{"id":3195,"date":"2011-08-09T01:52:46","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T08:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3195"},"modified":"2011-08-09T01:52:46","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T08:52:46","slug":"shawn-mullins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/shawn-mullins\/","title":{"rendered":"SHAWN MULLINS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

SHAWN MULLINS<\/h1>\n

How crossing the divide between Atlanta and Nashville lit up his world<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A dozen years ago, the Top 10 hit \u201cLullaby\u201d and platinum album Soul\u2019s Core<\/em> catapulted Atlanta-born singer and songwriter Shawn Mullins into the limelight. Before long he found himself opening arena shows for the likes of \u2019N Sync, the Backstreet Boys and Destiny\u2019s Child\u2014and becoming increasingly uncomfortable with his place in that overblown pop world. \u201cI\u00a0told myself, \u2018Man, you\u2019ve always wanted to be on Americana radio and play good listening rooms. It doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s 100 seats,\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201cSo I had to get back to that. But in the process I closed myself off for a while.\u201d Over the last several years he has reversed that process, opening himself up to more artistic collaboration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve looked for a new horizon, to find community,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s really what\u00a0it\u2019s been about.\u201d\u00a0The first conspicuous byproduct of his new philosophy was \u201cToes,\u201d the 2009 No. 1 country hit Mullins helped pen for the Zac Brown Band. \u201cFor years I would never have co-written,\u201d he says. \u201cI would have said, \u2018You\u2019re not a strong enough writer if you have to co-write a song\u2014you should write one by yourself.\u2019\u201d His thinking has since evolved, and he began working with a variety of writers on his new album, Light You Up<\/em>, including veteran Nashville songwriter Chuck Cannon. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m a really strong melodist\u2014decent little melodies that people can hum back,\u201d says Mullins. \u201cBut I have to work real hard at the lyrics. And as fast as a melody can come to me, song lyrics come to Chuck\u2014like entire quatrains and stanzas, just blow-your-mind kind of lyrics. And he\u2019s opened the doors of Nashville to me, in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cannon introduced the Music City newbie to one of his songwriting heroes, Rodney Crowell, who offered valuable encouragement when Mullins encountered a case of writer\u2019s block. \u201cI was saying, \u2018Man, I haven\u2019t written anything in months. How am I gonna do this?\u2019\u201d he remembers.\u00a0\u201cAnd Rodney said, \u2018Man, you\u2019re a great songwriter. Soul\u2019s Core<\/em> is one of my\u00a0favorite records.\u2019 When that caliber of\u00a0writer has nice things to say, it scoots you along if you\u2019re having a bad bout of not\u00a0being able to write.\u201d And so the once\u00a0go-it-alone Mullins now feels perfectly at home in a songwriting world where collaboration is prized above all. \u201cThey\u2019re real cool in Nashville,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you\u2019re a good guy, you\u2019re welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Bob Cannon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SHAWN MULLINS How crossing the divide between Atlanta and Nashville lit up his world A dozen years ago, the Top 10 hit \u201cLullaby\u201d and platinum album Soul\u2019s Core catapulted Atlanta-born singer and songwriter Shawn Mullins into the limelight. Before long he found himself opening arena shows for the likes of \u2019N Sync, the Backstreet Boys […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[1175,2326,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3197,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3195\/revisions\/3197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}