What’s a ‘wave on a sunset’ and who did Tucker Wetmore ‘wind up missin’?

When Tucker Wetmore released “Wind Up Missin’ You” in March 2024, little did he know it would be the song that set his career in motion.

“I didn’t know it would be this crazy,” he reflects. “When we first wrote it, I was like, ‘This feels really good. I got a good feeling about this,’ and so did my buddies that I wrote it with.”

“We were all saying the same thing,” he remembers, “but I didn’t know it’d kinda just be like the starting factor to what [it] is now, you know? It’s nuts, it’s crazy.”

The Washington native is pretty proud he came up with its “waves on a sunset” line, which went on to be the title of his debut EP.

“I actually free-styled that line. So we had the idea, we had the guitar riff,” he says as he hums the lick, before starting to sing. “And they’re like, ‘What does that mean?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, write it down, it sounds cool.’ So it was kinda just an accident how the whole thing [panned] out.”

But with a romantic song like “Wind Up Missin’ You,” inquiring minds want to know: Is there a particular person who inspired Tucker’s breakthrough?

“Yeah. It is about a person,” he tells ABC Audio, without going into anymore detail. “But it’s a feel-good song, you know, and it relates to a lot of people.”

“It kind of embodies that young love aspect,” he continues. “You know, before you move to college and you split up with your high school sweetheart, or life just gets in the way. And I feel like a lot of people relate to it.”  

Tucker’s full-length debut, What Not To, is out now, featuring his first #1 and his new single, “3,2,1.”