Morgan Wallen reflects on how pivotal the writing process for ‘Chasin’ You’ was for his overall career trajectory, with the Sneedville native underlining that it gave him the confidence boost he needed as he was making a name for himself as a writer in Nashville.

Wallen penned ‘Chasin’ You’ around 2016 and 2017 - while sleeping on a buddy's couch - with two highly revered Music City songsmiths, Craig Wiseman and Jamie Moore.

After its release in 2019, the soul-searching, heartbroken offering went on to hit No. 1 at Country Radio in 2020, marking the ‘Last Night’ hitmaker's third chart-topper at the time. Fast forward to 2026, of course, and Wallen has a whopping 20 No. 1s to his name. But as he explains in an insightful conversation with his friend ERNEST on the latter's Just Being ERNEST podcast back in 2021, he might not have had the courage to keep working on his craft if it wasn't for ’Chasin’ You’.

When asked about the track by ERN, Wallen explains how he wrote ‘Chasin‘ You’ during a period where he was still finding his footing, “I was so young, especially with songwriting. I had been doing it two or three years. You know, it's a decent amount of time, but I've never had any sort of actual guidance when it comes to writing songs...That song for me really gave me confidence to keep writing”.

He goes on to recall how ‘Chasin’ You’ felt like his first ‘perfect’ song, so to speak, “I thought, ‘That's a song’. There's nothing missing here, there's nothing I would change, there's nothing I wish that I would've done different. We really wrote that song”.

Then, Wallen and ERNEST go on to express their admiration for Wiseman's unique - and somewhat eccentric - approach to songwriting, with the duo joking about Wiseman's post-smoking revelations that can make all the difference in a session.

Wallen muses, “I've never written with anyone that really writes the way he does...He'll sit there and then throw out a bunch of stuff and you're like, ‘Ah, that's probably not it’, and he'll just go smoke a cigar like you said and he'll come back and have it”.

ERNEST echoes Wallen's sentiments, “He doesn't give up on one either. You could go home thinking you didn't get anything, and then two days later, he'll send you a demo back where he just went and finished and polished a turd and made it f***ing really good”.

Wallen laughs as he adds an amusing anecdote about writing with Wiseman (very) early in the morning before catching a flight a matter of hours later, “Or you'll get on a roll like me and him did one day - we wrote four songs together ‘til three or four in the morning, and I had a flight at like six or seven and I'm like, ‘Craig, I gotta go’”.

Wiseman was a key figure in the creation of Wallen's much-loved debut album, If I Know Me, with the duo co-writing a host of stand-outs from the project, including the honeyed, romantic ‘Talkin‘ Tennessee’ and the rowdy, tongue-in-cheek ‘Happy Hour’.

Although Wiseman remains a go-to songwriter for Wallen's label, Big Loud, Wallen's last two projects, I'm the Problem and One Thing At A Time, haven't featured him as a co-writer, with the country titan instead utilising smaller, close-knit writing groups.

Even so, given how much we still enjoy If I Know Me, with ‘Chasin’ You’ remaining one of the ‘Up Down’ crooner's fan-favourites and a mainstay of his setlist, we're hoping Wallen teams up with Wiseman again in the near future. Given their track record, we're sure they could run it back and produce another gem like ‘Chasin You’.

Watch Morgan Wallen's full interview with ERNEST on Just Being ERNEST below:

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