Cole Swindell on New Album ‘Spanish Moss,’ Stories Behind the Songs

Cole Swindell has had plenty of milestones in the past decade: eight No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, along with being a writer on several hits for other artists including Luke Bryan and Thomas Rhett, while garnering a reputation as a reliable hitmaker and concert headliner who knows how to construct personal songs that convey a sharp emotional impact.

His 2022 album, Stereotype, further elevated his career, thanks to the four-week No. 1 Country Airplay smash “She Had Me at Heads Carolina.” On his fifth Warner Music Nashville album, Spanish Moss, which releases Friday (June 27), the Georgia native continues balancing songs that are deeply personal, while not abandoning Swindell’s instinct for commercial hits.

The album’s namesake is a song that almost wasn’t written. While golfing in the 30A area of Florida with writers including Jordan Minton, a question from Minton sparked a specific memory for Swindell, and a song that would shape the album.

“Jordan asked me what that stuff was hanging from the trees was,” Swindell tells Billboard. “When I told him it was Spanish moss, it reminded me of this memory of my dad. After I left his place in Savannah [Georgia], and I later noticed something hanging from my truck’s gas cap, and it was Spanish moss. I thought that phrase was a cool idea for a song and a title. The song ended up not being about that moment, but more of a love-type song, but if Jordan hadn’t asked that question, we might have never written this.”

Appropriately, Minton also took the photo — a snapshot of the Spanish moss that was on the golf course that day — that ultimately became the album’s cover.

The past two years have been a whirlwind of change in Swindell’s personal life. He proposed to longtime girlfriend Courtney Little in 2023, and they wed in June 2024. The couple is expecting their first child, a daughter, this fall. “I’m excited to be a dad. I’ve always wanted to be a dad,” he says. “She’s not here yet, and I’m already wrapped.”

The new album’s lead single “Forever to Me,” written by Swindell, Greylan James, and Rocky Block, already reached No. 2 on the Country Airplay chart — and originated during a spontaneous writing session two years ago.

““I wasn’t sure if I would get to write a song like this,” Swindell says. “I called Greylan, and he asked if he could bring Rocky. I’d never written with Rocky before, but I said, ‘Let’s go.’ We were talking and someone asked if I had a wedding song. I said, ‘Not yet.’ Then they asked how I felt about Courtney, and I told them, ‘She’s forever to me.’ Immediately, they were like, ‘That’s the hook.’”

Looking back on his wedding to Little, he recalls how they wed in a private venue in Sonoma, California, the same venue they had previously attended an event together before they became engaged. “I remember asking the staff back then, ‘Do y’all do weddings here?’”

The 21-song Spanish Moss has been in the works for over two years, as Swindell briefly took some time away from writing and recording to focus on his marriage and personal life.

“I’m glad I had kind of a break away from things, to enjoy that time together,” he says, adding that eventually he knew it was time to continue working on the new project. “We ended up with so many songs that we love and so, we decided to put all of them on here.”

While songs such as “Forever to Me” look at his current season of life, other older songs on the album, such as “Dale Jr.” and “Heads Up Heaven” are nods to Swindell’s late parents.

“Dale Jr.,” fittingly placed as the third track on the album, is a deeply personal tribute that honors both Swindell’s late father and the legacy of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Sr. The song, which Swindell wrote with James and Matt Alderman, also speaks to Swindell’s meaningful friendship with Dale Earnhardt Jr., as the two have connected on a profound level through their shared grief and the lasting impact of losing their fathers.

He says Earnhardt Jr. reached out after Swindell released his 2016 hit “You Should Be Here,” which he wrote after losing his father in 2013, sparking a friendship between the two.

“This is one of my favorite songs I’ve been involved in writing,” Swindell said, adding, “That was what first connected us — we each lost dads pretty early on. My dad was a Dale Earnhardt Sr. fan, and was at the race when Dale passed away [at the Daytona 500 in 2001]. I sent [the song] to Dale Jr. after we wrote it and I think it meant a lot to him, just having that connection with someone who knows what you’ve been through.”

Songs like “99 Problems” explore the 20/20 hindsight of adulthood, and how youthful problems that once felt huge now seem small. But there are also plenty of up-tempo, arena-sized grooves such as “Kill a Prayer” and “We Can Always Move On.”

He just wrapped a run of international shows in Australia and New Zealand, opening for Cody Johnson, and in the coming months, he’ll be figuring out how to balance tour buses and baby cribs, but he’s up for the challenge.

“I want to keep getting better — better as an artist, better as a songwriter. But now, I also want to focus on being a good dad and husband,” he says.