Ryan Hurd first met his wife Maren Morris in 2013 during a writing session shortly after Morris moved to Nashville. They started writing regularly together, including the ballad "
Last Turn Home" for Tim McGraw, and began dating in 2015. Though Morris has provided background vocals on a couple of her husband's previous songs, "Every Other Memory" and "To a T," "Chasing After You" marks their first official studio duet.
Brinley Addington and Jerry Flowers wrote this sensual song about an up-and-down relationship. Hurd and Morris each give their perspective as two people who are unable to break away from their romance. Morris told
Billboard the track reminded the pair of their early days when their friendship began to develop into something more.
"It wasn't the easiest road for us to come together," she said. "We were in separate relationships when we met. We kind of grew a love out of a friendship over many years before we were out of those other relationships and could finally be together after some time. I think it reminds us of falling in love with each other and not being able to really act on it yet."
"Chasing After You" had been circulating around Nashville for years, and several artists had the song on hold before it fell into Hurd's lap. "I just really love the writing of this song. It's really simple, but the melody is just so effective," he told
ET. "It's a song that I wish I had written and those are the ones I think that you end up recording when you're not the writer... It kind of makes me mad that I didn't write it, to be honest."
Maren Morris had been aware of the song for a long while and wanted to join her husband on the recording. "We were on a beach in the Cayman Islands - I think it was the first trip we ever took together," Hurd recalled to Today's Country host Kelleigh Bannen. "Maren was like, 'I want to sing on that song with you.' So this is years in the making."
Hurd and Morris laid down their parts with producers Aaron Eshuis and Teddy Reimer while following health and safety guidelines. "We recorded all the vocals in our basement, which is crazy to think about these things, like, making hit records where you sleep. It's nice," Hurd said. "The whole thing doesn't even feel real. I don't know if it's because of the pandemic, or because we haven't worked in so long... but it's odd the journey something like this takes."
The song originated with Jerry Flowers' guitar line. Flowers, who plays bass in Keith Urban's band, came up with the riff just as Brinley Addington was climbing the stairs to their first songwriting appointment together on October 17, 2014. "I pretty much busted through like the Kool-Aid Man and said, 'Hey, I'm Brinley. Whatever that is, we got to write that,'" Addington recalled to
Billboard.
After spending an hour or two getting to know each other, Flowers and Addington started writing a song about two people who can neither commit fully to each other, nor let go of the relationship. Flowers drew inspiration from his then-girlfriend, who has since become his wife. "That moment in our relationship was kind of tumultuous," he recalled. "We just could not figure it out, and that's what that was about. Like, you know, 'I just guess I love chasing after you.'"
When Flowers played his demo to Urban asking him for feedback, the country star put it on hold. Urban cut "Chasing" but never released it, and many other acts placed holds on the song without doing anything with the tune. Finally, Hurd, who had originally heard the track when Addington played it live the first time, scooped it up for himself.
Hurd included the song on his debut album, Pelago. The record's title originated when Hurd was looking for a word that rhymes with "Chicago" for his track "Coast." He came up with "Pelago" as a placeholder, and it ended up meaning something specific to the album. "It means open sea or it means overwhelming passion," he explained to Audacy, "and I thought that was a such a cool umbrella for these songs to live under."
