Kane Brown Shares the Story Behind Every Song On ‘Mixtape Vol. 1’

Kane Brown’s long-awaited new EP, Mixtape Vol. 1, is out now.

The seven-track project includes the Top 10-and-climbing “Cool Again” and Brown’s recently-released Top 40 hit, “Be Like That,” a collaboration with Swae Lee and Khalid. Also featured is the timely “Worldwide Beautiful” and “Last Time I Say Sorry,” Brown’s previously released duet with John Legend.

The three new tracks on the EP are “Didn’t Know What Love Was,” “Worship You” and “BFE.” The four-time AMA winner previously teased “Worship You” on social media and performed the ’90s inspired track “BFE” during the CMA Summer Stay-Cay.

With its diverse mix of sounds and lyrical content, Mixtape Vol. 1 further proves Brown’s status as a genre-bending superstar. There’s truly something on this EP for everyone and there’s no doubt it will take Brown’s career to the next level.

As Brown’s fans dig into the EP, the superstar is sharing the story behind all seven tracks, revealing the inspiration behind each and every song. Check it out below.

1. “Cool Again”

Written by Kane Brown, Josh Hoge, Matt McGinn and Lindsay Rimes; Produced by Dann Huff and Lindsay Rimes

“Cool Again”, we were trying to get a summer vibe song. It came pretty quick, and then after we wrote it, we’re in quarantine so it’s kind of a perfect match of, “you know we just want everything to be cool again, we wanna be back on the road.” We were all excited when we got it. It was our first single off the next record, and we’re pumped it was “Cool Again,” I think radio is taking it really well.

2. “Be Like That” (feat. Swae Lee and Khalid)

Written by Kane Brown, Khalif Brown, Alexander “Eskeerdo” Izquierdo, Khalid Robinson, Ryan Vojtesak and Mike Will; Produced by Charlie Handsome

When I first heard “Be Like That” I fell in love with it. It’s one of those songs that just hits you and knew I couldn’t release it how it was, so I started messing with it a little bit, and then we decided to bring Khalid and Swae Lee on. It took a while for us to get Khalid because he was always traveling to Japan and he was in another country another day, and we literally got him the day we were supposed to release the song, I think that we got him the day before that he jumped on it, so it was a blessing, it’s doing really well for us right now.

3. “Worship You”

Written by Kane Brown, Alexander Izquierdo, Ryan Vojtesak and Matt McGinn; Produced by Dann Huff

“Worship You,” is basically “Heaven” 2.0, it’s saying that your girl, your wife, is your everything. You know that she don’t walk on water or anything like that, but you basically praise her. Originally it was thinking about Kate you know, but then I did this video that I put on my Instagram, it was me, Kate and Kingsley and I was singing it to Kingsley. So I was like you know, this song could be about my daughter. It’s basically just worshiping my family now, they’re both my girls and I’d do anything for them. Worship the ground they walk on. I feel like it’s going to be a wedding song, and everybody has been asking for it so I’m just excited I get to release it.

4. “BFE”

Written by Kane Brown, Sam Ellis, Matt McGinn, Taylor Phillips and Will Weatherly; Produced by Dann Huff

“BFE” basically, this is the version of BFE that I know a lot of people out there live, but they live it up. You know what I mean? There’s nothing to do around there, but they’ll find something to do, they’ll find some people to hang out with, and you can do whatever you want to do because there’s nobody around. Basically just really how I grew up. I grew up on a farm, and they told us, go outside and play, do whatever you can outside because you’re not going to be in here playing video games. There’s so much to do, we got fishing, cows out there we’d chase them, we had dogs, cats, chickens, everything. So it was basically we just got as country as we could and just told all the stuff we used to do as kids playing around on the farm.

5. “Didn’t Know What Love Was”

Written by Kane Brown, Shy Carter, Matt McGinn and Lindsay Rimes; Produced by Dann Huff and Lindsay Rimes

“Didn’t Know What Love Was,” we heard the instrumentation first, it’s got that “Benny and the Jets” vibe, we just started talking about like, we never knew what love was until I met the girl. When you find the right person you’ll know, I hope that they take that away from this song, but I also hope they get a good vibe from this song. I feel like this song, the chorus is pretty mainstream country radio, but then when you get into the second verse it’s kinda like a little rappy, but a little singy. It’s just way different than anything I’ve done, especially with the flow, it’s really cool.

6. “Last Time I Say Sorry” (with John Legend)

Written by John Stephens, Kane Brown, Matt McGinn and Andrew Goldstein; Produced by Andrew Goldstein

“Last Time I Say Sorry,” I love the song, glad it’s on the EP. We have a couple other features on there, I want to say we have 4-5 features on this album, so I’m glad this one made it. I feel like once people check out the EP and then eventually check out the album, there’s going to be a lot of people that still haven’t heard this song, that will eventually fall in love with it. It’s just cool to have a song with John Legend. I met him like a month before, but then you walk in and you see John Legend behind a grand piano and you’re about to write with him. You’re like this is it, here we go, it’s the real deal, so I was nervous, I was like I hope we get a good song. I figured it was going to be because it’s John Legend. We just start, we connected on a different level that I haven’t connected with a writer on in a while, and we wrote it pretty fast and it came out good.

7. “Worldwide Beautiful”

Written by Kane Brown, Shy Carter, Ryan Hurd and Jordan Schmidt; Produced by Dann Huff

“Worldwide Beautiful” is just a song that we didn’t know what to write one day, we were on my back porch, and I was looking around and it was beautiful outside. We got trees surrounding us, they were all blossomed and beautiful and green. The blue sky above us. I just remember I was like what if we wrote a song called “Worldwide Beautiful?” I have Shy there, Shy Carter, who is also bi-racial. We talk about a lot of our problems and we had Jordan Schmidt and Ryan Hurd that was there and so we got to basically just all put our thoughts in and write this song just saying that everybody is beautiful, everybody is people. I really feel like we got our thoughts across pretty well. We were so excited that we actually finished the song, but we felt like we rushed the second verse, so we ended up writing the second verse like three months later, making sure it was good. When we first got the verse and chorus, like it’s happened a couple times in writes, but when at least one person or two people get cold chills when you say something, that’s like when you know that you have something. Ryan said he got cold chills when we started writing the lyrics, so we knew we had something special.