Songwriter Spotlight: Troy Verges

From Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations to a slew of #1 hits, songwriter Troy Verges already has an incredible track record. Verges has written for artists including Hunter Hayes (“Wanted,”) Tim McGraw (“Drugs or Jesus,”) Martina McBride (“Blessed,”) Kenny Chesney (“You Save Me,”) Kip Moore (“Beer Money,”) Carrie Underwood (“Crazy Dreams,”) Easton Corbin (“Someday When I’m Old”) and many more. We chatted with the artist about crossover hits, women on the radio, and scoring movies.

You’ve written for an incredibly diverse group of artists, and had a lot of crossover success. How did that come about, and how do you balance it?

I grew up listening to every kind of music under the sun, and honestly, the last genre of music that I got turned onto was country music. Growing up I played in mostly rock bands, but I listened to everything – folk, jazz, whatever I could get my hands on – and I still do. I love country music now after discovering it in college and songwriters and all that, but it certainly is not the only music that I enjoy, and it really helps me to be able to shift gears and get out of the track that I’m on if I’m writing one style of music. I mean, country is still the dominant style of music that I write, and it’s definitely my favorite. I love Nashville, and I love everything that goes with the music and singers and songwriters. But it’s fun every now and then to just kind of shift out and use a different muscle. And the process is often so different writing pop music than it is writing country music, it’s nice to be able to change it up. Where different things are important, the lyric is key in country, and the melody is more key in pop music, so you have to really get strong in one of those areas, and hopefully it helps you when you go from writing one to writing another, you have a little bit better chops at the thing you’re doing. So it’s just fun to mix it up.

It must be advantageous too, having the skills to work with crossover artists. You’ve written for Hunter Hayes, for instance, who’s an example of someone who’s appealed to both the country and pop formats.

That’s totally true, and he’s a great example of that, such a diverse artist in himself. He takes these songs across boundaries, and for a country artist he’s doing a pretty good job pretty early on in his career of taking his music outside of America too. So yeah, he’s a great example of an artist that’s like that and it makes it easy for me because he’s so diverse and a singer and a producer and a record artist that it takes the song in new directions they might not go otherwise.

How often do you end up writing with the artist, how often are you with other writers?

I guess you know, whenever you can get in the room with the artist it’s usually advantageous. Like today, I’m writing with Kip Moore, who’s become one of my really good friends through songwriting – and same with Hunter – so I write with them as much as I can, but they’re on the road an awful lot. I don’t know what the split is… maybe 30% of the time I’m writing with the artist and the other times with other songwriters. And when I am with other songwriters and there’s no artists in the room, it’s pretty often that we’ll talk about who’s recording and probably start out trying to aim something like, Carrie Underwood’s writing a record, or whoever it might be, in the next couple months, so maybe we should try and write something for Carrie. But having said that, I can count on one or two hands the times that that works. Usually we’ll start out trying to write a song for an artist, they won’t cut it, but it’ll be there when another artist we weren’t even thinking of comes along and it makes their record. So I wish we had better success ratios of trying to decide who was gonna cut what we were writing while we were working on it, but unfortunately that’s not the case.

Some songs end up being cut that were written, say, ten years ago. Have any of yours happened like that?

I’d say it’s a mixed bag, I mean that happens for me, maybe not that far back… I’ve had one example where it was a song that was maybe seven or eight years old that got recorded and actually became a hit, was a song called “You Save Me” that Kenny Chesney recorded, which was more rare than not. Most of the time the newer songs get more attention just given the nature, like everyone at your publishing company is gonna get more excited about it when it comes in, and it’ll get more activity, get pitched more, things like that. But your publisher – my publisher anyway – does a good job of staying aware of the catalog, and if there’s something that really shines through, it’ll get worked until it gets placed somewhere – hopefully, that’s the ideal situation. I can’t imagine having to go through the number of songs publishers get in town every day, there’s just hundreds of songs being written every day, and I don’t know how – if you had a company with 10 writers or more and you’re trying to keep up with all that, and you go back years… I couldn’t do it. So I’m very thankful that they’re there to remember our songs, and a lot of times my publisher will pull out ideas for pitches of songs that I’d totally forgotten about.

That definitely takes skill, to keep all those in your mind.

No doubt!

When you first started writing, you get your first hold, things like that, and that’s kind of a cool thing. Now that you’ve been at it for so long, where are those moments of real excitement? 

All of it really gets me excited! I mean I’ve learned just a little bit for myself, for my emotional stability, not to get too attached to holds anymore, but I still can’t help it, and I do sometimes, and I certainly get really excited about any placements, any cuts. You try and tell yourself don’t get too excited, just because it’s cut doesn’t mean it’s gonna make the record, so don’t get too excited until you can pick it up in Target, and buy it, and see the song on the CD, until it’s really official. And then hope for the single. Every step along the way is exciting, it really is joyous when it happens, and still a big letdown when it doesn’t. But I’m still invested in it as I ever was, you know? I guess I’ve learned to protect myself a little bit, trying not to get too excited to early, but you really can’t help it.

It’s a hard business for that, for sure.

Definitely, no doubt about it! You gotta have a thick skin.

You’ve had a huge number of hits for women – Martina McBride’s “Blessed” for instance – but many people have found the radio climate to be less than friendly to female voices lately. Has that changed the way you write, and do you think the climate is changing?

A lot of times you write something that could go either way, depends on how you demo or what the vocal is, but just in the last six months or so, it’s kind of gotten to the point where even with my female co-writers… I mean Hillary Lindsey is one of my main co-writers and one of my best friends and one of my favorite vocalists is the world, but even in the last few months we’ll be writing and we’ll be like well, if we write a female song today, there’s nowhere to go with it for this many months, until this next person makes a record, because it’s just saturated with guys. Which is awesome, I mean I love that too, but like you said, I’ve always done well with female artists and I’ve always loved female artists, felt like they did some groundbreaking things. You know, people like Faith and Martina and Shania are so diverse. I love the females that are working now, I just wish there were more of them, ‘cuz now that Taylor’s temporarily left the genre, Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert are kind of carrying the solo female torch for country, and I think there could be more.

Are there artists that you’re excited to see growing into that space, or are you not really seeing the potential for someone on that level?

I see ‘em all the time! Most of the ones that I see that I’m thinking of don’t have record deals, because the rosters of our labels aren’t filled with women. The guy thing is working. I don’t know if it’s a self fulfilling prophesy, you know, whether it’s the chicken or the egg, but there’s definitely loads of talented women in town ready to fill that slot. They’re not there yet, but I’m sure that they will get there, because it seems like there’s starting to be some momentum to place females, it seems like the town kinda knows that that should be what’s coming next and what needs to happen.

Anyone in particular you’d suggest checking out?

The two people that come to mind right off the top of my head are Caitlyn Smith, who’s an excellent artist and an amazing writer, and she’s had big cuts as a writer now, she had “Wasting All These Tears” for Cassadee Pope, and we wrote “Heart of Dixie” together for Danielle Bradbery, and has a Garth cut now. She’s awesome, and an awesome vocalist, and making an awesome record. She’s out touring right now, she’s done dates for Sheryl Crow and Eric Church, and being able to get on the road and do that, and she’s growing as an artist. And then another girl is a girl named Sara Haze, who’s really great I think too. We wrote a song together that Kelleigh Bannen recorded called “Famous” and then she has a song on the Rascal Flatts record now as a writer, but she’s a great artist and a great singer with a really great voice as well. So those are just two examples out of many more that are in town. But there’s always great talent in Nashville., and right now is no exception.

As far as writers in general, are there people you’re stoked to get in the room with? Who do you see that’s newer to Nashville that you’re excited to see start to get cuts, or should be getting cuts soon?

The two girls that I just mentioned like I said, they’re great artists but they’re great writers too, so I’d put them at the top of the list for me. I write at universal, and there’s a couple of guys over there that are new, one’s named Ryan Hurd, and one is Chase McGill. Both of those guys are just getting their first cuts now – Ryan just got his first single out. There’s another friend of mine who’s not necessarily new to Nashville but he’s just starting to get a bunch of cuts named Justin Weaver, and there’s a guy name Erik Dylan who’s a great young artist and a great writer as well. I mean, I could list 20 people. But those are the ones off the top of my head. Maren Morris, she’s another great female artist who’s a great singer, a great artist, and a great writer who just got her first cut on the Tim McGraw record.

You’ve had a ton of success. Are there still bucket list things with your career – artists you want to get cuts for, other goals – that you’d like to accomplish?

There’s definitely some artists I wanna get cuts with that I haven’t, and honestly the day to day – if I can keep doing this as long as I can keep doing it and succeeding at it… I mean, I feel like I’m succeeding by being able to do it, so just being in the mix and in the game is awesome, and I’m very happy with that. I still have definitely other ambitions that keep going – there are certain artists like Keith Urban, like for some reason I can’t get on a Keith Urban record! I had one song he recorded a few records ago that got released, but it was only released in Australia, it was like his Australian single, so I’m not counting that one. Then I had a song he recorded for this record that’s out now, that’s one of those occasions like I mentioned where it just didn’t make the record. So I’m still working to get on a Keith Urban record. And one day hopefully I will. I’m a massive fan of Jay Joyce as a producer, and also the record that he’s made with Eric Church, and so I have no relation to the Eric Church camp or any songs have even come close to making it on those records, but that’s a goal as well to be able to do that. And you know, working for the great stuff they’re doing. Everything that Jay’s doing is just insanely creative. So those are just two artists off the top of my head. And one day I hope to do something more with movies, with soundtracks or scoring, that’s just kind of what the pipe dream, not doing anything with that but one day I’d love to be able to do that.

That must involve such a different type of writing, right?

I think so. I honestly don’t know that much about it. I’ve written songs for movies, where they send you the script and they’re like we’re looking for this kind of song with this scene. Tom Douglas and Hillary Lindsey and I got the Academy Award nomination for doing exactly that: they sent us the script, told us exactly what they wanted, and we did it, and it worked. And I love doing that, and that’s super cool, and always fun, even when it doesn’t work, ‘cuz you get to read the script, and learn about the movie, and the whole process is fascinating. So I’d love to do that, but I’d also love to do at some point, where you’re actually just scoring the movies. I don’t know anything about what that’s like, or what kind of direction you get. It’s kind of like the thing that Trent Reznor’s doing a lot now, he seems to be getting a lot of scoring work, but it seems like it would be a blast. Gordie Sampson and I have been talking about trying to get something together at some point but right now we’re pretty involved in trying to get on country records so it may have to wait.