Devin Dawson on ‘All on Me’ Success: ‘I Am Very Lucky and Thankful’

Devin Dawson is definitely kicking off his country music career on a high note. The singer-songwriter’s debut single, “All on Me,” from his upcoming Dark Horse album, is already in the Top 20, and still climbing.

Although Dawson says seeing the song climb the charts is “surreal,” in many ways, he has been planning for this his entire life.

“Writing is one of my addictions, and that’s just my way that I’ve learned how to communicate or cope or something,” Dawson tells PopCulture.com. “When you get up in the morning and you write every day during the week, it’s like working out — you get up and you’re just creative. You just want to keep thinking about something and make something, create something, say something.”

Dawson wrote “All on Me” with Jacob Durrett and Austin Smith, and even though the California native has written hundreds and hundreds of songs, the day he wrote “All on Me” is etched in his memory: Nov. 1, 2015.

“I like to keep a lot of titles on my phone,” Dawson explains. “I’m inspired a lot by concepts or titles. I’m a lyric guy, first and foremost. I love melodies, I love root, I love chords, but lyrics for me, need to be at least the catalyst, or at least the first inspiration. And so I was kind of doing a little Russian roulette through my notes in my phone, the little yellow notepad. I kind of just did one these and I stopped on one and it said ‘All on Me.’ I was like, “Hmm? What is that today?”

The title, which Dawson says he had in his phone for a long time, suddenly jumped out at him, and he felt compelled to write it, not knowing it would become his first single, or have the chart success it has had so far.

“It was one of those things where I was like, ‘That’s a title but it doesn’t really point at anything.’ You could just put your own story to it,” Dawson says. “And for me, it was talking about this positive love song, like when somebody is going through it, whether it’s the world, or whether it’s your job, or whether its finances, or whatever it is, just put it all on me. Just let me shoulder the weight of the burden of whatever you’re going through. It’s just this classic ‘lean on me’ kind of love song.”

Dawson didn’t yet have his record deal when he wrote “All on Me,” but he knew right away the song would be significant for him, and his career.

“I remember listening back after we did a demo,” recalls Dawson. “[In] the process of me trying to figure out what I was writing for, who I was and all this, it was one of the first songs where I was knew there was something there. That feels like me. That feels like I could hear that on the radio. That feels like everybody can relate to it. It’s positive. It’s got a good grove. Everything. It checks all the little boxes.

“It became the song to beat,” he adds, “and it was just a pretty unanimous decision for the whole team to have that be the first single and now it’s sitting at No. 12, almost ready to go Top 10. First single ever and I am very lucky and thankful for the wings that it’s spread and the life that it’s had.”

Dark Horse will be released on Jan. 19. “All on Me” is available for download on iTunes.

Photo Credit: Instagram/zdevin