BRELAND goes experimental with Project 2024.

In 2019, BRELAND hit the ground running with his platinum-selling debut single, “My Truck”, its success fuelled by social media buzz. Two EPs and an album followed, as well as collaborations with the likes of Keith Urban and Shania Twain. This month he released his latest EP, Project 2024.

BRELAND uses the term Cross Country to describe his unique reimagining of country music that fuses it with elements of gospel, hip-hop and R&B, so it was an obvious choice of title for his debut album. Looking back, BRELAND is proud of how sonically innovative 2022’s Cross Country was – “we did a really good job of playing around with country music and other genres” – but is conscious that he had yet to find his feet in the industry. “I was still trying to figure out what my place in country music was. I was thinking a lot about how people were going to perceive what I was making.” In the intervening two years, he has become more self-assured. “I really just want to make songs that feel, first and foremost, great to me. And then from there, I hope that people enjoy them. But if nothing else, I've got to be able to love it from the jump.” However, he didn’t feel the time was right for a second album, preferring to limit Project 2024 to a more concise six-song format. “When it comes to the sophomore album, you want to come into it with some momentum. I would love to come into an album with a couple of songs that are doing really well. I felt the EP was a good compromise because I do want to be able to get songs out to my fans.”

Project 2024 was inspired by a visit to Selma, Alabama, the home of his great-grandparents as well as a key site of the civil rights movement, leading him to see his own family’s story within the larger history of the African American community. The resulting songs are elevated by lyrics that are more profound than before. “It's definitely more of a concerted effort to be real, to be a little bit more honest in these songs. The thing that differentiates a country song from a pop song is that the lyric tends to go a little deeper.” A natural musician, BRELAND admits that writing the melody comes more easily to him but he now realizes how essential strong lyrics are. “When you have a great melody and a great lyric together, you're more likely to make a song that people can connect with on multiple levels.” Another case in point is “Run”, a song that predates Cross Country but whose time has now come. “I was going back through some of these older songs, and was like, wow! ‘Run’ really resonates with where I am now: it's a song about wanting to be a little bit more responsible, being a little bit older, recognizing that the way that I used to go out and party at the beginning of my career isn't really sustainable for me at this point. Also, just shifting toward being ready for, and open to, more legitimate connections on the relationship front as well.”

“I’ve expanded in some new directions on songs like ‘Motion’, which to my knowledge is the first ever country and Afrobeats fusion – I’ve never heard anybody do that before.”

— BRELAND

Project 2024 develops on Cross Country’s genre-hopping foundations while encompassing different styles and influences. “I've expanded in some new directions on songs like ‘Motion’, which to my knowledge is the first ever country and Afrobeats fusion – I've never heard anybody do that before,” he says. “Motion” was written during a spontaneous visit to the UK earlier this year, as BRELAND explains. “I was out in Seoul, Korea working on some K-pop music, and I had a flight back to Nashville, and literally while I was at the airport, I realized that I would rather just go to the UK. So I cancelled my flight and then booked a new one out to London, literally two hours before I was ready to take off. I was following my heart, which is something that I wanted to give myself space to do this summer, taking some time off to be able to freely travel and experience life.” It turns out that a holiday for BRELAND doesn’t necessarily mean a holiday from composing – before long he had contacted his publishers to arrange some writing sessions in London.

It was the popularity of Afrobeats in the UK that gave him the idea for “Motion”, and soon the song began to take shape. “It really started with the little piano lick that you hear at the beginning. Initially, I thought the hook was going to be what is the first verse on the song but my co-writer was like, ‘That feels like a really great first verse to me – I don't think that's hooky enough to really be the chorus.’ So then we started thinking, ‘OK, what could the chorus be?’ and I was like, ‘Well, we could go super simple: we could just say “motion” a bunch of times and leave it at that.’ So we kind of approached it that way, and ended up with the structure that the song has, and then started adding some of those percussive elements. I was like, ‘I really would like this to build, where if you listen through the first verse and chorus, you don't really know what kind of song this is. And then second verse, maybe we bring everything in’.” With production taking place transatlantically, first in London and then in Nashville, “Motion” is a crossover track on multiple levels. “Shout out to a production duo called Levels UK, they handled that and then sent it back over here to my producers to add some of those country elements: the strings, and the pedal steel that you hear going throughout the back of this song. We wanted to give it some of that country flavour, while also recognizing that this is a really unique hybrid type of record.”

Although next year’s plans are still to be finalized, BRELAND hopes he’ll be able to schedule some live dates in the UK. “I'm excited should that happen, because the UK is my favourite place to tour, and Europe in general – touring out there is a different experience. I think partly because you get to see firsthand just how far your music reaches. You make most music in a studio in Nashville or wherever, and then you get to travel across a whole ocean and see a group of people from a completely different culture that are able to resonate with it. I think that's really powerful.” The closing track on Project 2024, “Same Work”, has its origins in a post-show encounter that highlighted how meaningful those human connections can be. “I had a veteran come up to me and say, ‘I've been giving free healthcare to other veterans in Memphis, and you and me do the same work.’ A conversation like that really changed my perspective, which is that this is a service job. As a 24-year-old, I came into this like, ‘Wow, I'm going to make money, and I'm going to be able to travel all around the world’, but actually, instead of all of those things, what makes it so special is the connections that I get to form, with people, through my travels and through this work.

Project 2024 is out now.

Author: Rachel Goodyear