It’s been almost a month now since Parker McCollum released his third studio album, Gold Chain Cowboy.
And honestly, I haven’t really stopped listening to it since.
Parker managed to carry a lot of his independent sound over to his major label debut (and that’s no easy feat, by any means), which can be heard in some really great songs like “Why Indiana”, “Never Loved You At All”, and the one we’re gonna talk about today, “Falling Apart”.
“Falling Apart” was a co-write between Parker and fellow Texans Miranda Lambert, his producer Jon Randall, as well as the great Randy Rogers. Essentially, just a roster of the best writers in Texas.
The song definitely has more of an 80’s rock sound to it compared to some of the other ones on the record, and that was not done by mistake.
Parker told Lyric Magazine he had the idea for the song during a rough time at the beginning of the year, thanks in part to COVID halting live shows, but also some trials in his personal life:
“That was crazy how that track came about. It was January, February of this year and I was really down in the dumps. It was cold, there was no touring and I had been fighting with my fiancé, Hallie Ray.
I was sitting up late one night and wrote the line, ‘what if I just want someone else?’ I thought it was really cool and I took it into the write with Miranda the next day and she immediately said that it was really good but it was too mean.”
Thankfully, Miranda had another, softer suggestion for how he could word that specific line:
“She suggested we change it to ‘maybe you are better with someone else?’ and all of a sudden we had the song!
We chased the melody that I had, it was 10am in the morning but we are all sat around drinking beer – Jon Randall and Randy Rogers were there too.
They all know each other really well although Miranda is a friend of mine and is the all time, just best, greatest, nicest person, you know?”
Later that night, Parker was at Jon’s house finalizing some things for the record, and they were trying to figure out if they’d even include “Falling Apart” at all:
“We were getting closer to finishing the record at this point, I was at Jon Randall’s house and I asked him what he thought about ‘Falling Apart’ and he said that he thought we ought to cut it.
I wasn’t sure how or where it would fit on the record, and it just so happened that Jon was jamming some .38 Special on his guitar and I said, ‘Dude, why does nobody ever cut songs like this anymore?’
Jon replied, ‘I don’t know, but lets fuckin’ do it!’
And luckily for all of us, it made the final cut:
“We literally went into the studio and cut a .38 Special rip-off track with ‘Falling Apart.'”
And God bless ’em for it:
