Story Behind the Song: Chase Bryant, ‘Room to Breathe’
In June of 2016, Chase Bryant dropped "Room to Breathe," the first single from his debut full-length album. The sexy tune with a bluesy feel was co-written by Bryant, Derek George and Ashley Gorley and includes lines such as "I don't need no room to breathe / No, nothing in between / Don't wanna go nowhere without your hands on me / No, I can't get enough / Cover me in your love." Below, Bryant recalls the day he wrote the song, the inspiration behind the sensual single and his intentions to color slightly outside the lines of country music.
For me, I wanted to write something that was leaning towards something that was going to get caught in your ear really fast -- a groove that was going to hit, that you were going to immediately go, "Wait, what is this?" People always say, "He’s got such a musical history, and he knows older music." I kind of wanted to write something that was a little more of a throwback, but also something with a little more sex appeal than I’ve written in the past. That’s kind of where "Room to Breathe" came from.
I wrote ["Room to Breathe"] with Ashley Gorley and Derek George. We’d only written one other song at the time, and that was "Little Bit of You." We got on a lucky streak. Now we’ve written two singles together, and so now I always say that I’m always going to write with those two together when we have to write a single.
I never have said anything like, "This is a hit" -- more like, "This is a great song," because I think radio and fans and the average person who buys a record defines if it’s a hit. I think I had that feeling with this song; I was like, "There’s something here. There’s something here that I haven’t ever done before, that I really like." Not to say that I haven’t ever done anything like that before, but I think a record is supposed to be made up of different ideas and surfaces. So, thankfully, we got that one.