Riley Green Explains Why Keeping Songs Simple Has Been Key to His Success

Country superstar Riley Green is riding high after earning his fifth No. 1 single with “Worst Way,” and the Alabama native recently shared insights into his songwriting approach, which keeps things simple and true to his roots.

“I think that’s what it is. I mean, that’s not a really pretty word to describe your songwriting, but I think that’s really accurate,” Green shared this during an appearance on the Zach Sang Show, in response to Sang calling his songwriting “simple.”

Green joked that in Nashville, sometimes writer can get “too songwritery” with their words and from him the key to success has always been simplicity. 

“The storytelling to me, I listen back to Merle Haggard and George Jones and all that and there’s not a lot of complicated stuff in there. They’re just telling a story and that’s what I always did early on,” he explained. “So now I think that when I’m in a writer’s room and I’m with a couple of the guys, I’m kind stingy about that. I go, ‘well, this is how I would say it. This is how that old guy sitting at the Chevron right there down the road from my farm would say it in the morning when my Granddaddies were playing dominoes and smoking cigarettes.’” 

Green has always had a strong sense of what makes a song connect, whether it’s a radio hit or not. Reflecting on his breakout single, “There Was This Girl,” Green said the excitement from his label gave him a clue that the song had real potential.

“Well, when I signed a record deal, the amount of excitement that the label had for ‘There Was This Girl’ told me that it might could [go No.1].. And there is a little bit of that song that sounds like a radio song. I always think about something that sounds like a hit to me as something that makes you want to roll the window down and turn it up. You’re driving down a road on a nice day and that song has that, whatever that thing is,” he said. 

But not every song follows the path of a traditional hit. Green knows that first hand.  

“But then there’s also songs that I didn’t think was going to be a big song. ‘I Wish Grandpa’s Never Died.’ Just again, I wrote as a tribute to my granddaddies and to see the response to that song, still every night, it’s the biggest moment in my show, and it wasn’t a number one at Country Radio, I think it peaked at 11, but it’s triple platinum today,” he pointed out. “So it’s crazy. You measure it that way and you want every song to go number one. But also what really matters is what fans think of it.” 

Riley Green recently expanded upon his 2024 album with the release of Don’t Mind If I Do (Deluxe), featuring six newly-added tracks.  

He’s currently on his largest tour to date, the Damn Country Music Tour, which kicked off in Canada earlier this year and will continue through November with stops in New York, Chicago, Boston, the UK, and more.