Nate Smith on Taking a Swing at a Power Ballad With ‘Fix What You Didn’t Break’: ‘Guys Are More Sensitive Than We Get Credit’

November 20, 2024 E Jazz Reporter

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It’s a necessary fact of music-industry life that the conditions in which music is created are often different than the reality in which they’re consumed.

Christmas songs, for example, are often penned in spring or summer, and they’re frequently recorded when Nashville temperatures are still in the 80s or 90s. Similarly, artists typically develop future singles when their current releases are just beginning to grow, and many of their projections about follow-up material are educated guesses about how the already-finished songs might perform.

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In that spirit, Nate Smith’s new single – “Fix What You Didn’t Break,” released by RCA Nashville to country radio via PlayMPE on Oct. 28 – is an example of strong artistic instinct. It’s a power ballad, fueled by crunchy chords and Smith’s trademark rasp, though it’s something of a departure. His first three singles – “Whiskey On You,” “World On Fire” and “Bulletproof,” each of which reached the top 5 on Country Airplay – all incorporated that rasp into defiant post-breakup anthems. “Fix What You Didn’t Break” revises the message, embracing a plot that celebrates a woman who changed the outlook of a previously defeated romantic partner. It’s not exactly the formula Smith has employed thus far, and he’s acutely aware.

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“It’s kind of scary when you put your first kind of ballad out there,” he says. “But I do love this song so much.”

Understandably. Smith was a teenager in the late 1990s and early 2000s when pop/rock radio was spinning Lifehouse’s “You and Me,” 3 Doors Down’s “Here Without You,” Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” and Goo Goo Dolls’ RIAA diamond-certified “Iris.” That sonic strain is part of Smith’s musical DNA, and provides permission to explore the emotions around successful relationships.
“Guys,” he reasons, “are more sensitive than we get credit.”

Smith’s musical identity was still being forged for the public when he wrote “Fix” on July 11, 2023, at the home studio of producer Lindsay Rimes (LOCASH, Tyler Rich). They were joined by songwriters Ashley Gorley (“I Am Not Okay,” “Truck Bed”) and Taylor Phillips (“I Am Not Okay,” “Hurricane”) – the same team that authored “World On Fire,” which was just in its fourth charted week at the time on its way to becoming Smith’s second No. 1. They already had a sense that Smith needed to think about changing things up with his future radio-targeted releases.

“Our goal,” says Gorley, “is not just to try to get a song on them, but to have a hand in what they should do next, or what we think we’d like to hear from them personally next. This kind of checked all those boxes.”

Phillips submitted the title – “He always has the titles… it’s one of his expected roles,” Gorley says – and it didn’t take long to figure out that it fit a story about a woman who served as something of a savior for a guy who was lost. Rimes cranked up some chords on electric guitar that gave it some testosterone.
“Lindsay, he’s always got that electric turned up so loud the neighbors can hear him,” Phillips quips.

The opening lines came early: “I was a 10-year train wreck/ With a last-call longneck.” They captured a guy numbing his pain with alcohol, and Smith says they drew on a past relationship that he hasn’t talked much about publicly. “It had been in the ballpark of 10 years since my divorce and what I went through before, when I left Nashville the first time,” he notes. “It kind of had a little nod of that.”

They mapped out the melody, still applying an anthemic attitude to “Fix,” even if it was a love song. One particularly attractive melodic segment, featuring short phrases and distinct-but-modest intervals, emerged during the work, though it wasn’t immediately apparent how to use it.

“We all dug the melody and the vibe of that section, and we were just trying to figure out where to put it,” Rimes remembers. “At the time, we might have thought that could be a verse, but it felt right as the pre-chorus.”

That pre-chorus was an ideal puzzle piece, easing from the opening verse into the first chorus. The verses themselves had their own forward motion thematically. While the opening stanza established the singer’s brokenness, the second verse focused on the woman, who saw him as salvageable and took the steps to revive his spirits, answering his prayers and picking up “the towel that I threw in.”

“One of my favorite lines – and I’m sure Taylor had something to do with it – is ‘Showed me the past ain’t a tattoo/ Loved me even when you didn’t have to,’” Gorley says. “That’s like a spiritual moment to be like, ‘Hey, you don’t have to be known for your past. It’s not with you forever. I’m gonna change that.’ That really goes with the theme.”

To cap it, they re-employed the pre-chorus as the bridge, figuring that the melody was so good it should be heard again.

“I don’t like doing a lot of pre-peats – it’s what I call them when you repeat the pre-chorus – but in that situation, what else can you say that’s better than that?” Phillips says. “The melody was so hooky, and it gave the song a second to breathe again before the last chorus.”

Rimes built the demo as the writing session progressed, adding programmed drums and bass around his guitar parts. When they thought they were done writing, Gorley took a swing at a scratch vocal, just to see if there were any issues that jumped out. Once he wrapped, Smith sang the real demo vocal, adding his rasp in all the right places.

“Fix What You Didn’t Break” languished for months, but Rimes brought it out this summer during a tracking session at Nashville’s Blackbird Studios with a five-piece band: drummer Evan Hutchings, bassist Mark Hill, guitarist Derek Wells, keyboardist Alex Wright and steel guitarist Justin Schipper. They found themselves with extra time at the end of the booking, and Rimes thought framing Smith’s demo vocal with a real band would better sell it to the team.

“I felt personally that the song wasn’t getting as much love as I felt it deserved, and it wasn’t finished,” Rimes says. “We were all focused on getting the album finished, and cutting songs and listening to new songs and stuff. I wanted to cut a band on this song, because I feel like it’s a huge hit.”

Sol Philcox-Littlefield came in later to drop a loud-but-simple guitar solo, and Smith spent hours finding places to add in backing vocals.

There were other options for singles, but multiple radio stations asked RCA to service it, presenting Smith in a slightly different light. It debuted on the Country Airplay chart dated Nov. 23, reminding listeners that the right situation can help overcome a past hardship.

“I feel like a good relationship exposes it,” Smith says, “but it also gives you the freedom to grow and the grace to forgive and understand that you’re going through this stuff, slowly refining.”