Exclusive Premiere: Troy Cartwright Debuts Music for Optimistic New Track, ‘Shine On Me’

Rising country singer/songwriter Troy Cartwright is bringing a message of hope and reflecting on moments that helped shape him into who he is today in the brand new music video for his optimistic single, “Shine On Me.” He is sharing the video with Country Now readers first in this exclusive premiere.

In the brand new clip, Cartwright is shown giving a solo performance on an acoustic guitar from the foot of a queen-sized hotel bed. While jamming out, he sings the beginning lyrics to “Shine On Me,” which paint a picture of his younger self back when he had dreams of making the big-time and emulating the careers of stars like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

“I used a broomstick for a guitar / On my parent’s king-size bed / I was up there in the bright lights / Takin solos and turnin’ heads,” Cartwright sings while strumming on his instrument from inside the dim-lit room. “I toured the world right there / In the back of momma’s van / I put my headphones on / Closed my eyes, and I counted off the band.”

Footage that aligns perfectly with the “Shine On Me” song lyrics show a young boy walking around the motel property and listening to music on an old-school CD player. As Cartwright dives into the second verse, which focuses more on love and relationships that sometimes result in breakups, a young couple can be seen disagreeing over something and then coming together to work things out in the end.

Cartwright, who revealed in a recent Instagram post that “Shine On Me” is “the most personal story I’ve got to tell,” opened up about the track and its accompanying video via email with Country Now.

He said, “To be honest with you, I don’t know how any of this works. I put a song out. I hope people like it. I hope they tell their friends and share it and tell me I’m great. But if you wanna know the truth, I’m doing it for that kid. And that’s what I tried to convey in this video.”

“A song can change your life, can make you wanna run down a dream, can make you feel like you’re not the only one,” the Texas native added. “So from that 13-year-old in the back of his mom’s minivan with a bunch of feelings, he can’t sort out, to writing this to you now almost a couple decades later… I hope this video takes you somewhere and gets you a little further down the road. Thanks for watching, y’all. I know 13-year-old me is proud of me today, and that’s the best feeling of all.”

“Shine On Me,” released in late April, was written by Cartwright alongside Nolan Sipe and Ben Caver and produced by Brandon Hood. The song will be featured on Cartwright’s upcoming live EP entitled Memory Machine Sessions, due out Friday (May 21).