Riley Green Struggles With His Inner Romeo

Riley Green has no trouble writing songs about trucks, breakups and grandfathers, but ask him to write a love song and watch him start to shift in his seat.

“I guess I haven’t been there,” he says, half-laughing, during an interview with Taste of Country.

There is one great love song on Green’s new Different ‘Round Here album, but he needed to be convinced to include it. “My First Everything” was written with Erik Dylan, Tyler Reeve and Justin Weaver in Orange Beach, Fla., and while the Alabama native says he thought it was a great song, he thought it might be a better song for someone else.

“You were my first love / My first broken heart, that’s all you were to me / Just my first everything,” Green sings during the song he says pushed him most. Still, there’s a breakup nestled in there.

“I’ve never been a big love song guy,” the newest Taste of Country RISER says. “I always go more towards the guy sitting in a lawn chair sitting next to a cooler full of Keystone beer as the girl drives off that he probably should have went after, but he was drunk. I play that guy well in my songwriting.”

The “I Wish Grandpas Never Died” singer isn’t afraid to get personal. His new single and “Numbers on the Cars” are two written after difficult times at home. In fact, the entire album fits him as well as his chosen T-shirt, jeans and Halo Waterfowl ball cap, but if you don’t know true love, how can you write about it?

Look for Green to perform songs from his new album as he finishes up a tour with Jon Pardi and during the We Back Tour with Jason Aldean in 2020.

50 Great Modern Songs for Fans of Traditional Country