Morgan Wallen has shared the creative process behind his brand new single, ‘Been By Now’, with the Sneedville native recalling how quickly he and his co-writers penned the song.

Via Morgan Wallen Radio on SiriusXM, Wallen outlines how it all started with one of his go-to collaborators, Charlie Handsome, throwing out an instrumental he'd been working on.

Wallen says it all came together easily after that, “I think the things I love the most about this song are the melodies. You know, once Charlie started playing that track, a lot of the melodies fell out within, you know, 30 minutes. We wrote the song really fast”.

He goes on to touch on the conflicted emotions that underpin ‘Been By Now’, “I think it's just a song where you're looking at your partner of a while, and you just don't really see it progressing any further and you just start noticing things, you know, that let you know that. And it's a little bit of a bittersweet-feeling song, you know, the music feels a little happy, but the message is overwhelmingly sad”.

ANALYSIS: The pop-adjacent, genre-blurring sound of ‘Been By Now’ doesn't feel like a standalone single - it's a sign of what's to come next from Wallen.

~ Maxim Mower, Holler News Editor

‘Been By Now’ is an infectious, synth-backed anthem that harks back to the breezy, pop-driven ambience of Wallen's 2024 summer smash, ‘Love Somebody’. It feels like a doubling-down on Handsome's comments earlier in the year about wanting to surround Wallen's unmistakable country vocals in more pop-leaning sonics.

The objective, Handsome outlined at the time, is for Wallen to secure mainstream Pop Radio hits, rather than limiting his outlook only to Country Radio. And honestly, this is a reasonable approach, because Wallen knows at this point that whichever song he picks out as his next Country Radio single, it's a guaranteed No. 1.

While Wallen is already a mainstream titan, with his albums remaining at the business-end of the Billboard 200 for years after their release, Handsome seems to be referring to the fact that all of his major Pop Radio hits so far have been collaborations. His mission for Wallen is to start consistently hitting No. 1 with solo material.

We think ‘Been By Now’, given it's summer-ready feel, the earworm hook and the genre-agnostic composition, will undoubtedly be a strong contender for his next Pop Radio No. 1.

Whether it can topple Ella Langley's ‘Choosin’ Texas’ on the Billboard Hot 100 is another matter entirely, though. The Lone Star State-inspired anthem has been No. 1 for a whopping 14 weeks, with even Taylor Swift having to settle for second position.

What's more, Handsome's remarks makes us think that, while Wallen made it clear he's still unsure as to what his next chapter of music will look like exactly, ‘Been By Now’ will seemingly be a good indicator of what's to come. I'm the Problem, Wallen's 2025 album, saw the ‘Thought You Should Know’ singer-songwriter expanding his musical horizons even further than on One Thing At A Time, and we suspect that his next body of work will feature an array of refreshing curveballs.