Daniel Gerard Breland, who goes by Breland, has named his upcoming album “Cross Country” for an obvious reason: the former Atlanta resident is a man who built his songwriting career on R&B and rap before crossing over to country as an artist.
His video for “Cross Country” was nominated for CMT Breakthrough Video of the Year on Monday’s CMT Awards, which aired for the first time on CBS. (Viacom, seeking the biggest possible audience for the show, knows CBS can bring in many more eyeballs than CMT itself.)
The video, in a “Sliding Doors” way, is autobiographical. The 26-year-old imagines what life would have been like if he had not uploaded his song “My Truck” onto TikTok in 2019, which became a surprise hit and opened major doors for him as a performer. But it’s not that his fictional non-famous life is all that miserable. In his imaginary alternative life, Breland has a baby and finds joy in a different way.
Lyrically, he sings, “Went to ATL/Where the nights are long/With a thousand songs that would never sell/ til I dropped the bomb that would put me on/did it myself.”
On the CMT Awards, he performed a portion of his upbeat gospel-tinged “Praise the Lord” as part of an array of up-and-coming artists. He sang the same song in full last month at the ACM Awards with Rhett. This time, he will go solo. The tune praises East Atlanta,” just like Camila Cabello’s 2017 pop hit “Havana.”
“It’s a really fun song,” he said. “I grew up in church. I always felt like the history of country and gospel have been closely related. This is different than the country gospel a Lauren Daigle or Chris Tomlin makes. I bring a Black church feel to it. Then bring someone in like Thomas Rhett. I heard his voice on it while I was writing the song.”
While in college at Georgetown University, the New Jersey native began his career as a songwriter. While there, he connected with Atlanta producers and songwriters. He also had a lot of family in town, including his grandparents. So he moved down South after college.
“We had always gone down to Atlanta growing up for holidays and summers,” he said. “It felt like a familiar place. It felt like the energy was right to move there and I had this support network.”
Breland said he “moved there knowing that I wanted to write songs but over the course of my time there, I realized I wanted to perform them, too. Atlanta helped give me the confidence to put out music myself and figuring out what that music would sound like. It’s the place where I became Breland. It’s the birthplace of my artistry.”
He originally came to Atlanta writing R&B and hip-hop music, getting artists like Trey Songz to record his songs. But while there, he began to appreciate the songwriting and storytelling qualities of good country music and realized that was what he wanted to perform himself.
In 2019, he put out “My Truck,” a joyous, super catchy song that has since generated 63 million views on YouTube and has some definite Atlanta trap influences interspersed with very country-sounding lyrics.
“I wish there was a cooler story for it but I was in the studio and there was an artist I was supposed to work with who never showed up,” he said. “I waited eight hours and was literally about to pack it up and go home but some of my buddies in the studio said, ‘You can’t leave here without making anything.’ If I’m going to make something, I wanted to make something I had never made. I had some country ideas and the song came about really quickly. We wrote it in an hour, hour and a half. It’s a simple song. It was meant to be something people could dance to and vibe out to. It was a lot of instinct. It felt really organic and raw and something I couldn’t hear anyone else doing.”
The song, to him, “was like my epiphany. This is something I’m really good at doing. I made more music of that intersection of country and urban music.”
So in 2020, he moved to Nashville, soon after the Lil Nas X “Old Town Road” phenomenon. Nashville songwriters quickly realized Breland was a songwriter himself first and foremost. “Any speculation about what my intentions were and my capabilities were assuaged by getting in the room with people and making music and having synergy with them,” he said. “I always had a Nashville approach to songwriting rather than free-styling. I’ve always tried to come up with a concept first, then create a melody and lyrics based on that. I’m a hook-first writer.”
He said on the surface, going to Nashville during the pandemic seemed like a bad idea. But it was actually a blessing: “People were still writing, just not doing shows. It was actually a good time to be there because nobody was on the road. It almost made it easier to collab and get into certain rooms. I was able to build relationships with other artists.”
Breland said he has a lot of skill sets, which makes him very open to collaborations. “I can sing on a ballad with Gary LeVox or a fun record with Keith Urban [Urban added his voice to a later version of “My Truck.”] I lent my voice to another Keith Urban song called “Out the Cage” which is classic rock meets early ‘90s hip-hop back beat. I can also hop on a song with a newer artist like Tiera and do a rap verse or jump on a song with Nelly and add a country element. I’m kind of like a Swiss army knife.”
His upcoming album “Cross Country,” he said, “will be a hypothesis. I’m trying to prove that country music can sound a million different ways. Each song is a different take on what I think country music can sound like. Based on some of the early feedback I’ve gotten, it’s one I think people will really enjoy.”
ON TV
“2022 CMT Awards,” 8 p.m. Monday, April 11 on CBS, available on Paramount+ the next day
IN CONCERT
The Delts of Hazzard with Breland, Chase Matthew, Kylie Morgan and Jordan Rowe in a fundraiser for Juvenile Diabetes Research and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
7-10 p.m. Saturday, April 16. $15-$70. Bartow County Saddle Club, 43 Saddle Club Drive, Cartersville. deltsofhazzard.square.site/tickets.
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