Out of Sane

“The title really came out of the process, which starts out coming from a sane mind,” Clint Black tells Apple Music about his first new album in five years, Out of Sane. “You get to a certain point in the process of making the record where it's no longer that, it's something torturous. Because I played most of the guitar stuff myself, it's a lot of working alone.” Savvy about classic country and sophisticated studio rock alike, Black’s co-written his own material throughout his three-decade-plus recording career and, along the way, taken charge of producing himself. “It's the meticulous process of applying audio sciences to make sure that every instrument has its place,” he says. “I've tried so hard over the years to unclutter the music. It's not as hard as construction—I've done that, so I don't want to try to make it sound worse than it is. But really, I think that's why it takes me so long. I try to be a student of human behavior, kind of like an actor. I need to understand everything that's behind this thought or this statement so that I can feel. If I just come up with a clever line, they may appreciate the cleverness of the line, but it might not necessarily make them feel anything.” Here Black walks through all the feelings behind each track on Out of Sane.
Hell Bent “When Hayden [Nicholas] and I wrote that, we were picturing the Old West outlaw. Just being history buffs, there were outlaws that came out of Texas, going up to Colorado and beyond. We tried to paint a picture of someone without defining what kind of outlaw they are. The basic principle in the song is that this is someone who wishes he could be with someone, but he can't because he's running on the trail.”
My Best Thinkin' “‘My Best Thinkin'’ is kind of in the ‘Better Man’ vein without the breakup: ‘I'm so much better now because of you, and when I let my mind wander to you, that's when I'm really elevated.’ I mean, it takes it all the way to the point where ‘I'm so smart now you can't even measure my IQ, and I don't need a degree, because I'm already thinking in the nth degree; I don't need a PhD.’ And then it takes it all the way to the Einstein level, just for good humor.”
America (Still in Love With You) “That really comes from my own sensibilities and realistic view of America, its origins. America really was here before 1776, firing on all pistons, with an organized government, etc. Then it declared its new idea and independence, and then it's been through a lot. Steve [Wariner] just came over to show me his new guitar, and I said I had this idea. It was ‘I'm still in love with you/In spite of all our ups and downs/We've gone our separate ways/But we've come back around.’ I don't know how much more of that I had, but then I got to ‘I'm still in love with you, America.’ He went, ‘Oh, I didn't see that coming.’ That was the idea. Like every relationship, there are going to be disagreements. My intent was to not paint an idealistic view of our country, but to present my willingness to continue to be patriotic, and be involved, and be proactive, get out and vote, and do all those things that I think will help without trying to tell anybody that everything's just right. It was a tough assignment to write that song and say everything that I would like to say and have it ring true to any other American, no matter their point of view. I have friends from every degree of variance of points of view from mine. I want them to be able to hear this song and say, ‘Yeah, I agree with that.’”
With Love “I know people who are cynical, and people who have lost faith in humanity. If you look around for all of the good being done, all the people who dedicate their free time to helping others, people who would lay down their lives for people they've never met, if you look at all of that, then it'll seem different. I believe there's more good than bad, and if you look for it, you'll see it. If you come from a place of love and compassion, then that's what you will see when you look around.”
Everybody's Talkin' “I was just looking through my iTunes catalog, which is thousands of songs, and I ran across that. It was just instant, just so loved that song. I knew I wanted to do something with it. The music in Harry [Nilsson]’s version, and in Glen Campbell's version, it was really these what we call pushes, where you're constantly pushing against the upbeat. It has its own way of charging forward, but it's not with our footsteps. It's on the upbeat. What we did with this was decidedly with our footsteps, straight down on the beat, in the groove. My vocal fell in with that.”
Found It Anyway “Kind of a Clark Kent, you know? That's where that 'Superman loving on Lois Lane' came from. Just a happy-go-lucky guy, who really wasn't paying any attention to what everybody else was paying attention to. I kind of see him as the guy with the glasses who turns out to be this really, really lucky superhero guy who got the girl and didn't even know how he did it. It was fun to write, because you feel like you're talking about some bumbling idiot who is secretly the most powerful man on earth, Superman.”
A Beautiful Day “That really came out of this chord progression that Steve had in mind. He had this real jazzy sort of movement. You don't roll out of bed and sing that one. It's really difficult, and if I made it sound easygoing, then that's wonderful. The first place [Steve] goes in the verse just completely surprised me: ‘I got a flat tire, and then it starts to rain, and hey, there you are, it's a beautiful day.’ It's just who he is so naturally, where I might go to some cerebral place of analyzing what's going on.”
Down to It “I have a basic arrangement, and I'm at the console producing, but I've got a microphone there and I'm singing the guide vocal for [the band]. We'll get to places, like with that song, where we have the arrangement charted out, but as we're playing it, I'm feeling something else. I'll speak up: ‘Let's ramp up and go eight bars, and then let the bottom drop out and really bring it down to almost nothing for the next four bars.’ Who knows how much of that they got, but the drummer heard it, and maybe a couple of other guys. It's like arranging on the fly, conducting on the fly. That's what happened with that song, and that's why you had this sort of happy accident [at the end].”
The Only One “The verse is in A minor, and then the chorus starts off on that, so it feels like it's going to stay that way. Then it's A major. Suddenly, it feels like this brightness has just come into the room. You just naturally are looking for that different thing, and when you hit it, you know. You go, ‘Okay, yeah, the ear really likes it, and it's really different, we don't have anything like that.’ It's really setting out to find the things that complement the entire body of work. If I were just writing a song that we were going to pitch to some other artist, I wouldn't be even thinking about my body of work.”
Can't Quit Thinkin' “‘Can't Quit Thinkin'’ really is a person who has barely come back from self-destruction because of the loss of love. I think of my own self, when I have things I'm trying to work through and I can't stop thinking about them. And sometimes you just say, ‘I'll do anything to shut my mind off.’ That's where this song is: I could do all the things that used to get me down and one of them nearly put me in the ground, and, basically, it was her. So even the music on that has got all that tension and darkness and it's ominous. One of my favorite ideas was getting to the point where the voices in my head are going, ‘Think and think,’ and then I yelled, ‘Stop.’”
Find Myself “I saw a T-shirt, and it said, ‘If I get back before I return, keep me there,’ or something like that. I just committed it to memory. Then it became, ‘Okay, who is that guy?’ Maybe it's me, and my bags are always packed, and I've lost myself in all of this. That's what happens, especially when you become a celebrity and all you're doing is showing up for events about you. It's not really about you, it's about the you that made the record and all of that. It becomes about this one part of you, and you sort of lose the rest of yourself, just because you're so busy doing everything that's about that other part of you. Then there's the other part of it that was just, well, he could be insane too, so let's make sure and leave room for that interpretation, that there's something more going on here than this guy with his guitar traveling around.”
What I Knew Then “We all know ‘I wish I knew then what I know now.’ Because I would have not stepped in the same pothole. We wanted to come up with a twist on that, which was ‘I wish I knew now what I knew then,’ which means that somewhere along the way you've lost your mind, or you've lost track of something or someone, some memory. That's a real thing too, not just with mental health. For this song, it really was this thing, love. Something happened, and now I don't know how to feel it. It's a weird thing to try to write. I can tell you that that was one of the toughest lyrics to get satisfied with, because you can end up making sense of it for a minute, and then you get to this place in the verse where you go, ‘Oh, we've got something really good and clever and deep here, but it doesn't support this weird thing that we're trying to say.’ Then you have to throw it away and keep working. It just becomes this chasing of the tail, to try to stay with this strange twist.”