The past is dead.
That self-help mantra is a great reminder not to let old regrets hold us back. But it’s complicated by an old William Faulkner quote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Several chunks of Ashley McBryde’s past are unearthed in her latest single, “What If We Don’t,” a song that draws on her pre-stardom work and old relationships, accompanied by a video rooted in a difficult story from her youth. McBryde has used an intense form of therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), to heal that high-school episode, which involved the death of a close friend in a car accident. She still sheds tears talking about that friend — and about one of the song’s co-writers, who also died in 2018.
“Writing and releasing this song now is how I’ve processed it the best,” McBryde notes.
“What If We Don’t” was penned on July 8, 2015, by the self-described “Music Row Freaks,” the cowriting trio of McBryde, Terri Jo Box and Randall Clay, around a metal patio table with an umbrella on the brick-and-mortar back porch at a duplex that Box rented at the time in Nashville’s toney Belle Meade district.
“We definitely brought the neighborhood down with our red necks,” Box says with a laugh.
On that particular day, McBryde announced on her arrival that she needed a “big rock-ballad chorus,” Box recalls. It was a conscious effort by McBryde to find her lane in country music at a time when that rough-edged lane wasn’t acknowledged.
“I love the things that were represented sonically at the time,” she says, “but I didn’t have my Pat Benatar that I could turn to.”
They had that sound in mind as they addressed the frustrations that both McBryde and Box were experiencing in their love lives, where they tended to get involved with friends who turned out to be less-than-ideal partners. “Ashley and I were both in situationships, which we both pretty much stayed in back then,” Box says.
They wrote a power chorus first, sculpting it to McBryde’s formidable range, with a lyric that contemplated two people turning a friendship into something more. When they wrote the more subdued verses, they set up the scenario in the opening frame by picturing two people calling it a night, about to go their separate ways. And in verse two, they considered the results: “things gettin’ weird if it don’t work out.”
“I remember asking her and Randall, ‘Is it weird to say “weird” in a song?’” Box recalls. “Ashley was like, ‘I love it. Let’s just say it, because that’s what it is: weird.’” In the big picture, “What If We Don’t” is all about crossroads.
“That moment of making the decision to take the risk or not take the risk,” says McBryde, “is immediately followed up by, ‘Wow, I get to live with these consequences,’ no matter what they are.”
McBryde first recorded “What If We Don’t” for her 2016 indie album Jalopies & Expensive Guitars. The song didn’t come out quite the way she imagined it, and it never received any significant exposure.
Subsequently, Clay died in October 2018 from pneumonia in Pensacola, Fla., as a hurricane descended upon the city. McBryde always harbored regrets that “What If We Don’t” had not received the best possible opportunity, and as she prepped for her next album, she began inserting it into her live set, working it up with her road band, Deadhorse.
“We were out in support of Cody Johnson, so we were trying out new arrangements of a song that has been around a long time in front of 20,000 people a night,” she says. “What a great barometer to go, ‘Well, that worked’ or ‘Well, that didn’t work.’” She enlisted Brothers Osborne guitarist John Osborne to produce the next album, and he appreciated the work they’d already put in before they set foot in his Pinebox Studio on March 6, 2025.
“They really do their homework, and they come in with arrangements,” he says. “I love that, because I can focus on the nitty gritty from the word go.” Box attended the session and was impressed with how deep he went into that nitty gritty.
“John Osborne could go around to every instrument and show what he wanted to hear,” she says. “He could get behind the drums, and then he played the guitar, and he [was] just cool and laid back about everything. He really let Ashley be Ashley.”
McBryde sang live with Deadhorse on every take, knowing that any nuance might unlock something new in the band. While drummer Quinn Hill is behind them in live settings, the musicians were able to make him the visual focal point in the studio.
“I’m watching Quinn play drums like he’s digging a ditch,” McBryde says, “and I’m watching Caleb Hooper’s hair fall into his face — he can’t even see his bass — and it doesn’t matter; his fingers are just flying all over it. And [guitarist] Matt Helmkamp over here ripping solos as though it’s as easy as carrying a bag of chips.”
They treated “What If We Don’t” like a 1980s power ballad, allowing McBryde to take on a Joan Jett/Heart/Pat Benatar persona. “There isn’t a production big enough that she can’t absolutely compete with ease,” Osborne says, “so I went really hard with it, and she was all about it.”
When the band had the framework in place, Osborne overdubbed additional instrumentation, providing some extra guitar parts and thickening the sound with mini-Moog bass and a mellotron that laid synth tones underneath much of the production.
“In the bridge, I put in some really cool pizzicato stabs,” he says. “I grew up playing classical music, and I didn’t appreciate it when I was younger, but as an adult, I love listening to classical music, so I love using sometimes classical rhythms and counterpoints and approaches to sections to create energy.”
Everyone on the team agreed that “What If We Don’t” should be the next single, which reaffirms the friendship with Clay. “We feel him around all the time,” Box says. “It barely feels like he’s not here for it.”
The accompanying video is built roughly around the loss of McBryde’s highschool friend, and it’s notable that the girl has a boyfriend but expresses some sexual tension with McBryde’s character.
“That’s definitely by design, to leave that up to the viewer who the young person is most interested in because at that time, especially at that age group, you’re not sure,” she says. “A lot of the times you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I really enjoy hanging out with these two, and I can’t tell exactly.’”
Warner Records Nashville released “What If We Don’t” to country radio via PlayMPE on Jan. 22, assigning an official add date of Feb. 23.
It builds on several different friendships, incorporates the harder edge McBryde always envisioned for it, and allows her to pour herself into some strong emotions in a way that formal therapy never quite provided as she heals her past.
“I may have had a heartache or two when I wrote it,” she says, “but I didn’t have the tools to fully process everything that I was packing into that until now.”
