The past is dead.
Mental health professionals sometimes cite that mantra as a reminder to live in the present. But people aren’t particularly good at doing that — and country music, of course, mirrors life, often encouraging listeners to rummage through the old cobwebs and reconsider the leftover business lurking there.
It’s how John Morgan’s “Kid Myself” operates, with an adult male drifting back in his mind to a time when he was young and stupid and likely let a good one get away. It’s a little nostalgic and a bit melancholy, though not entirely either of those things. It’s mostly just regretful, and the musical vibe of “Kid Myself” fits that attitude to a T.
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“This song is somewhat of an apology letter,” Morgan says, recalling a relationship he left behind in North Carolina. “I wasn’t able to be what they probably deserved.”
It’s not only about Morgan’s experience. “Kid Myself” is also his title. He logged it in the list of possible hooks he keeps on his smartphone, and it was waiting for him when he wanted a solid idea to present during his first co-write with Tyler Hubbard on June 8, 2024.
“I’ve obviously been a big fan of his for a long time with [Florida Georgia Line] and have heard a lot of good things about his writing as well,” Morgan says. “So I was like, ‘I got to bring at least one good idea.’”
The night before, he scrolled through that list of titles, and “Kid Myself” caught his eye. He tossed the words around in his mind and realized it lent itself to a classic country flip: “I was just a kid myself” and “I don’t want to kid myself.” Then he played his guitar a bit, looking for a progression that matched the regret the title insinuated.
“It’s not an F.U. kind of hook,” he says. “I’m just telling facts of what it was at the time.”
Morgan and Hubbard showed up the next day at the home studio of Jordan Schmidt (“God’s Country,” “wait in the truck”). Morgan didn’t push his idea on them — in fact, they spent more than an hour chasing another song that didn’t quite pan out. Finally, Morgan confessed that he wasn’t feeling it and wanted to see what they thought about “Kid Myself.”
“Kudos to John for speaking up,” Schmidt says. “All of us want to write great songs and we respect one another, and if somebody in the room is like, ‘Hey, I don’t think this is it,’ it’s rare that you’re going to get a lot of pushback from people.”
Schmidt started building a track around Morgan’s acoustic guitar progression, and they filled in the chorus using the hook as bookends. It opens with the guy recalling when he was “just a kid myself,” lamenting how badly he handled the end of the relationship and working toward some acceptance that he destroyed whatever interest she once had for him: “I don’t want to kid myself.”
“I don’t think he had the whole chorus sussed out,” Hubbard says. “But he definitely had enough of an idea, concept and melody to get us going, to really hang the dartboard and give us a direction to shoot toward.”
The verses maintained the same reflective tone as that chorus, drifting back lyrically to a time when the two people were young and carefree. She, however, grew up while he kept hanging out at bars, and by the end of the opening verse, he recognizes that he just couldn’t give her what she deserved: “a ring and a house with a dog and a couple of kids.”
That last part inadvertently provides an extra interpretation to “Kid Myself.” When Morgan sings the last line of the chorus — “I don’t want to kid myself” — he phrases it, “I don’t wanna kid myself.” Listeners who aren’t staring at the lyrics are apt to hear it as “I don’t want a kid myself,” which would suggest they argued about what a family would look like or that he even impregnated her and abandoned her. It’s not Morgan’s story, but it is an interpretation he briefly considered when they cut the demo.
“I’m in the vocal booth, and [Jordan] just kind of let me vamp on the end for one pass,” Morgan says. “I started saying that very thing — I was like, ‘I don’t want a kid myself/ Got a couple kids myself.’ We were just joking around, but we all kind of looked at each other like, ‘Should we try to fit that in there?’ And I think we just came to the conclusion that there was already enough turns and we didn’t want to confuse the listener.”
Hubbard was impressed with Morgan’s performance in the vocal booth. “There’s a lot of artists, myself included, that aren’t first-takers [who] can just get in there and crush it on first take,” he says. “John’s one of those guys. I was blown away. This dude can really, really sing.”
Schmidt hired guitarist Jonny Fung to add a few parts to an intentionally sparse demo.
“With a song like this, the music really helps set the tone and the melodies,” Schmidt says. “The whole song is kind of based around the four and the five chord, and it never really resolves. That’s kind of like the whole tone of the lyric, too, so it all fits together nicely in this tension.”
Night Train Records founder Jason Aldean told Morgan, based on that demo, that “Kid Myself” should be the next single. Morgan and producer Brent Anderson (Chris Janson, Dustin Lynch) created the foundation for the master version, working a day or two at a time between Morgan’s tour dates at Anderson’s home studio. Anderson recorded bass and drum placeholder parts, and they experimented with guitar and keyboard sounds on top of that.
“There kind of wasn’t really any rules,” Anderson says. “It was just me and him there, ordering Uber Eats, and my wife keeps bringing us whatever kind of cookies or anything else. You’re just down there throwing stuff at a wall until you listen back and go, ‘Man, I’m really proud of that.’ ”
Morgan played a solo as well that had a lonely, ’80s Britpop sound. The actual notes weren’t nearly as important as the tone.
“[Writer-producer] Derek George has a Telecaster that I, for all intents and purposes, have stolen,” Anderson says with a laugh. “I tell him all the time, ‘Man, I’m going to give that back.’ ‘It’s OK, just get it back when you can.’ I’ve had it for a year, and I have no intention of giving it back.”
They brought in steel guitarist Mike Johnson to create the final instrumental piece of the puzzle, and they had drummer Rob Ricotta and bassist Caleb Bates — both members of Morgan’s touring band — replace the placeholder rhythm section. Morgan was intentionally emulating Aldean, who uses his own band in the studio.
Ultimately, Night Train/Broken Bow released “Kid Myself” to country radio via PlayMPE on May 28 as a follow-up to his Aldean collaboration, “Friends Like That,” which peaked at No. 2 on Country Airplay.
“There’s a lot of details of my story in this song, and so I felt like it represented me really well as an artist,” Morgan says. “I’m still on the front end of showing people who am I as an artist and what makes me different than everybody else.”