Max McNown isn’t entirely sure what day it is.
“This has been the fastest year of my entire life, easily,” McNown tells American Songwriter while sitting outside on his balcony overlooking the hustle and bustle of Nashville in the summertime. “It’s not even close.”
Indeed, few years have changed a life as dramatically as the past one has for McNown, as he not only finds himself married to the love of his life, but an established artist on the cusp of releasing his third studio album.
“I feel very fulfilled and very satisfied and grateful for all of the blessings I have,” the 24-year-old says. “And so, it’s hard not to write hopeful music when that’s kind of where you’re at in life.”
Nearly the entirety of McNown’s upcoming album, Leave On A Light, was created while smack dab in the middle of experiencing the giddiness of true love and the aftereffects permeating from the high points of his career thus far: his Stagecoach debut, back-to-back sold-out shows at the Ryman Auditorium and the ongoing success of the songs that changed everything for him, including his breakout hit “A Lot More Free.”
Still, the song that seemed to shift his reality the most was undoubtedly “Better Me For You (Brown Eyes),” which served as the lead single from his 2025 sophomore album Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up). The song went double platinum in the U.S. and landed McNown at No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The career-altering song established McNown as not just another pretty face scrolling past on an already overcrowded social media feed, but an ultra-talented wordsmith worthy of far more attention than many have given him up to that point.
So, as he went into the recording of Leave On A Light, McNown just kept doing what he’s been doing best: he wrote his truth.
“I have a very difficult time writing about things that aren’t currently on my heart,“ McNown says of the foundation of the album set to release on September 25. “But most of the songs were definitely just where I was at in life. It’s hard not to write hopeful music when that’s kind of where you’re at in life. I view albums as snapshots into my life, and this one is 100 percent a love album.”
But rather than making a straightforward love album, McNown soon realized he was making something far broader. “What I ended up discovering through the process was this album was going to be a ‘thank you’ to the people in my life,” he says. “Not just my wife, but all of those who love me and support me and take care of who I am outside of music.”
McNown’s words seem to point to growing pains in the career of a man who not too long ago was just a kid who taught himself guitar before busking across Southern California.
“The theme that runs throughout the album is, ‘I need these people that know me,’” he says. “People that just don’t see me as Max McNown the artist, but see me as Max—the brother, the friend, the husband, all that. That’s equally as important to me. I need these people who take care of me and that keep the light on when I come home after being exhausted for 62 days straight on tour.”
Because, yes, to add to the chaos that comes with a career catapulting to new heights at rapid speed was the fact that McNown found himself headlining on his The Summer Vacation Tour.
“Let me try to find the best way to phrase this,” McNown says, smiling. “So, there can be good chaos, but it’s still chaos. So, I’m doing all this stuff, and I’m playing these shows—sometimes opening, sometimes headlining, sometimes playing festivals, all this different stuff. And especially on this last tour in Europe, just every kind of little thing that could go wrong was going wrong. And we ended up playing all the shows, and I loved my experience, but it was so chaotic.”
He draws a deep breath.
“Sometimes when I come home, the most important thing is peace and quiet and love,” he continues. “I can’t even express how grateful I am for the blessings I’ve received in this career and this life, but at the same time, it does get tiring, and burnout is a real thing for artists. And so, I feel like the way I’ve prevented that is to balance my home life with my professional life as best I can.”
Perhaps no song captures that sentiment better than “Famous to You.”
“You know how people will set goals, and once they achieve them, they realize, ‘Oh, that’s actually not what it’s all about,’” he says of the song he wrote alongside Jamie Kenney, Ava Suppelsa, and Sasha Sloan. “That’s how I feel this career has been. Without my wife’s support specifically, I would not want to do this. I want to be somebody that she and my family love, respect, and look up to. And so ‘Famous to You’ was written directly towards my wife, basically saying, ‘Hey, it doesn’t matter where this all ends up as long as you take care of me and I take care of you.’”
And that appreciation extends well beyond his marriage.
In fact, family remains at the heart of Leave On A Light, especially in light of the beauty expressed in “Selah’s Song,” a song McNown wrote specifically for his little sister.
“It’s probably my favorite song on the entire project,” he says of the heartfelt song written with Kenney, Suppelsa and Trent Dabbs. “It is just so different, and it’s a concept that I’ve never thoroughly heard exactly the way it was created.”
Indeed, the beginnings of the song materialized during the course of McNown’s own wedding, as he found himself standing at the end of the aisle—waiting for his wife to walk down to begin their new life together.
“What I wasn’t prepared for is for my baby sister to be the first bridesmaid to come around and walk down the aisle,” says McNown. “I got caught so off guard by Selah walking down that aisle towards me. And I took some time to reflect on that.”
It was this reflection that took McNown back to the person he was before the tours and the albums and the frenzied fans. “I was so lost for so long,” he says. “I was never a bad brother, but I was just not somebody that I was proud of. And even if she didn’t know about some of the things that I was doing that I was not proud of, I just felt like I couldn’t fully and authentically be the older brother that she could look up to and emulate.”
But at that moment and at that wedding, he felt he could be.
“And so, in that moment for the first time, I felt complete and felt like somebody that she could look up to in that moment—and I think that’s kind of what broke me,” he says. “So, the song is thanking her for all that she’s done for me and our friendship. And then also just telling her, at the end of the chorus, you’re looking up at me, but I’ve always been looking up to her.
Another standout on the new album is “Overdose (Slow Down”)—written alongside Kenney, Scott Harris, and Emily Weisband—that adequately speaks of the tug of war that any artist seems to be having with the rest of the world at the moment.
“This was one of those cases where the inspiration struck very close to the actual writing session,” he says. “I was grabbing a coffee at Panera, and there was a song playing over the speaker that—I cannot for the life of me remember what song it was—but it was how the song flowed that got my attention. And so, I came into the room, and I was like, “Well, I’ve been wanting to write a song about how hectic life is right now.’ I was thinking about a song that not just lyrically, but melodically and sonically, emulated that feeling. That’s why that pre-chorus is so fast and rappy.”
‘Fast and rappy,’ until it hits the slow and steady chorus.
“Appreciate the little things,” McNown says. “Take your time…I really like the uniqueness of the melodies of that song. It’s kind of an extension of my comfort zone. It’s something I’ve never really done before, that kind of faster pre-chorus. And I think lyrically it says everything I want it to say.”
It’s this drain on one’s psyche that McNown says he has experienced firsthand—and for good reason. “The world of social media right now and just how, especially as an artist, you constantly have to be proving yourself and posting this plethora of content…you have to give so much of yourself, and it really is so draining,” he says. “I mean, it’s dangerous if you let it take control of you.”
He refuses to let it, if he can help it.
“At this moment, I can be fully and unapologetically myself,” McNown says. “And when you take that into a writing room, there’s no longer any pressure of, ‘Should I write this song? Where is this song going to fit? Where is this going to end up being? Is this a certain genre?’ The overthinking is slowly starting to become less and less as I write more music and live this life in this very comfortable place.”
And living in this comfortable place means that McNown refuses to try to define who he is anymore. “With this album, I definitely leaned into the individuality of who I am,” he says. “I’ve stopped trying to jam the square peg into the circle of it all. I could be any genre in the world. And I think that’s such a freeing feeling, and I think that leads to the most authentic representation of your art that you could possibly give.”
The post As His Career Reaches New Heights, Max McNown Discovers That Love, Family, and Gratitude Matter More Than Fame appeared first on American Songwriter.