In Jordan Davis’ 2023 single “Tucson Too Late,” the singer races to the airport, hoping to save a relationship.

His latest, “Turn This Truck Around,” reverses direction. In this case, he’s driving away, attempting to end a partnership. It’s similar in storyline to Glen Campbell’s 1968 release “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” though there are sharp differences. “Truck” sounds tougher and technology makes it more likely the woman he’s leaving can initiate a conversation that will make the guy cave.

“‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix,’ you’ve got to find a pay phone, even if you want to make the call,” Davis notes. “Now we’re carrying our phones around.”

The only actual travel involved in writing “Turn This Truck Around” was the four songwriters’ commutes to Nashville’s Anthem Entertainment on Dec. 7, 2024, and the family trips they rekindled in conversation. Davis talked about chauffeuring his three kids (he and his wife, Kristen, have since added a fourth), and Warner Music Nashville artist Devin Dawson recounted a ride he and his twin brother, writer-producer Jacob Durrett, took to the Six Flags theme park in Vallejo, Calif., when they were young.

“My brother and I are in the back seat, just being little hellions and picking on each other and shit,” Dawson says. “I remember [Mom] saying, ‘Don’t make me turn this car around.’ ”

Those images didn’t take on significance until Jake Mitchell (“One Beer,” “Some Girls”) introduced a pulsing track he had developed with a simple chord progression. It had a Tom Petty air about it, and discussion about the driving beat led to talk about driving imagery. Dawson brought the earlier conversation back up with a slight revision to the vehicle, “Turn This Truck Around.” The work was fairly easy.

“It doesn’t feel like we talked about what the idea would be that much,” Mitchell offers. “It kind of just came out. And I feel like we didn’t put too much story in there. It’s more so just about that moment when you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it. Don’t go back.’ ”

The chorus melody emerged first, and Josh Thompson (“Drowns the Whiskey,” “Wasted On You”) provided the setup line, with the protagonist proclaiming he was on his way “long as your memory/ Don’t make me turn this truck around.” Davis wanted a starting line for the story, and they crafted one — “This time I said it and I meant it” — that indicated the relationship had been in trouble for some time. From there, they bounced back to the chorus before patching the whole plot together. Verse one provided a sense of the journey, focused on the brakes and the gas station stops. Verse two brought the listener inside the cab, where the singer wrestles with the love songs on the radio and fears that a text message will undermine his determination. It’s never clear if he’ll go through with the breakup or give in.

“I kind of love the little bit of open-endedness in that lyric,” Davis says.

They brought the tension to a climax in the bridge — though not the kind of bridge one encounters on the road. 

“I’ve written with [people who] said bridges are made for burning and jumping off of,” Davis quips. “There are some songs where the bridge just feels like it’s useless, but this one I was pretty proud of. It really kind of helps the song out.”

It allows for a mention of “memory lane” — “ ‘Memory Lane’ had to be in that song,” Davis says — but it also uses musical elements to amp up the drama.

“The bridge is my favorite part of the song,” Dawson says. “I think it just really lets all that emotion spill out of the melody, and the way he sings it — [near] the top of his range there — it really dumps the desperation out.”

Mitchell produced the demo, which introduced several new ideas. He inserted sound effects of a door slamming, boots walking and an ignition starting, though none of those made it into the final product. And at Dawson’s suggestion, he employed a halftime feel on the bridge. They all thought they had a winner, and Mitchell didn’t want to take a risk that any element in the recording would turn off even one decision-maker who would be evaluating its potential.

“It’s usually got to go past A&R managers,” he reasons. “They play it for all kinds of people in their teams, and sometimes, whether people realize it or not, they can not like a song because of the way a vocalist says words. Even if they don’t think about it that way, they could just be like, ‘I don’t know about that one,’ and that one voice could make an artist doubt the song and not want to do it.”

Davis left the appointment confident that they had written a hit. He had never felt that way about a song before and never lost faith in “Truck.”

Producer Paul DiGiovanni (Travis Denning, Alana Springsteen) appreciated its Petty-like foundation — “My favorite artist of all time right there,” he says — and he made a point of highlighting the persistent eighth notes that were key to many of Petty’s recordings during a tracking session at Sound Stage on Music Row. 

Mitchell’s demo had presented the song’s substance well — “He knocked it out of the park,” DiGiovanni says — and the final production essentially worked its way to the bridge.

“Some bridges are just like, ‘Hey, let’s change my brain chemistry for 10 seconds so you can put me back into the chorus,’ ” DiGiovanni explains. “That is the climax of the song. It’s the most desperate part and it’s a pretty long bridge. So I feel like that’s as important as the chorus in the song, and I knew we needed to put some emphasis on that.”

As uncluttered as the arrangement feels, it adds small touches and extra voices throughout, many of them felt subliminally. It includes, for example, a quiet, filtered-out synth part that sounds like wood blocks at the end of the choruses and a barely audible pulse synthesizer and Hammond B-3 that operate as a danger signal at the bridge’s conclusion.

“It just builds as it goes,” DiGiovanni says. “Like the background vocal stacks — the first chorus, there’s four; the second chorus, there’s six; the last one, there’s 12. It’s just things to pad it and give it a little bit more beef as it goes on.”

Despite the angsty bridge, it was one of the easiest vocal performances of Davis’ career. “Usually, I go in and cut vocals for two hours,” he says. “I went in to just sing two songs one day, this being one of them. It was like 20 minutes. Paul is looking at me like, ‘All right, man. Anything else? You good?’ That was a good day.”

So was April 5. He played “Turn This Truck Around” live for the first time during the Tortuga Music Festival in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The audience responded as if it was familiar, and it confirmed Davis’ belief it should be a single. MCA Nashville released it to country radio via PlayMPE on Oct. 13. Fans may respond as if the song is preordained; the results of the storyline are not.

“The hero in this song — I love the fact that he’s not 100% sure that he’s the hero,” Davis says. “Eventually, her memory is going to catch up to you, no matter how far you drive.” 

Herb Alpert says he’s returned to holiday music as another thing to do — and for all the right reasons.

“I just like making music,” says the iconic trumpeter, composer and record company executive, who delivered Christmas Time Is Here, his third holiday set, on Nov. 7. “That’s what I do to stay healthy. I like to record, and if I can find a song that haunts me for some reason and do it in a way that’s different, that people haven’t heard before…that’s what I like to do. I picked out a bunch of songs, and even though I’ve recorded a couple of these songs before I felt I could put another spin on them.”

Holiday albums have certainly been good for Alpert during his 67-year recording career, which has put him in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and earned him a National Medal of Arts. Alpert’s first seasonal effort, Christmas Album in 1968, went gold, per the RIAA; 2017’s The Christmas Wish hit No. 2 on the Jazz Albums chart and No. 5 on the Top Holiday Albums chart.

“They sell every year,” Alpert notes. “You put ’em to rest for 11 months and they come back like they’re almost fresh. They’re good songs, and when you pick good songs, I think people appreciate that.”

Alpert tried a few different things with some of the 12 tracks on Christmas Time Is Here. Particularly notable is his new cover version of Rodgers and Hammerstein standard “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, which Alpert kept melodically faithful within a revamped arrangement. “I always liked that melody,” he explains. “It’s written in 3/4, like in a waltz time. I found a way to do in 4/4 that seemed like it fit the song. There’s been so many recordings of (the song), but this one certainly doesn’t sound like something that’s been overplayed.” Alpert, who’s joined by keyboardist Jeff Lorber on several of the songs, also lent a New Orleans flavor to the staple “Jingle Bells” and incorporates some vocals into the mostly instrumental set on tracks such as “Sleigh Ride” and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

“It takes relaxation and not thinking too hard,” he says of the process. “I’m not trying to make a hit record that’s going to sell a zillion copies. I’m just trying to make something that feels good to me. I’m always looking for that. That’s my goal, to make music that feels good. So when I hit on a type of arrangement just felt right, felt interesting, that’s when I felt like (the songs) deserved to be done again.”

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the most contemporary selection on the set but one that’s certainly been on Alpert’s radar since its 1994 release. “I always thought it was a really good song, good melody, nice lyric — it didn’t surprise me that record of hers did so well,” he says of the perennial Billboard Hot 100 topper. “It’s always melody first; like Quincy Jones once said, you can take the greatest singer in the world, and if the song’s not there the record won’t be any good.”

Christmas Time Is Here comes in the midst of a variety of celebrations for Alpert during the past year-plus. During September of 2024 he released 50, his — wait for it — 50th studio album. This year, meanwhile, he turned 90 (on March 31) and has been commemorating the 60th anniversary of his breakthrough Whipped Cream & Other Delights — his first of three consecutive No. 1s on the Billboard 200 — by touring with a reconstituted Tijuana Brass, which hit the road again Nov. 9 with dates booked into next summer.

“It’s this new renaissance; I can’t believe what’s happening,” Alpert says. “I’m 90 years old and I’ve got this audience that wants to hear music that I did 60 years ago. I’m doing it for the right reasons; it’s something I have to do. It gives me energy; It gives me a reason to be. I like it, and I get a chance to make a lot of people happy. That seems like a good deal. I didn’t expect this to be happening at my present age.”

There’s more to come, he says. Alpert is planning to release a live album from the tour, though no release date has been determined. Meanwhile, he adds, “I’ve got a whole bunch of songs that are ready to be released,” again without a firm plan yet, and he’s confident there will be even more after that.

“That’s what I love to do,” he says. “I love to record. I love to work. I have a Logic (recording) system, and it keeps my brain working. I play the horn just about every day of my life. I’m a right-brain guy — I paint and sculpt and blow the horn. I’ve got this gift, and I love that I get to share it with people.”

Cody Johnson and his wife Brandi Johnson welcomed their third child, and first son, last month.

During an interview with Lon Helton’s Country Countdown USA, Johnson revealed that the couple had welcomed their third child, son Jaycee Daniel Johnson, on Oct. 21. In May 2025, while on the red carpet at the Academy of Country Music Awards, Johnson revealed the couple was expecting their third child.

Jaycee joins the couple’s older children, daughters Clara Mae (born in 2015) and Cori (born in 2017). In May, Johnson told People about expecting his first son,  “My girls… you can’t beat my girls, I love my two girls with all my heart. They’re 10 and 8, Clara and Cori, and I think I’m excited to watch them help raise this little boy.”

Johnson also added that he felt “a lot better off now as far as career and financially, than I was when we had [our daughters]. He’s gonna get a horse a little quicker than my kids did. He’s going to get to do some things a little quicker than my daughters did.”

Heading into next week’s CMA Awards, slated for Nov. 19, Johnson is nominated for four trophies, including entertainer of the year and male vocalist of the year, as well as music video and musical event of the year (for “I’m Gonna Love You” with Carrie Underwood).

Last year, Johnson sold out his first stadium show at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. He recently had to cancel his remaining tour dates for 2025 due to a ruptured ear drum, but has plans to head out on the road again in 2026.

“It is with a very heavy heart I have to share the remainder of this year’s concert performances will not be able to happen. While battling a severe upper respiratory and sinus infection, I burst my ear drum. The severity of the rupture means I must undergo immediate surgery. The healing process will take many weeks, and it is not possible for me to sing during this time. Without the surgery my downtime could be months. I pray for full healing so I can get well and return to doing what I love. Thank you COJO Nation for the love and support now, and always,” Johnson said in a statement on his official site announcing the canceled tour dates.