It’s been a fast and furious ride for Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney, collectively known as Dan & Shay. Less than a year after they met at a party, the duo charted its first single, “19 You + Me.” In its 17th week on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, the song has reached No. 17, and also cracked the Billboard Hot 100, moving 78-85.
Their rapport was instant and their output prolific. The morning after the party, the pair began writing together. By day’s end the two had a song on hold for Rascal Flatts. “It just worked musically,” Mooney says. “It was the direction we were both trying to get to for so long.” The pair kept writing, sometimes up to three songs a day. “Within two months, we had 10 publishing offers,” Smyers says.
The idea to join forces as a recording duo wasn’t immediate, they say — until women kept asking them to perform together at parties. “There was a point where we realized, ‘This is really cool,'” says Mooney, who was previously signed to T-Pain’s Nappy Kid Entertainment as a solo artist. (“I was a redneck in an urban world,” he recalls.)
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Warner Music Nashville president/CEO John Esposito, who signed the duo, says the focus is now on trimming the voluminous number of songs the act has recorded down to the dozen that will be on Dan & Shay’s still-untitled April 1 debut. “We’ve got six or seven cued up to be single No. 2,” Esposito says. “It’s not a bad problem to have.”
The pair, which nabbed an Academy of Country Music Award nomination for vocal duo of the year, will tour with labelmates Hunter Hayes in March and Blake Shelton in the fall. Smyers says he’s not the only one who’s excited. “My mom’s already asked, ‘Can you get Blake’s autograph for me?'”