Erin Kinsey is enjoying a big moment. RECORDS Nashville released her debut single, “Just Drive,” through PlayMPE on Feb. 14, spurring her first radio promotion tour. The song itself reflects a nostalgic moment, generated by Kinsey on the way to work.
It was July 27, 2021, and Kinsey was headed to the home of songwriter-producer Josh Ronen for a writing appointment that would also include Demolition Music GM Michael August. Olivia Rodrigo had recently released “Good 4 U,” defined by a slashing punk-pop chorus that drew heavy comparisons to Paramore’s “Misery Business.” Kinsey had often slipped Paramore covers into her live sets when she was in high school — even when she suspected the music didn’t resonate with her Texas steakhouse audience — and on this morning, she decided to listen to the group’s 2007 album Riot! (the LP home to “Misery Business”) as she cruised to the co-write in her Toyota 4Runner.
So when she arrived, she announced that she had a challenge in mind for the session: to write a country song with Paramore’s energy level. “I was in the drum line in high school,” she says, “so I’ve always wanted to figure out a song and be able to write something that had big drums in it. I guess the stars [aligned] that day.”
Her co-writers could have balked and headed in a safer direction — but instead, they seized the moment and accepted the challenge, emulating the crunchy chords implied by the Paramore assignment. “I pulled up a guitar thing I had done previously from another session that just never got finished,” recalls Ronen. “It hit her right away. Her eyes just kind of opened — she’s like, ‘I love that,’ and I was like, ‘OK, let’s try to make this a little more mainstream.’ ”
From there, the work became a whirlwind as they simultaneously played with chords, the melody and the lyrics. Kinsey had recently determined she should make her songs as reflective of her own life experiences as possible, and her co-writers encouraged her to move in that direction. She infused details from her commute — “Paramore on the radio” and a “white Toyota” — and she connected that with another meaningful instance in her life: freshman year in high school, when she had started dating her boyfriend in Rockwall, Texas. They observed a holiday that year with a fancy dinner at The Melting Pot in Dallas that translated in the song to a “five-star reservation.”
“I don’t know if that’s necessarily five stars,” she says, “but it was five stars to 16-year-old Erin.”
It was about a 35-minute drive to the restaurant, but somewhere after they crossed the Lake Ray Hubbard Bridge, the alone time with her boyfriend was so enjoyable that Kinsey began wishing that the trip would take longer. The occasion, the car and the Paramore song provided some of the specifics for “Just Drive,” but those details created the overriding thematic notion: living in the moment with someone who matters.
“She was literally talking about how some of the best times in her relationship with her boyfriend, Josh, is just when they’re driving, literally just hanging out,” explains August. “It’s not about the destination, not about the date itself, just hanging out driving. That feels totally authentic, especially for her age, so we rolled with it.”
Kinsey freestyled a line about going “90 down 40” — essentially speeding down Interstate 40 — and that became a keeper phrase on the way to a roller coaster melody that brought the chorus to its end. They created contrast with less aggressive, more conversational verses, kept short to get to the chorus faster. Still, fitting all the pieces together was a bit of a puzzle.
“At one point, we were writing the song in a different key, and we were wrestling around with the idea that the chorus wasn’t popping, it wasn’t high enough for her,” August says. “I remember us trying to actually fish around with another melody that goes higher, but it was not nearly as good for whatever reason. The other one just felt like a smash. What we ended up doing was we raised the key for the whole song — and then we changed her verse melody so that she could sing the verses lower, and then the chorus could go up where it is.”
Ronen built a track as the day progressed, and before Kinsey left, he had her sing a lead vocal for it on a Shure SM7B mic. “It’s a dynamic microphone that doesn’t pick up a lot of resonating around the room,” he says, “so it helps a lot when you’re recording a demo vocal and you just want the artist to be able to sit on the couch essentially and record.” Ronen produced it further from there, creating drum beats in the intro that purposely disguise the downbeat, and introducing a burning, turn-around guitar part at the end of the first chorus.
Kinsey uploaded the first verse and chorus to TikTok on July 15 and put up a second version of it three days later, branding it as a song for people who like Maren Morris and Paramore. It registered over 200,000 views, and she continued posting more TikToks — most of them shot from the front seat of her Toyota, mirroring the subject matter — with a July 31 upload generating 4.8 million views. The full song went public on Aug. 5, and by November, she had had meetings with most of Nashville’s country labels.
Kinsey ultimately settled on RECORDS — the label seemed more interested in her long-term possibilities than the rest of the competition — and the signing was announced Nov. 29. Ronen subsequently remixed the track, enlisting Derek Wells and Jeff King to add slide guitar and enhance the turn-around, providing country counter-balance to the Paramore vibe. “If we released it with the guitars I had on there originally, it would’ve sounded like Olivia Rodrigo,” reasons Ronen.
Kinsey is understandably psyched about the speedy ascent of “Just Drive,” but so are her co-writers. “My dream cut would be the first song that breaks an artist or their first single on radio that puts that artist on the map,” August says. “The fact that it could be happening right now is pretty surreal.”
Meanwhile, Kinsey is holding out hope that Paramore’s lead singer — Hayley Williams, who lives in the Nashville area — will give Kinsey her personal approval. That would be another big moment.
“I’ve heard that her mom really liked it, and that she has sent it to Hayley, but I haven’t heard anything from her,” says Kinsey. “It might be God’s way of sparing me having a heart attack– because if I heard that she liked it, I would just fall over dead. That would be the absolute coolest thing ever.”