Ryan Hurd co-wrote Lady Antebellum‘s current single, “What If I Never Get Over You,” currently in the Top 15 and climbing. The song, which Hurd wrote with Laura Veltz, Sam Ellis and Jon Green, is a true heartbreak song, which Hurd penned by considering what his life would be like if he ever lost his wife, Maren Morris.
“I had the title, and I thought we would write it a little bit different,” Hurd told All Access. “I wanted to write it like, ‘If I never get over you, this is what I’ll do.’ Instead, Jon and Laura and Sam kind of molded it back into the terrifying question, like, ‘What if this is it? What if I never get over you?’
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“We all kind of thought about that, because Laura and I are with partners that we are in great relationships with, but the idea of losing that is scary,” he added. “That’s kind of the emotional place that we wrote the song from.”
Both Hurd and Morris enjoy writing with Veltz, who co-wrote Morris’ No. 1 single, “I Could Use a Love Song” with Morris. But it was Hurd who first met Veltz, who he has great songwriting chemistry with.
“I love writing with Laura Veltz, and we’ve written a ton of songs together,” said Hurd. “She’s one of our really close friends and one of my first ever songwriter friends in this town. I actually introduced her to Maren, and they’ve had so much success together. So it was just another day, really, sitting down, writing with her.
“And then Sam Ellis, who I’ve written a bunch of tunes with at Universal Music, and my friend Jon Green,” he continued. “I’d never written with Jon before, but he just is so inspiring and his melodies are so inspiring.”
It was Charles Kelley who heard the song and had the idea that it would work for Lady A’s new project.
“We were just really lucky that day to write something that we felt was really honest, and then to have somebody like [Lady A’s] Charles Kelley hear it, really believe in it, and say that he loved it, and then actually follow through,” Hurd said. “They made the most beautiful recording. It’s different from the demo in the best way, and I’m really proud of just to have a small part of it.”
The song resonated with Kelley, even though he didn’t write it, because he thought about life without his own wife, Cassie.
“‘What If I Never Get Over You’ is definitely about that feeling – I think right after you break up, there’s that moment that, whether you were the one that did the breaking up or got broken up with, that you wonder if you’ll ever find that same connection and love,” Kelley previously explained. “And I know I felt like that before. Before I met [my wife] Cassie, I had a longtime girlfriend, and I mean, it was years of feeling that, ‘Am I ever gonna find anyone like her? Was that the one?’
“I think that’s why it is kind of a universal message,” he added, “and that’s what this is about.”
Download “What If I Never Get Over You” on iTunes.
Photo Credit: Getty images / Erika Goldring
