The Sit Down with Dan + Shay
On August 21st, Dan + Shay return with their sixth studio album. Over their 13 year career, the duo have amassed more than 14 Billion global streams and 139 worldwide career Multi-Platinum, Platinum and Gold sales certifications. This album, their first since 2023’s Bigger Houses, promises to be their most personal yet as they look to give fans a snap-shot of where they are in their lives right now with every song inspired by a true story. We sat down with Dan and Shay to look ahead to the release and find out more behind Young.
Hey guys
What's up Ian?
Hey man, what's happening?
Good, yourselves?
Doing great man, thanks for taking the time here.
We're just a couple of weeks away now from the new album coming out. Does it feel like it's that close now?
Yeah, it's pretty wild man, we've been doing a lot of pre-promo for it, maybe more than we have on the last couple albums, but it's just a different world out there with how you get your music out. There's a lot of traffic, there's a lot of people putting out music every single week. I think that is like 100,000 songs a week or something like that, which is different than when we put out an album 10 years ago. It's been three years since we put out an album and apologies to our fans for making them wait that long. We don't usually make them wait that long, but it took us a second to find this one and I'm glad we did.
It really isn’t like you two to take that amount of time. Are you glad that you have taken that time and really honed it in to get this album right?
You know, I can say now that absolutely, I think if we didn't have the album that we do in hand, I don't know how we'd feel about it. We should have just gotten it out there a little quicker, but I think that this album took time because we had written basically a whole album that we got cold feet about, because it wasn’t touching our hearts and it wasn't really moving us. We thought, man, in a world of AI and all of the technology out there that has shaken up the music industry, if you will, and we really knew that the only way to combat that was with something real, something very human that would touch the human spirit. When we wrote the first song for the album, we were like, man, this is it. This makes me feel something. This moves me in a way that an AI track can't do. I think that there's some songs that we had written where we're like, this could be done by anybody. We need to go back to the drawing board and really write these songs that are from our heart and are exactly where we are in our life right now. I think that the song Bigger Houses from our last album, the title track, was really the North Star to what became the Young album, because that was exactly where we were in our lives at that very present time. I think that that was an important thing for us to do. The whole process of writing this album was very life-giving. We were just writing about what was happening in our lives. Say So came from conversations with our friends and that's how every song on this album was. We'd get in the writer's room and we had no agenda but to write the best song that was in that room that day and just to pour our hearts out about what was going on in our lives. Looking back on it, those few months that we wrote this record, I will always revere that time. Honestly, it was just a really awesome period. We really got to soak it in and take our time and make sure we were writing the album that wanted to be written. I think that at this point in our career, doing it over 10 years, it had to matter. Every song had to answer the question, why? Like, why does this song exist? I think every single song on this record has a purpose and a reason. Dan always uses the term inevitable. We felt like every song on this record was inevitable. It needed to be out into the world. It’s a cool thing to be able to stand on that and say, you know what, we weren't chasing anything with this record. If you don't know anything about Dan and Shay, you're going to learn a lot about us personally on this record. If you do know us, then you know it's all true. It was a really cool writing process, man. I'm glad we took our time to create that.
At the same time, you're going to have people who have now followed you for the full 12 years, really. How important is it to those fans to know the writing is inspired by your own, and ultimately their, stories?
Big time, man. I mean, I think sometimes you fall into the trap of when you're trying to make a quote-unquote hit song, you're like, oh, we got to make this as universal as possible so as many people can relate to it as possible and make sure it performs well on the charts. If you tap into the opposite, especially now, I feel like we're seeing a big authenticity movement. You're seeing artists like Noah Kahan, who's writing about his personal experience and testimony, selling out multiple nights in stadiums. That's really cool to see. If you can be specific, I think these fans who've been with us on our journey want to hear our stories. If we're telling the truest form of our stories, they connect with us. So inherently, we think they'll connect with the music and that’s important for us, especially at this point in our lives. Being a little bit older, we're not singing about the same stuff we were singing about in our early to mid-20s. We're going through different things in life right now. Tapping into those themes, even though some of them may be a little bit heavier, like our lead single Say So, it's something we've never written about or talked about openly before. I don't know if we can say what we mean, what's on our hearts, but I think the fans will really resonate with that on a deeper level and when they do, you get a deeper connection with your fan and those fans are with you for life rather than just something that's surface level. Don't get me wrong, we're a sucker for a good melody or something catchy that sounds good on the radio, but I think if you can have a little bit of substance in the material, I think fans connect on a deeper level. It just creates a little bit more longevity.
Hey guys
What's up Ian?
Hey man, what's happening?
Good, yourselves?
Doing great man, thanks for taking the time here.
We're just a couple of weeks away now from the new album coming out. Does it feel like it's that close now?
Yeah, it's pretty wild man, we've been doing a lot of pre-promo for it, maybe more than we have on the last couple albums, but it's just a different world out there with how you get your music out. There's a lot of traffic, there's a lot of people putting out music every single week. I think that is like 100,000 songs a week or something like that, which is different than when we put out an album 10 years ago. It's been three years since we put out an album and apologies to our fans for making them wait that long. We don't usually make them wait that long, but it took us a second to find this one and I'm glad we did.
It really isn’t like you two to take that amount of time. Are you glad that you have taken that time and really honed it in to get this album right?
You know, I can say now that absolutely, I think if we didn't have the album that we do in hand, I don't know how we'd feel about it. We should have just gotten it out there a little quicker, but I think that this album took time because we had written basically a whole album that we got cold feet about, because it wasn’t touching our hearts and it wasn't really moving us. We thought, man, in a world of AI and all of the technology out there that has shaken up the music industry, if you will, and we really knew that the only way to combat that was with something real, something very human that would touch the human spirit. When we wrote the first song for the album, we were like, man, this is it. This makes me feel something. This moves me in a way that an AI track can't do. I think that there's some songs that we had written where we're like, this could be done by anybody. We need to go back to the drawing board and really write these songs that are from our heart and are exactly where we are in our life right now. I think that the song Bigger Houses from our last album, the title track, was really the North Star to what became the Young album, because that was exactly where we were in our lives at that very present time. I think that that was an important thing for us to do. The whole process of writing this album was very life-giving. We were just writing about what was happening in our lives. Say So came from conversations with our friends and that's how every song on this album was. We'd get in the writer's room and we had no agenda but to write the best song that was in that room that day and just to pour our hearts out about what was going on in our lives. Looking back on it, those few months that we wrote this record, I will always revere that time. Honestly, it was just a really awesome period. We really got to soak it in and take our time and make sure we were writing the album that wanted to be written. I think that at this point in our career, doing it over 10 years, it had to matter. Every song had to answer the question, why? Like, why does this song exist? I think every single song on this record has a purpose and a reason. Dan always uses the term inevitable. We felt like every song on this record was inevitable. It needed to be out into the world. It’s a cool thing to be able to stand on that and say, you know what, we weren't chasing anything with this record. If you don't know anything about Dan and Shay, you're going to learn a lot about us personally on this record. If you do know us, then you know it's all true. It was a really cool writing process, man. I'm glad we took our time to create that.
At the same time, you're going to have people who have now followed you for the full 12 years, really. How important is it to those fans to know the writing is inspired by your own, and ultimately their, stories?
Big time, man. I mean, I think sometimes you fall into the trap of when you're trying to make a quote-unquote hit song, you're like, oh, we got to make this as universal as possible so as many people can relate to it as possible and make sure it performs well on the charts. If you tap into the opposite, especially now, I feel like we're seeing a big authenticity movement. You're seeing artists like Noah Kahan, who's writing about his personal experience and testimony, selling out multiple nights in stadiums. That's really cool to see. If you can be specific, I think these fans who've been with us on our journey want to hear our stories. If we're telling the truest form of our stories, they connect with us. So inherently, we think they'll connect with the music and that’s important for us, especially at this point in our lives. Being a little bit older, we're not singing about the same stuff we were singing about in our early to mid-20s. We're going through different things in life right now. Tapping into those themes, even though some of them may be a little bit heavier, like our lead single Say So, it's something we've never written about or talked about openly before. I don't know if we can say what we mean, what's on our hearts, but I think the fans will really resonate with that on a deeper level and when they do, you get a deeper connection with your fan and those fans are with you for life rather than just something that's surface level. Don't get me wrong, we're a sucker for a good melody or something catchy that sounds good on the radio, but I think if you can have a little bit of substance in the material, I think fans connect on a deeper level. It just creates a little bit more longevity.
I got to give a shout-out to the UK. I feel like the UK, the fans there dig in on the music, not just how they do in the States. I feel like they dig in deeper and maybe that's a generalization, but I remember playing there for the first time and we’d just put out our first album and we were playing deep cuts. We didn't have enough hits to play a full set, so we were playing all the album tracks and the fans knew all the words. When we would chat with fans after the shows, they'd be like, man, I love track eight on the record and here's why. I think there's a deeper level of appreciation for lyrics and concepts and meaning over there. I just think maybe because some of the music that's being written historically out of the UK by singer-songwriters are just the best of the best.
Looking back on those early shows, I think it was Bush Hall that was one of your first shows here and there were like 500 people there.
That was the first one! That was what I was thinking of.
If you look back now, having called that album Where It All Began, how much does that mean to you to have had that album title 12 years on, billions of streams and six studio albums later?
Hey, that's a crazy thing about it. When we're telling stories about how we started and we're telling the origin story of Dan + Shay, I look back on that first album. What a cool, great name for an album when you're looking back on things. It has just such a different meaning. I think when we were writing that album, at least I did—and I bet Dan did because he thinks a lot further than I do—looking back on that now, it just has a different meaning of where it all began. There's a lot of weight to that now. I think about that night, December 7th, 2012, when I walked into that house and met Dan for the first time. That's a crazy thing to look back on and through writing this album, I really have just a new appreciation for where we are in our lives and what it took to get here. We can look back on that album in many different ways—that was where our career began. We were writing songs about young love and all these things. Man, it's crazy to look back on now. I'm just so grateful for all the twists and turns it took to get here, it is just wild. The Young album feels like it wraps up to me exactly where we are in our lives right now because of that time and just the lessons that we've learned and the mistakes that we've made. I wouldn't change a thing. I would go back and I would do every single mistake the exact same because it got us to here. I think that's a really important thing to think about in our lives as humans and not to look back and say, man, I wish I would have done that. I wish I would have done this. I think it's important to celebrate your mistakes in a way. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but I think that I'm very grateful for the things that we did wrong in a way because it led us to here. Some of those lessons you can only learn by doing them wrong and even now with kids, I've got four boys, I think that that's a scary thing because I don't ever want them to go through hardships because you don't want that for your kids. I know that there's lessons that have to be learned the hard way and you know those lessons at the core. It's just a cool thing to look back on now and I'm just so grateful that this is where we are and that this is the album that we're making. I'm just super proud of that.
Looking back on those early shows, I think it was Bush Hall that was one of your first shows here and there were like 500 people there.
That was the first one! That was what I was thinking of.
If you look back now, having called that album Where It All Began, how much does that mean to you to have had that album title 12 years on, billions of streams and six studio albums later?
Hey, that's a crazy thing about it. When we're telling stories about how we started and we're telling the origin story of Dan + Shay, I look back on that first album. What a cool, great name for an album when you're looking back on things. It has just such a different meaning. I think when we were writing that album, at least I did—and I bet Dan did because he thinks a lot further than I do—looking back on that now, it just has a different meaning of where it all began. There's a lot of weight to that now. I think about that night, December 7th, 2012, when I walked into that house and met Dan for the first time. That's a crazy thing to look back on and through writing this album, I really have just a new appreciation for where we are in our lives and what it took to get here. We can look back on that album in many different ways—that was where our career began. We were writing songs about young love and all these things. Man, it's crazy to look back on now. I'm just so grateful for all the twists and turns it took to get here, it is just wild. The Young album feels like it wraps up to me exactly where we are in our lives right now because of that time and just the lessons that we've learned and the mistakes that we've made. I wouldn't change a thing. I would go back and I would do every single mistake the exact same because it got us to here. I think that's a really important thing to think about in our lives as humans and not to look back and say, man, I wish I would have done that. I wish I would have done this. I think it's important to celebrate your mistakes in a way. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but I think that I'm very grateful for the things that we did wrong in a way because it led us to here. Some of those lessons you can only learn by doing them wrong and even now with kids, I've got four boys, I think that that's a scary thing because I don't ever want them to go through hardships because you don't want that for your kids. I know that there's lessons that have to be learned the hard way and you know those lessons at the core. It's just a cool thing to look back on now and I'm just so grateful that this is where we are and that this is the album that we're making. I'm just super proud of that.
Over the years, you've had many a track used as a wedding first dance. Do you feel like with Marry You Again, you're now going to get the message from people renewing their vows, saying this is the song we used?
100 percent, man! It's nice to have one of those in the arsenal now with all the wedding songs that we've had. We've been crashing weddings as our little stunt to promote this song. Having an uptempo one—we've got a lot of ballads; we've got From The Ground Up; we've got Speechless, which are great first dance kind of ballads—but we got to have a song for every moment in the wedding. This will be for the moment when the bride and groom exit and everybody's got sparklers and they get in the car and there's cans tied behind it. It'll be that moment. We just love participating in that world and we've already got people saying we're going to use this in our wedding or our vow renewal. That's a big moment in somebody's life and for our music to be a part of that makes us very grateful for it. It's a fun song. I'm glad that one's out there and the fan response has been good. We've been having fun with the social media content.
100 percent, man! It's nice to have one of those in the arsenal now with all the wedding songs that we've had. We've been crashing weddings as our little stunt to promote this song. Having an uptempo one—we've got a lot of ballads; we've got From The Ground Up; we've got Speechless, which are great first dance kind of ballads—but we got to have a song for every moment in the wedding. This will be for the moment when the bride and groom exit and everybody's got sparklers and they get in the car and there's cans tied behind it. It'll be that moment. We just love participating in that world and we've already got people saying we're going to use this in our wedding or our vow renewal. That's a big moment in somebody's life and for our music to be a part of that makes us very grateful for it. It's a fun song. I'm glad that one's out there and the fan response has been good. We've been having fun with the social media content.
How much fun has that been to almost take it back to origins, going into a room of just maybe a hundred or two hundred people and shocking them with you being there?
I’m so grateful for it, because I think it takes you back to those times. If this was 12 years ago and we pop up at a wedding, they're like, why are these people here? You leave thinking what are these weirdos doing trying to sing at our wedding? Like Dan said, that's such a special moment in someone's life and something that they will always hold dear to them and that's one of my favourite parts about doing this for over 10 years. Now we have people who have been with us for so long that were kids listening to us at the age of 10 and they're 23 now. It makes you feel a little old, but it's the coolest thing. I think time is the only thing that can do that. Time can do a lot of things—time takes a lot away from us, but it also grows. It's been a cool process to be a part of people's lives in that way and to be able to crash someone's wedding, and the fact that they're grateful for it, that we're there, it's just a wild feeling. It’s a kind of thank you in a way to all these people who have been with us since the beginning. We obviously aren't going to be able to crash everybody's wedding—we'd like to, it'd be a lot of fun—but it's such a cool thing to be a part of something that's a lot bigger than us. Music is such a powerful thing and to be a part of someone's story is truly one of the most gratifying things that you ever be a part of as an artist. It's just a really cool thing, man.
I'm sure you've had this on your calls today, but we're all here patiently waiting for you to come back anytime soon and maybe even crash some UK weddings!
We are absolutely working on it, man. It is on the top of our list. You can put it out there to the world that it is going to happen before too long. I feel like this is the perfect album. Like I said, the UK fans get on the music a lot more (no offense to the fans in the States), it's just a different thing. I think this is a good album to come over there and play. I feel like we'll be able to get away with playing a lot more of the deep cuts on the record and I think we'll get requests for them from the fans there. So I'll just say it. I'll go on record and say it is in the works.
That's what I like to hear.
Absolutely, man. Absolutely. I love that you shouted out Bush Hall, by the way. That was a sick venue.
That is one of my favourite venues in London.
It's a good one. Maybe we'll do a little pop-up acoustic gig there!
Lifehouse are doing exactly that soon so it’s doable!
Sick. That's really cool.
Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate the time. It's been excellent talking.
Thank you, man. I appreciate you taking the time and asking great questions. And hopefully we'll talk to you real soon.
Talk to you soon, guys. Have a good one.
See you, man. Bye. Thank you so much, Ian.
Appreciate you, man. Bye. Bye.
I’m so grateful for it, because I think it takes you back to those times. If this was 12 years ago and we pop up at a wedding, they're like, why are these people here? You leave thinking what are these weirdos doing trying to sing at our wedding? Like Dan said, that's such a special moment in someone's life and something that they will always hold dear to them and that's one of my favourite parts about doing this for over 10 years. Now we have people who have been with us for so long that were kids listening to us at the age of 10 and they're 23 now. It makes you feel a little old, but it's the coolest thing. I think time is the only thing that can do that. Time can do a lot of things—time takes a lot away from us, but it also grows. It's been a cool process to be a part of people's lives in that way and to be able to crash someone's wedding, and the fact that they're grateful for it, that we're there, it's just a wild feeling. It’s a kind of thank you in a way to all these people who have been with us since the beginning. We obviously aren't going to be able to crash everybody's wedding—we'd like to, it'd be a lot of fun—but it's such a cool thing to be a part of something that's a lot bigger than us. Music is such a powerful thing and to be a part of someone's story is truly one of the most gratifying things that you ever be a part of as an artist. It's just a really cool thing, man.
I'm sure you've had this on your calls today, but we're all here patiently waiting for you to come back anytime soon and maybe even crash some UK weddings!
We are absolutely working on it, man. It is on the top of our list. You can put it out there to the world that it is going to happen before too long. I feel like this is the perfect album. Like I said, the UK fans get on the music a lot more (no offense to the fans in the States), it's just a different thing. I think this is a good album to come over there and play. I feel like we'll be able to get away with playing a lot more of the deep cuts on the record and I think we'll get requests for them from the fans there. So I'll just say it. I'll go on record and say it is in the works.
That's what I like to hear.
Absolutely, man. Absolutely. I love that you shouted out Bush Hall, by the way. That was a sick venue.
That is one of my favourite venues in London.
It's a good one. Maybe we'll do a little pop-up acoustic gig there!
Lifehouse are doing exactly that soon so it’s doable!
Sick. That's really cool.
Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate the time. It's been excellent talking.
Thank you, man. I appreciate you taking the time and asking great questions. And hopefully we'll talk to you real soon.
Talk to you soon, guys. Have a good one.
See you, man. Bye. Thank you so much, Ian.
Appreciate you, man. Bye. Bye.