Singer Jordan McGraw opens up about his brand new music and the alterations he made while on the Happiness Begins tour with the Jonas Brothers in this new exclusive interview with Us Weekly.
“We were able to test the songs out on tour and let the fans kind of react and pick which ones they wanted,” the 33-year-old songwriter tells Us. “’Bread and Butter,’ which Joe Jonas wrote. He played it for me and I just kind of held him hostage until he gave it to me. It’s been one of the really fun ones to play live.”
His single, “We Should Still Be Friends” — for which he released a music video on Thursday, November 21 (watch above!) — inspired a shift in the record too. “It kind of, like, slowly raised its hand as the crowd favorite once we started the tour,” he says. “It just kind of changed the whole course of my sound and things to come and how we reproduced the other two songs a little bit and kind of added more of that organic rock vibe to it.”
Jordan has his father, Dr. Phil McGraw, to thank for his love of the art form. “Anytime he would drive me to school, we would just kind of listen to Led Zeppelin on repeat. So he would always kind of turn me on to that,” he recalls. “He’s a Solid Gold Oldies kind of dude. So we had ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ and ‘My Boyfriend’s Back,’ that was a big one for him. … Frankie Valli. He would just force me to listen to as many different types of music as possible.”
Despite his dad’s passion, Jordan is the only member of the family who took the musical route. “I always grew up with music going on in the house. Nobody could play it. My parents and my brother can barely turn the radio on,” he quips. “But we always had like Led Zeppelin and Tina Turner and, for this time of year, Kenny G’s Christmas album just on repeat. That was my mom.”
He adds: “I always had music kind of surrounding all the biggest memories in my life.”
Jordan McGraw is out now.
With reporting by Marc Lupo
