“You Could Hear Her Tearing Up Over The Phone”: Kane Brown Recalls The Moment He Told His Nana He'd Written ‘When You Forget’ For His Grandpa

In a new interview with Holler, Kane Brown has delved into the creative process behind an array of stand-outs from his new album, The High Road, which has dropped today (January 24th).

It's a refreshingly eclectic project, with the ‘Heaven’ hitmaker dipping his toe into EDM, R&B and Pop textures, while still ensuring Country remains the cornerstone of the album.

One of the most striking qualities of The High Road is the way in which Kane Brown digs deeper than ever before, getting candid with listeners on the mental health-inspired ‘Haunted’ with Jelly Roll and the rousing, Khalid-assisted SOS call, ’Rescue’.

The track that epitomises this openness most viscerally is undoubtedly the final song on The High Road, ‘When You Forget’, which Brown penned alongside his trusty team of co-writers, Gabe Foust, Jaxson Free, Hunter Phelps and Jordan Walker.

Written about Kane Brown's Grandpa's battle with Alzheimer's, ‘When You Forget’ is a heart-rending example of Brown's ability to bring fleeting vignettes vividly to life. The track calls back to some of the genre's most lustrous gems, such as Kenny Chesney's ‘While He Still Knows Who I Am‘ and Riley Green's ’Numbers On The Cars’.

Speaking to Holler, the ‘Do Us Apart’ singer-songwriter has explained how emotional it was telling his Nana about ‘When You Forget’, which Kane Brown first teased last year.

Brown recalls, “I love those types of personal songs...Getting to call my Nana and tell her that we were going to write a song about him, you know, you could hear her tearing up over the phone. Then just asking her questions about him, like when him and my Mamaw got married and all that type of stuff. So it really was a cool song to write”.

Kane Brown outlines how he was - thankfully - always going to find room for ’When You Forget’ on The High Road tracklist, “I remember tearing up a little bit as we were writing it. Regardless of what the fans think about it, that song means a lot to me. As an artist, if it's going to touch me, then it's going to touch a lot of other people”.

‘When You Forget’ is one of the many highlights on The High Road, with Kane Brown nimbly walking the line between a plethora of genres, while at the same time balancing his desire to be more vulnerable than ever with his penchant for fun, feel-good anthems.

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