Matt Stell is battling some confusion among the women in his life, and it’s presenting a challenge.
For starters, his mother watches his social media accounts and is worried he’s drinking too much. But he thinks he has her calmed down.
“Mom gets it now that social media is not real life, that it’s like the cartoon version of your life,” Stell said. “There’s like a Busch Light or a Casamigos in every post. The party brand is strong as of late, but yeah, we keep it on the rails.”
Stell is also giving up alcohol for Lent, which starts today (March 2). However, he can’t stop drinking quite yet. The “Boyfriend Season” singer is headed to the European Country Music Festival C2C, and there’s no way he’s going to Scotland and not drinking the “stoutest Guinness they have over there.”
“I’ll just add some days to the back of Lent,” he explained.
Last October, a more significant misunderstanding emerged when he released “Boyfriend Season,” a song about getting his heart broken, the day after his ex-girlfriend’s birthday. It didn’t help that his ex is Bachelor Nation’s Victoria Fuller, who competed on Peter Weber’s season of “The Bachelor.” Stell prefers to keep his dating life private, but the news got out when Fuller tagged him in a social media post. He’s adamant he didn’t know when her birthday was, promises the song isn’t about her and says it’s all a huge coincidence. He admits it “ruffled some feathers.”
“We’ve all been in relationships where we feel like we got the short end of the stick,” Stell explained of “Boyfriend Season.” “I wrote that song and was in a relationship and then wasn’t in that relationship, but it wasn’t about that relationship. Because of timing and social media, it seemed like it was, but it wasn’t.”
Stell explained the girl in the song is a “voodoo doll of ex-girlfriends” that he and his co-writers Zach Abend, Seth Ennis and Geoff Warburton stitched together from past bad experiences in relationships.
“I’ve definitely had relationships end where I was a fault, and I’ve had some end where I wasn’t,” Stell said. “Because I write a lot about relationships that I’ve had, it felt like that was a pretty true thing to talk about. But it wasn’t about anybody, and it certainly wasn’t about anyone who was on ’The Bachelor’ – who is a friend of mine.”
However, Stell already has his mind on new music. The singer said he and co-producer Ash Bowers just finished a round of vocal tracking for what might be his next album.
“I moved to town to be a songwriter so getting to create and live in that world is where I like to be,” Stell said. “It’s the best stuff that we’ve done, and it’s exciting to have that groove figured out. Figuring out who you are and your voice – it sounds like such a cliched thing that doesn’t mean anything, but it does to me. I like songs that have some kind of lyrical hook or turn like, ’Prayed for You,’ spinning that a couple of different ways. Sonically, if it sounds like a mix of Alanis Morissette and Dwight Yoakam, then I’m in a good place. It’s like barn rock.”