Max McNown has followed up his breakthrough hit “A Little More Free” with “Better Me for You (Brown Eyes).” While the song was inspired by his then-girlfriend, Max says it’s not exactly a love song — it’s more about how she inspired him to be worthy of her love.
“The verses are very honest depictions of who I was and who I didn’t want to be,” he told ABC Audio. “I was just making decisions that I was not proud of. I was a person I wasn’t proud to be.”
“And it’s so funny, people think the song is just purely about this relationship,” he added. “But it’s actually about, equally, who I was before the relationship and how it kind of saved me.”
Max says his manager initially had to convince him to release the song as a single. But he had an inkling it might be special the first time he played it for his the woman who inspired it.
“We were in the parking lot and I was just like, ‘Hey, I wrote a song about you today and about us and how I feel.’ And she was like, ‘Oh my gosh, can I hear it?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, for sure,'” Max recalled.
“And it was just a guitar and my voice, and I played it, and I remember she was just in the passenger seat and she just started crying,” he said. “And I was, like, ‘Man … I think this is a special song.'”
The woman turned out to be pretty special, too — she and Max are now married.
Max launches his The Cost of Growing Up headlining tour March 20 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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