“What Kinda Man” doesn’t love a happy ending? Well, quite simply, his name is Parker McCollum, who’s made no bones about the fact that he much prefers a sad song.
It’s actually such a trademark for Parker that his wife had begun to wonder if he even had a happy ending in him. So, for his self-titled fifth album, he acquiesced, at least a little bit.
“The whole record’s super vulnerable, but you know, Hallie Ray [McCollum] was always asking me, ‘Are you ever gonna write songs that end happy?’ Which I’ve never liked,” he admits. “And so there’s a couple on this record, this one included, [‘What Kinda Man’], that kind of have a happy resolution.”
“But they’re not cheesy,” he adds. “I think it’s said in a way that still allows a song to have quite a bit of integrity. So I think the songwriting is good. That’s a hard thing to do, have a happy ending. There’s a way to do it. It’s just, it’s not as easy, I think, as making it go terribly wrong.”
Fortunately for Parker and Hallie Ray, his penchant for sad songs isn’t a reflection of his life. Their son, Major Yancey Tyler McCollum, celebrated his first birthday on Aug. 8.
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