Talk about a HIT that sounds straight outta 1980…
Lainey Wilson released a new song today called “I Would If I Could” as part of Apple Music’s Lost & Found series, which is a track written by two incredible country music songwriters, Skip Ewing and Dean Dillon.
The new series focuses on showcasing unreleased country tracks from some of Music City’s best songwriters, and I think this tune is a prime example of that.
Skip and Dean penned “I Would If I Could” together in 1996 (in what was somehow their only writing collaboration), and Dean told Lost & Found Radio with Lori McKenna that he always knew it was a great song that for whatever reason just got tossed aside like so many unfortunately do:
“Skip and I had never written before, I don’t know who had the melody or who had the idea, but when we finished, I thought we had a great song.
There was more to it than a lot of other stuff I’ve written, but for whatever reason, and you know this yourself, it happens a lot. They just get pitched a couple times and that’s it.
You never hear about them again. And then somebody somewhere dug this out of the trash can somewhere.”
Lainey added that the song has a “magical” element to it, and she knew she wanted to record it when she first heard that “timeless” melody:
“When you listen to the first line of the song, it is classic. And it feels like a song that should already be a song. There’s just a magic in it and this is the only song that [Dean Dillon and Skip Ewing] ever wrote together… It’s wild.
Two of the most incredible songwriters that have ever existed. I look up to them a whole lot. And I wanted to record something that was done a long time ago, that still stood the test of time, is timeless; this melody.
And two, the words are incredible, the lyrics are incredible, but you don’t even have to know what it’s saying to be in it. That’s when you know it’s a good song.”
The production is as timeless as the melody, and hearing Lainey’s fresh, twangy vocals sing about heartbreak and knowing that it’s time to let go of a relationship is quite literally perfection.
And I know it would probably never happen, but this would make such a kickass radio single too…
I just wish it was available across all streaming platforms, because it’s actually one of my favorite songs Lainey has ever released and kind of a different, more decidedly classic country sound for her, so hopefully she’ll record it for another record or something one day.
If you have Apple Music, you can listen to the whole song there now, but if you don’t, you can listen to a clip of it here:
The original demo is really damn good too:
And speaking of classic, Lainey appeared on the Christmas At Graceland special earlier this week to perform a rousing rendition of Elvis’ “Santa Claus Is Back In Town”:
