Dan + Shay Return With Deeply Personal Album ‘Young,’ Leading With Suicide Prevention Anthem

Dan + Shay’s forthcoming album “Young” marks a significant departure from the wedding-themed catalog the Grammy Award-winning country duo has built throughout their career. The project introduces a more introspective, emotionally vulnerable sound across its 10 autobiographical tracks, with lead single “Say So” addressing suicide prevention—a heavy subject neither Dan Smyers nor Shay Mooney was initially certain they should tackle.

“Say So” was written as a tribute to Ben Vaughn, the late head of Warner Chappell Music Publishing and a mentor to the pair, who died by suicide a year before the song’s creation. The hopeful chorus carries the message: “If you’re going through hell, you’re not alone. If you need somebody, say so.” Remarkably, the day the duo began working on the track coincided with what would have been Vaughn’s 50th birthday—a moment Smyers interpreted as a sign the song could provide meaningful help to listeners.

The creative process proved therapeutic for both artists. Working alongside co-writers David Hodges and Jimmy Robbins, Smyers and Mooney found themselves sharing stories about their friend, with the song emerging organically from their conversation. “We owed it to our friend Ben, to the community he meant so much to, and to ourselves to see that one through to the finish line,” Smyers explained to The Associated Press.

The album opens with its stripped-back acoustic title track, which Smyers describes as “a message from your future self to your present and past self, about the passage of time and appreciating the moment.” Beyond its temporal themes, the song also addresses emotional vulnerability among men—a subject Smyers says he had previously struggled to confront in his own life.

Religion plays a more prominent role throughout “Young” than in previous Dan + Shay releases, evident in the single “Her, The Kids and Jesus” and two references to the King James Bible. The final 10 tracks emerged after the duo wrote and discarded an entire album’s worth of material, keeping only songs that reflected genuine self-examination and honest conversation between the pair.

Other album highlights include “Dogs in Our Twenties,” a tribute to early adulthood pets, and “The Old Guys,” a reimagined love song featuring neo-traditionalist country artist Cody Johnson. The latter collaboration showcases vocal complementarity—Mooney’s high register, Johnson’s lower tone, and Smyers’ contribution creating what the duo calls “perfectly meeting in the middle.”

Mooney emphasized the album’s breadth of emotional territory. “There’s kind of a song for everybody, for whatever you’re going through,” he said. “Whatever people need to get out of this album, I hope that they get that.”