The dog songs are always TOUGH.
This week, Hardy stopped by Katie & Company to talk about his forthcoming album Country! Country! that’s dropping this Friday, September 26th. He has already released “Bro Country” with Ernest, and this past Friday, dropped a tear jerker called “Dog Years” that will have you in your feelings if you’ve ever lost a pet and know what that feels like.
A solo write by Hardy, he actually penned it over ten years ago, and it was the song that helped him get a publishing deal. For whatever reason, it got forgotten about for a long time, and at one point, Miranda Lambert had reached out to him about cutting it. You probably know that Miranda is a HUGE dog lover, and has an entire foundation dedicated to helping dogs and other animals called MuttNation, but she just couldn’t do it.
She told Hardy she loved it, buts he’d never be able to perform it live because she would cry ever time. Eventually, she asked Hardy to sing it with her at one of her MuttNation events, and he realized he needed to cut “Dog Years” and give it a chance:
“A few years ago, Miranda hit me up and she was like, this ‘Dog Years’ song. And I was like, ‘Yeah?’ and she was like, ‘I would cut it, but I would never be able to sing it cause I would cry.’ Because you know how much she’s a dog lover.
And I was like, ‘Screw that, cut the song, please.’ But I really owe a lot of that to her. Last year, she had her MuttNation event at Ascend, and she called me and asked me if I would sing ‘Dog Years’ and have her harmonies.
And I was like, yeah, sure. And that was kind of the moment that I was like, okay, this is cool. I need to give this song a chance.”
When asked if he could be able to get through it without crying, Hardy said enough time has passed that he doesn’t think it will be an issue, but that’s obviously not always been the case.
He recalled when his childhood dog, Nugget, passed away, who the song was about, right after he’d taken a trip home to Mississippi during the holidays:
“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Enough time has passed now. It was the first time, I’ll never forget, I had probably gone a solid six or seven years without crying. Like I just am not… I used to be, or I’ll go through phases. I remembered, I went home for deer season over the holidays, and I knew that my dog was getting old.
And when it was cold, they’d let him sleep in the front part of the hallway, next to where the laundry room was, and he was outside dog. And I just I laid with him one night, and I fell asleep, and I woke up at like five in the morning and went and got in the bed. And then I slept a couple more hours, and I drove back to Nashville. And my dad called me that next morning, and he had passed away.
So that was the first time that I had cried and like seven or eight years. And I just remember thinking, like, what the hell is happening? It was really sad. He was like my true, I had him from a child to an adult. That entire, very important part of my life. His name was Nugget. So that one’s for Nugget.”
If you’ve ever experience the loss of a pet, then you know just how much it hurts, and I’m sure almost anyone who listens to “Dog Years” can totally sympathize with why Miranda couldn’t bring herself to cut it.
“Dog Years” covers a dog’s life all the way up to the point where they have to say goodbye to their owner, and he perfectly captures the heartbreaking feeling of knowing that all the love a dog has to give is gone when they take their last breathe:
“And right now I know you’re fightin’ a lot of feelings
Starin’ at me
Knowin’ this time when you scratch my head it’ll probably be the last
But if I could speak your language
All that I would do is thank you for the best years,
Though they went by seven times too fast.”
It’s almost too much, and again, I can completely understand why so many artists passed on this one simply because it’s too emotional and would have them bawling onstage every night and making it hard to finish a concert.
Hopefully, Hardy doesn’t surprise himself and break down when he does start singing this every night on tour, because I’m sure plenty of fans in the crowd will have the water works flowing, and understandably so.
You can listen to “Dog Years” below, but don’t say I didn’t warn you if you shed a few tears…
“Dog Years”
The full interview is available below.
Country! Country! tracklist:
1. Country Country
2. Favorite Country Song
3. Bro Country (with ERNEST)
4. Luckiest Man Alive
5. Car That Drove You Away
6. Girl With A Gun
7. Buck On The Wall
8. I’d Go Crazy Too
9. Take The Country And Run
10. Goodbye
11. Bedroom In The Sky (with Stephen Wilson Jr.)
12. Bottomland
13. Who Don’t
14. Country In Me
15. Gun To My Head
16. Keep It Country
17. Y’all Need Jesus
18. Dog Years
19. We’re All Gonna Die
20. Everybody Does
