Matt Stell stopped by The Bobby Bones Show with his mother to help celebrate the release of his new album, Born Lonely. His mother was a teacher and worked in a different school district his whole life, so it didn’t interfere with his school time much. But his grandmother was a teacher at his school all throughout High School, so it was hard for him to get away with any bad behavior during school.
Stell’s new album, Born Lonely, is out today. Track six “Smooth” the lyric “My life got rough when my hands got smooth,” was one of his favorite lines he wrote. He shared that what inspired the song was about much Nashville has grown in the last few years. As good as that growth can be in many ways it comes at the expense of the farms around it. He grew up on a farm so when he wrote the song from the perspective of what would’ve happened if someone offered to buy their land for property development. A song on the record he’s really looking forward to playing live and seeing how people respond to is “Built By Broken Hearts.” It opens the record and Stell had no idea the song production would turn out so cool. The song stands out to him so much because the first verse is autobiographic. He’s from Arkansas but grew up in South Florida when his mom got re-married. He spent a lot of time going back and forth between his mother's house in Florida and his father’s house in Arkansas. During that time, he would get upset about having to say goodbye to family members for weeks at a time. His mother and father would meet halfway and when he’d get in his father’s truck, it felt like he’d change worlds. He was happy to spend time with both parents but sad to leave the other parents. He would deal with those emotions by putting on his headphones and listening to everything on country radio. He credits it to why he probably loves music the way he does now and that’s the core of the song.
Stell recently hard launched his new girlfriend, Casey, on Instagram and she’s gotten the approval from his family. They’ve been together for a few months, and he feels like because they’ve done long distance, the timeline of their relationship has gotten sped up. She is a civil and environmental engineer and only got one question wrong on his SAT’s.
He explained his new single “Breakin’ In Boots” is about him getting his heart broken at a bar in Nashville from a girl he never met. He saw her across the bar and closed his tab before he went up to her to say something. He was gone before he got over to her and he realized he fumbled the bag. He was in a bad place about it and wrote the song about it. He never saw her again and she has no idea there’s a song about her on the radio.