Drew Parker on ‘Love the Leavin’,’ The Bluesy Ballad With a ‘Classic Edge’ That Country Hadn’t Bargained For

When Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced the five stages of grief in 1969, she provided an understanding of the complex reactions people use as coping mechanisms for severe loss.

The five stages — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — don’t always occur exclusively, or even in order, and though they were originally identified to assist people struggling with death, they also apply to other significant experiences, such as the loss of a job, a theft or the breakup of a relationship. That lattermost situation is the source of grief in Drew Parker’s “Love the Leavin’,” featuring a desperate singer in the bargaining stage, attempting to negotiate his way out of a broken heart.

“It is definitely exactly where it lives,” Parker says.

He created “Love the Leavin’” in February during a co-write with Matt Rogers (“ ’Til You Can’t,” “Freedom Was a Highway”) at the Middle Tennessee home of Lindsay Rimes (“World on Fire,” “Cool Again”). Parker had finished recording his debut album — Camouflage Cowboy, released July 12 — so it was a low-pressure appointment. He brought up the title, written in his notes as “Love the Leavin’ (Out of You),” initially believing it should be witty and uptempo, an “I hate to see you go, love to watch you leave kind of thing,” Parker says.

Rimes explored a series of musical foundations, allowing them to weed out options that didn’t work or seemed too cliché.

“Lindsay is such a mad scientist,” Rogers says. “He’ll go from a song being 130 [beats per minute] to a waltz to four-on-the-floor, and then all of a sudden, we settled into that 6/8 ballad thing. It just came out, and Drew starts singing what we’re writing. He has such a massively powerful voice that it just felt very natural.”

As the song morphed into a ballad, Parker moved to an upright piano, an instrument that inspires a different set of melodies for him than his usual guitar. In the process, they fashioned a chord progression that consists of as many minor seventh chords as it does more standard major triads. “I don’t know that I’ve ever really put two minor chords butted up to each other in a chord progression,” Parker says, “but for some reason, it worked really, really well in the song.”

They wrote “Love the Leavin’ ” in linear fashion, starting with the first line as the protagonist offers reasons for his partner to stay instead of going home. It’s raining, it’s late — his pleading echoes that of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

The chorus raised the energy, firmly punctuating the stanza’s opening lines with higher melodies and stabbing phrases. It relied heavily on blue notes that cry out — much like the protagonist — for resolution. “It almost comes off like blues,” Rogers says. “It doesn’t sound like country.”

In verse two, it’s clear that a flicker remains, and Parker suggests they “pour gas” on their emotions, creating a bonfire that would last at least for the night. That sentiment was underscored again in a short, two-line bridge that repurposes phrases from separate sections: The first line in the bridge uses the melody from line three of the chorus, while the bridge’s closing line matches the melody from the end of the verses.

“We could have gone to a different chord,” Rimes says, “but there’s already enough crafty chords in the song.”

Rimes produced the demo around an acoustic piano, with spare drums and bass parts, designed to frame the vocal without drowning it. Parker responded with a lead performance that captured all of the song’s Kübler-Ross grief. “Drew sang his ass off,” Rimes says. “Honestly, it felt like we could put the demo out.”

Rimes finished that demo the same day, and the writers all texted each other enthusiastically, believing they’d built something special. That was confirmed by their publishers. “You always know a song is a successful song when you get bombarded by the entire team,” Rogers says. “And all of us, instantly when we submitted the song, it was just like bombs going off on our phone.”

The publishers weren’t the only ones who liked it. In short order, Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs and Nate Smith all asked if they could place it on hold. The writers felt even more strongly about “Love the Leavin’ ” and its future potential. But Warner Music Nashville (WMN) co-chair/co-president Cris Lacy required a change of plans.

“A couple days later, I went and played it for my label, and Cris Lacy was like, ‘Why are you not cutting this?’ ” Parker recalls. “I was like, ‘Well, my record’s done.’ She was like, ‘Your record is not done. You have to cut this.’ ”

The label gave Parker an extremely tight deadline so it could release it as a single ahead of the album. Producer Jacob Rice (Conner Smith, Chase Daniel) booked session musicians for the Curb 43 studios in April, but he didn’t wait for the band’s participation to get Parker’s vocal.

“We actually started tracking the vocals before we cut the band,” Rice says. “We used the demo track that Lindsay created to start cutting vocals to get ahead, because the turnaround time that we were given was so short we had to get this thing done quickly.”

Parker was challenged, especially because the most difficult moment in the production occurred when his voice was most exposed.

“I think we cut it in C sharp; that is extremely high for me,” Parker says. “It was the hardest vocal I’ve ever cut, and I sang it over and over and over and over and over, mainly for that last chorus part where the band kind of cuts out. It gets that gravel in there, and my voice cracks. It’s breaking — it almost sounds like I’m crying. I wanted that. And so to get that I had to cut the song in a key that I normally wouldn’t sing in.”

Rice recorded several different songs during the instrumental tracking session, primarily using musicians who were best suited for “Love the Leavin’.” They were careful not to overplay, leaving plenty of space for Parker’s performance to shine. Sol Philcox-Littlefield overdubbed a blues-rock guitar solo, and Parker insisted on a steel guitarist, Eddie Dunlap, to heighten the song’s country quotient. Rice also snuck a prog-rock mellotron into the mix on the second and third choruses.

“The Beatles made it popular [primarily through “Strawberry Fields Forever”], and I’m a huge fan of classic rock,” Rice says. “We didn’t make it super apparent in the mix. It’s more of a supporting thing than anything. But I love using those types of things because it kind of makes it older-sounding but in a cool, fresh way.”

WMN released “Love the Leavin’ ” to country radio through PlayMPE on June 24, banking on Parker’s emotional performance and the band’s strategic playing to help the label bargain with stations.

“Everybody that is close to me, I’ve heard many of them say, ‘It sounds like I’ve heard it before,’ ” Parker says. “It does feel that way, which I think gives it that little classic edge.”