5 Things to Expect from HARDY's New Album

We chatted with country singer, HARDY about his new album, the mockingbird & THE CROW, out Friday, January 20th. Here are five things to expect from the upcoming project.

The album may be a half country, half rock album; however, the mockingbird & THE CROW will always be rooted in country music.

“It definitely was more freeing, but I want people to know although it’s half a Rock and roll record, it’s also a little bit of my take or my spin on country music as well, because if you really dig into the lyric, THE CROW side has a deeply rooted country lyric […] I kind of opened the door for doing the rock ‘n’ Roll thing, but it opened the door for me to do a country thing, country lyrics over a really rock ‘n’ roll sonic production.”

HARDY is a co-producer on every single track on the upcoming project.

“Every project that we go into the studio, I have felt more free to speak my mind or throw out ideas. […] Joey [Moi] has taught me a lot about filling the space […] That’s something I have really picked up on, helping Joey with ideas for filling gaps, and I’ve definitely grown a lot with that.”

The album’s title track was the last song that was written for the project; and changed the title of the album.

“’the mockingbird and THE CROW’ was the last song I wrote for the record, and I did not necessarily have a title for the record. The record was originally 8 songs and 8 songs. […] We ended up just writing the whole song that day and it ended up being the last song for the record.”

HARDY’s rock-heavy song, “Jack” was the first song he wrote for the album, and “happy” was the first solo song he wrote since 2013.

“The first song I wrote for this project was “JACK,” two years ago. And for obvious reasons, no one else was going to cut that shit. That was the minute that I was like this is cool, what do y’all think about this […] I had been wanting to try to get one by myself just to know that I still could. […] I had this weird idea about personifying the word happy and turning happy into a person.”

“drink one for me” was written from the perspective of the guy who died in “GIVE HEAVEN SOME HELL” from HARDY’s debut album.

“Once we had the idea that we wanted to write about somebody dying, we said we should write it from the perspective of the guy that died in “GIVE HEAVEN SOME HELL.” That was said out loud in the room. That was on purpose.”

**Bonus note, HARDY shared that he WILL collaborate with Morgan Wallen & Ernest on a song in the future.