SOPHOMORE ALBUM NIGHT DIVING
OUT JANUARY 24, 2025 PRE-ORDER HERE
Singer-songwriter Max McNown is back with his new single "Roses and Wolves" featuring country singer Hailey Whitters. This song is a beautiful meditation on heartbreak. The music video premieres on YouTube at 3 pm ET on Thursday.
“The privilege of hindsight helps us accept that relationships don’t always last forever,” says Max McNown. “‘Roses and Wolves’ is written from a place of comfort in the realization that the world will keep spinning and heartbreak is part of life. Hailey Whitters’ beautiful vocals created a unique energy and truly brought this song to life!”
Equally as appreciative, Hailey Whitters shares, “I was so glad Max asked me to sing on this! He’s an incredible artist and I’m so honored he asked me to be a part of such a great song.”
The soul-soothing single follows the release of the introspective “Better Me For You (Brown Eyes).” Both tracks are part of the stunning sophomore LP Night Diving (out January 24, 2025, via Fugitive Recordings x The Orchard), which is McNown’s promising follow-up to his critically-acclaimed debut album Wandering. Produced by Jamie Kenney (Colbie Caillat, Laci Kaye Booth), Night Diving is a body of work that explores new and daring sonic terrain while fully affirming McNown’s extraordinary capacity to ease the mind and strengthen the soul.
About Max McNown:
Singer/songwriter Max McNown creates the kind of songs that soundtrack our most intimate moments: times of intense heartache and tremendous loss, immense upheaval and life-changing revelation. Within just a year of teaching himself to play guitar, the Nashville-based artist set off on a meteoric rise largely fueled by his breakout single “A Lot More Free”—a track that earned him a top spot as #1 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart, peaked at #1 on the iTunes singles and TikTok Breakthrough USA charts, and landed on Spotify’s Hot Country and Viral 50 global playlists. On the heels of a banner year that’s included making his Grand Ole Opry debut and sharing bills with superstars like Wynonna Judd, the 23-year-old Oregon native is now set to deliver his sophomore album Night Diving: a body of work that explores new and daring sonic terrain while fully affirming his extraordinary capacity to ease the mind and strengthen the soul.
Bringing a bold new energy to his graceful fusion of folk and country, Night Diving follows McNown’s widely lauded full-length debut Wandering—a 2024 release that turned up on Whiskey Riff’s list of the year’s best debut albums and won critical praise from the likes of People and Holler (who proclaimed that “[m]ixing the raw folksiness of Noah Kahan and the stadium-sized ambitions of Mumford & Sons, McNown sings the kind of songs that people will want to sing along with at the top of their lungs”). In the making of Night Diving, McNown worked closely with producer Jamie Kenney (Colbie Caillat, Laci Kaye Booth) and an A-list lineup of session players, sculpting an unpredictable and infinitely mesmerizing sound centred on his poetic yet candid lyrics. “The whole time we were working on this album, I felt a perfect balance of freedom and comfortability with the process—it feels like the truest version of me, with no strings attached,” he says. “In the past, I haven’t always felt super-confident in the writing room, but this album really helped me to come into my own and be unapologetically myself with every creative choice we made.”
Anchored in the charmingly warm vocal presence he partly honed by busking at the beach in Southern California, Night Diving takes its title from a soul-baring and spellbinding track that wholly encapsulates McNown’s newly elevated artistry. With its otherworldly textures, moody guitar tones, and strangely haunting rhythms, “Night Diving” arrives as a lived-in meditation on cycles of addiction, co-written with Kenney and singer/songwriter Erin McCarley. “We stepped into the writing room and Erin asked, ‘What’s something in your life that you keep fighting and can’t seem to overcome?’” McNown recalls. “‘Night Diving’ became the answer to that question—it’s a song that addresses addiction in my own life, and I think it’ll resonate with people on a lot of different levels.” In bringing the song to life, McNown and Kenney incorporated a number of inventive sonic elements, including a beat constructed from banging chains against the floor. “Because I’m still relatively new to making music, I tend to have a lot of ideas that some producers might immediately shut down and say, ‘Nobody does that,’” McNown points out. “But Jamie was willing to experiment with whatever weird ideas I came up with, and that allowed me to create something that’s completely unique to me.”
A prime showcase for his emotionally potent yet nuanced lyrics, Night Diving shifts into a brighter mood on “Better Me For You (Brown Eyes)”: a lilting and dreamlike reflection on the way that love transforms us, built on McNown’s fantastically detailed storytelling (from the chorus: “I didn’t know you’d have brown eyes/Like to pray to Jesus, spending Friday nights at home/Didn’t know you’d be the strong kind/Deeper than a coal mine, lovin’ with a heart of gold”). “I wrote that song when I’d just started dating my girlfriend, who’s the absolute light of my life,” he says. “It’s about how meeting her made me want to become the kind of person who deserves to be with her, which means becoming a better person in general.” Meanwhile, on “Hotel Bible,” Night Diving takes on a quietly anthemic power as McNown offers up a warmhearted antidote to the soul-crushing effects of self-doubt. “‘Hotel Bible’ is about someone feeling so down that they start to dim the light they give to others,” he says. “It’s about trying to pull them out of that self-sabotaging experience so that they can understand how beautiful they are, both inside and out.”
Although Night Diving endlessly reveals his deepened self-assurance as an artist, each song also spotlights the innate musicality he’s nurtured his entire life. One of five children, McNown grew up in a family where singing was second nature. “Every night before bed when I was little, my dad would sit in the hallway and play his guitar and sing until we fell asleep,” he recalls. “None of us took lessons but singing was a part of our everyday lives, and from an early age I felt a strong connection to music.” Despite that profound musical passion, McNown planned to pursue a career in business management after graduating high school in 2020. But after two years of attending college online and working at a coffee shop full-time, he felt undeniably compelled to make a change. “My brother has been battling lymphoma for about six years now, which is something that takes a toll on the whole family,” he says. “During lockdown I had my friends around to help me cope with everything, but when the world opened back up they all went back to their colleges. Loneliness just overwhelmed me, to the point where I felt like I was losing my mind.” In August 2022, McNown packed up his car to head for Southern California and crash with his aunt and uncle in San Clemente, then received a last-minute gift from his dad. “My car was packed so full I could barely see out of the rearview mirror, and my dad opened the door back up and handed me his guitar,” he says. “If he hadn’t done that for me, I don’t know if I would be where I am now.”
Once he’d settled in San Clemente, McNown started studying guitar and showed a friend a song he’d penned in high school. “I didn’t have a lot of faith in myself, but my friend encouraged me to go down to the San Clemente Pier and play that song and see what happened,” he says. “That night I made 93 bucks, and also got a free taco and a girl’s phone number folded into a $5 bill.” He then began busking at the pier several times a week, earning an ardent response for his understated but impassioned covers of alt-country songs. When an admirer posted a video of McNown performing a Zach Bryan track, he saw an instant spike in his following and decided to share more of his music online. As he racked up more and more followers, McNown devoted himself to developing his songcraft and sharpening his guitar skills and soon came up with his first official song, “Freezing in November”—an April 2023 release that surpassed a million streams in a few months, setting his music career into unstoppable motion. After signing with Fugitive Recordings and putting out his debut EP A Lot More Free (whose massively successful title track later hit #1 on Billboard’s Digital Rock Sales chart), he turned out a series of rapturously received singles—amassing over 80 million streams in his very first year of releasing music, all while bringing his debut album to life.
Since the arrival of Wandering—a 13-song LP examining everything from breakups and new love to the pain of watching his brother struggle with cancer and the confusion of finding his place in the world—McNown has steadily established himself as a captivating live performer. To that end, he’s taken the stage at leading festivals like AmericanaFest, toured with Briscoe and Blake Rose, and opened for the likes of Corey Kent, Wyatt Flores, Sam Barber, The 502s, Trampled by Turtles, and JOSEPH. In early 2025, he’ll embark on his first-ever headline tour—a nearly-sold-out nationwide run including stops in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and more, with one of two dates at New York City’s legendary Bowery Ballroom sold out in just three hours.
With his latest triumphs including being named a CMT Next Up Now featured artist and a Billboard Country Rookie of the Month, McNown notes that he’s found an essential touchstone in his personal experience with the transformative power of music. “The reason I want to put my songs out into the world is I know how much music has helped me throughout my life,” he says. “Whether it was dealing with a breakup or my brother’s cancer or the troubles we all go through, music gave me hope and made me feel less alone, so now I want to return the favor.” And through his whirlwind journey over the past two years, he’s gained firsthand knowledge of his own ability to provide others with solace. “A lot of people tell me stories about the difficult things they’ve been through, which can sometimes take a while to process,” he says. “But even though those stories are tough to hear, it’s a reminder that I’m on the right path—my songs seem to be making a positive impact and helping people in some way, and that’s all I can ever really ask for with my music.”
Follow Max on his socials: TikTok | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify | www.maxmcnown.com