Zac Brown Band Releases Two New Songs Co-Written by Luke Combs

The Zac Brown Band shared more new music with fans on Friday, July 9, releasing new songs "Out in the Middle" and "Old Love Song," both of which were co-written by Luke Combs. The two songs were written by the band's Zac Brown with Combs, Ben Simonetti and Jonathan Singleton, and Brown shared on Today's Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen on Apple Music Country that getting to write Combs for the first time was "great."

"He's got great sensibility for parts and then singing along, man, what a voice. He's got an incredible voice. So making a demo was very easy. It was really nice not to have to sing everything on the demo. And just little inflections on how he would do melody or how he would do things, it made a nice soup for all of our input together. Luke's a great writer and of course he's an amazing singer, and it was fun. I hope we do more together."

"Out in the Middle" is "southern-rock storytelling about being proud of being country, living a simple life, and working hard," Brown said in a statement, adding that the song is "a tip of the hat to the people who live out in the middle of nowhere and they're happy being there." The musician told Bannen that he found himself "Out in the Middle" during the pandemic, which ended up being a great place for him.

"I'll tell you what, it was great to be out in the middle when COVID happened," Brown said. "It was great to be able to provide our own food if we needed to, it was great to be able to have capable people around us that knew how to do it, to help us live off the land. I mean, it pretty much says it all right there in the song. Through my experience, when city folk come out to the country, they absolutely love it. And they've got different kinds of wisdom, different things, different street smarts and different things that are happening. So, we all got a lot to learn from each other, but I'm super happy to live out in the middle where I can wake up in the morning and pee outside."

"Old Love Song" is a song all about old love songs done in Zac Brown Band's signature style, and Brown explained that writing it was "like a puzzle trying to put together all the song titles we really love." The song includes references to tracks by Randy Travis, Tom Petty, Keith Whitley and more, and Brown added, "I grew up listening to oldies — songs a lot older than I was. And this song has that feel to it."