Every so often Luke Bryan likes to remind you that he’s more than capable of putting out some really solid material.
Substantive, emotional, a bit nostalgic, “Songs You Never Heard” is a glimpse of just how good Luke can really be.
Written by Luke Bryan, Josh Osborne, and Luke Laird, the heartfelt new tune finds Luke reminiscing about his late brother Chris and the music they used to listen to together, but more than that, he also wonders about the songs he never got the chance to hear.
Chris was tragically killed in a car accident in 1996.
Name dropping artists like George Strait and Keith Whitley, while alluding to others like Clint Black, Alan Jackson and Tracy Lawrence, Luke imagines what it would be like for his late brother to hear songs like Jamey Johnson’s “In Color” for the first time, as well as other songs he never got the chance to hear.
The bridge fast forwards to today, Luke is the country music superstar that he is, and if Chris was still here, he’d be on the road with Luke, touring alongside him and the band, guaranteed to be Luke’s #1 fan.
“I’ve written songs through the years that really talk about me losing my brother, but I don’t think any one of them is as good as how this one describes who he was.
He was a huge country music fan and I just think about how amazing it would be to have him in my life, and how watching him react to all of these songs, and watching him react to my career.
And the fact we can’t do that, I think really pays tribute to that. There’s a lot of people out there that have lost a sibling and it’ll make them think about that same feeling.”
Both heartbreaking and yet, full of happy memories, it’s a refreshing direction for the reigning ACM Entertainer of the Year.
Now if only we could songs like this one on country radio…
