With Morgan Wallen kicking off his next chapter with ‘Been By Now’, fans are inevitably scouring interviews and social media for clues as to what we can expect from his next album. In a new conversation with the Songwriter Soup podcast, one of Wallen's go-to writers for I'm the Problem, Blake Pendergrass, offers some fascinating insight into what the writing process is like for a new Wallen album.

Pendergrass has written for the Sneedville native ever since Dangerous in 2021, with Wallen cutting ‘865’, before recording three Pendergrass co-writes on his next album, One Thing At A Time. On I'm the Problem, Pendergrass was one of the most prominent writers, working on 15 of the 37 tracks, with his solo write, the philosophical, faith-driven ‘The Dealer’, drawing plaudits from critics and fans alike.

Pendergrass describes the writing sessions for Wallen's albums as being like seasons, with the ‘Last Night’ chart-topper getting his crew of favoured songwriters together to write specifically for his project over roughly a five month period.

With Wallen releasing ‘Been By Now’ as the first piece of the puzzle of his next album this summer, as well as confirming he's been working on new music, it sounds like Pendergrass is in the middle of one of those five-month stints of writing for Wallen.

While on the Songwriter Soup podcast, Pendergrass begins by explaining how much he learns from Rakiyah Marshall, the founder of the artist-publishing house Back Blocks Music, “I lean a lot on Rakiyah. She pushes me a lot more to do new things, because I love hanging out with, like, my crew and my friends...Just from like a friendship standpoint it's fun to hang out with your friends. But I also trust her judgment fully, so [if] she says somebody I should write with, I'm like, ‘Okay’”.

He goes on, “I'll always run into this period before the write, and I'm like, ‘Oh I don't want to do this’...and I still do it, just because I'm like, she says it's a good idea, and...it always ends up being a good thing, and I'm very thankful that I kind of lean on her”.

Elsewhere in the conversation, Pendergrass touches on his Wallen songwriting routine, “My day to day a lot of the time ends up being at this point, like, seasonal of which artist I'm working with...Like, when it's that time, it's like it's game time”.

Pendergrass shares, “With Morgan...when he's writing, it's like a five month period of like, ‘We're writing Morgan Wallen songs’, and I'll have stuff here and there...Sometimes he's on tour at that time...But I kind of look at it as there's the Morgan season of writing, and then when his album comes out, I...start the clock [and] see however many cuts I can get on everything else. And then [it's] back to Morgan”.

He also touches on how lucrative getting a Wallen album-track can be, given how broad the ‘Whiskey Glasses’ hitmaker's reach is, compared to targeting Country Radio No. 1s.

Pendergrass shares how Seth England - the co-founder of Big Loud Records and Rakiyah's husband - initially advised him to put his attention into writing for Wallen for this reason.

It seems Pendergrass is set to be a crucial figure in the creation of Wallen's next album, with Pendergrass having co-written ‘Been By Now’ with Morgan Wallen, Charlie Handsome, John Byron, Rocky Block and Taylor Phillips. This reads like a who's-who of some of Wallen's closest collaborators - with a few names missing, like ERNEST and HARDY. As a result, it feels like ‘Been By Now’ arose from one of those dedicated ‘Morgan Wallen writing sessions’ that Pendergrass refers to.

Given the synth-backed ambience of ‘Been By Now’, and Handsome's comments earlier in the year of wanting Wallen to lean more into the Pop Radio world, it seems we can expect more genre-blurring textures in his next era. Whatever his new album holds, we feel pretty confident that Pendergrass will be a cornerstone.