder, after a few dormant years, of who the band was and what they could do with a microphone in front of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBeyond Tikhman and Zaruk, The Core is filled with young and hungry digital natives who understand the internet. They saw Dan + Shay had been out of the public spotlight for a few years and posting sporadically. The first step was getting their music onto TikTok and other platforms. But these were not new artists. They shouldn\u2019t suddenly be doing viral dance trends and asking \u201chow do you do, fellow kids?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe can make you guys have quote \u2018viral moments,\u2019 but it\u2019s got to be with your music and with your brand,\u201d says Zaruk. \u201cIt can\u2019t feel desperate. It\u2019s got to remind people who you are, what you\u2019ve done, and that you have new music coming out. We are in a crazy business where if you\u2019re gone for too long, people start to forget how relevant you are. We wanted to really bring these guys to the forefront of all conversations when it comes to country music and put Dan + Shay\u2019s name at the top.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tEven with social strategy, the music has to come first \u2014 and it has to feel real<\/em>. It has to fit the music they\u2019re making now, while reminding people of who they are: a multiplatinum band with a big catalog of hits waiting to be discovered or rediscovered.<\/p>\n \n\tDan + Shay know they aren\u2019t reinventing the wheel. You can still come to them for a reflection on maturing or a romantic ballad. But they think deeply about their craft, and they are extreme perfectionists. They\u2019re always looking to find something new in any song they record.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThey point to Young <\/em>song \u201cThe Old Guys\u201d as an example. A collab with singer\/songwriter Cody Johnson, it\u2019s a classic Dan + Shay love song layered with immaculate vocals.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cTrying to find a new way to say \u2018I love you\u2019 is a very difficult thing,\u201d says Smyers. \u201c\u2018The Old Guys\u2019 is a sad song. It\u2019s asking, \u2018What if your spouse passes before you do?\u2019 But it\u2019s a romantic song too. You\u2019re not saying that person is gone. You\u2019re saying to that person: \u2018If I lost you, I would not make it.\u2019 And that\u2019s just a unique way to say \u2018I love you\u2019 in a way that hasn\u2019t been done before.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDan + Shay say they were looking for twists like that all throughout the album. They start Young <\/em>with the title track, a reflective ballad written as a letter from their future selves, and \u201cDogs in Our Twenties\u201d uses pets as another bittersweet way to reflect on the passing of time. They\u2019re all universal themes, but through the lens of their own life experiences.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tThose hits they made before Young<\/em>? They still might release them. But this felt like the right music at the right time.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe\u2019re always asking ourselves: \u2018Why does this justify coming out?\u2019\u201d says Mooney. \u201cWe\u2019re living in a world of AI, and AI can spit out a song that sounds really catchy. What do we have that is unique, that\u2019s different than anybody else? The only answer for us right now is, let\u2019s just talk about our lives. Let\u2019s be vulnerable and authentic, let\u2019s find a way to say things in a way that only we can say them. That\u2019s something that AI can\u2019t replicate: the human spirit.\u201c<\/p>\n \n\tIn a world with technology at everyone\u2019s fingertips, it feels like anyone can write a hit. But there are only two people in the world who can be Dan + Shay.<\/p>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/music\/country\/dan-shay-cover-story-interview-young-album-1236322240\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/cover-dan-shay-billboard-082426-dragan-andic-1-1800.jpg?w=1024″] Trending on Billboard Dan + Shay know when they have a hit on their hands. In their 13 years together, the duo of Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney have become one of country music\u2019s surest bets.\u00a0 Songs like \u201cTequila\u201d and \u201c10,000 Hours\u201d with Justin Bieber (which reached No. 2 on the Billboard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-2108947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2108947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2108947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2108947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2108947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dan](\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/cover-dan-shay-billboard-082426-dragan-andic-2-1200.jpg?w=240\")
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