Kameron Marlowe on His Song ‘Seventeen’ Getting Inspiration & Approval From Springsteen: ‘I Can’t Believe He Heard a Song I Wrote’

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

Joni Mitchell said it in the 1970s. Rock band Cinderella used that same phrase in the ’80s.

Kameron Marlowe doesn’t quote those words exactly, but he’s exploring the same sentiment in 2025 with “Seventeen,” a new single that picks up sonically on the classic-rock era while celebrating the paradox of teen spirit. Seventeen-year-olds can’t wait to grow up; grown-ups often consider 17 with an appreciation they never expected.

“I was always looking ahead, always looking toward the next thing,” Marlowe remembers. “Not that I don’t do that now, but you don’t realize [what you have] when you’re in that space, when you’re that young and have that much freedom.”

Appropriately, “Seventeen” came together creatively in a way that fits the experience of a 17-year-old still searching for a life path. “It’s definitely different when you don’t know where you’re going,” says co-writer Tucker Beathard, “but you like the ride.”

Marlowe, Beathard and songwriter Joybeth Taylor (“weren’t for the wind”) spent a couple of days working in the office of Austin Goodloe (“Something’s Gonna Kill Me”) at Combustion Music earlier this year, focused specifically on songs for Marlowe. Coming off the album Sad Songs for the Soul, Marlowe was keen to make something with a lot of sonic power. So Goodloe plugged in a Gibson 335, an instrument associated with Chuck Berry.

“We just grabbed an electric guitar and put it on stun and kind of had a Back to the Future moment, where [Michael J. Fox] gets blown away by the speakers,” Goodloe says. “That’s the feeling that I [was] trying to capture, which might be why I grabbed the 335.”

Goodloe came up with a winding riff fairly quickly, and they started down four different roads, attempting to build a song around that lick. None of them worked. “It was probably one of the most frustrating songs that I’ve ever written,” Marlowe says.

While chasing one of those failed ideas, they delved into stories about their high-school misadventures. Marlowe ultimately decided they should fit the riff to a song called “Seventeen.” Since they had already set the tone — musically and thematically — they launched into a first verse about driving fast and testing speed limits, singing “Born in the U.S.A.” Notably, that Bruce Springsteen song would not have been a current-culture marker for Marlowe — or any of his co-writers — at age 17. It was released 13 years before he was born.

“A lot of the kids my age, they obviously know Springsteen and seem to know that song, too,” Taylor says. “It’s just one of those timeless songs that has lasted for forever. I feel like my brother knows the song, too, and he’s four years younger than me.”

After celebrating the freedom that the car represents to a 17-year-old, they spent verse two on examples of the trouble they would have found: experimenting with chewing tobacco and smoking at a bonfire. “I don’t think we even intentionally meant for it to be that progression,” Taylor says. “That’s just from talking about what we did at that age.”

In the middle of those tales, they crafted an ultra-short chorus: 10 words in four lines. It mimics the compact, anthemic choruses that were prevalent in classic rock — think Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do,” Van Halen’s “Jump” or The Steve Miller Band’s “Rock’n Me.” “We made it about as easy as it possibly could be for anybody to learn the lyrics,” Marlowe notes.

Its length was not the only aspect of the chorus that defied norms. “The melody on the chorus is lower than the verse melody,” Tucker offers. “Like, how does that work? I’m telling you, if you can pull that off to where you have a chorus that actually does not jump high, that is more chill than the verses, sometimes it actually comes across as really cool.”

Before it was over, they created a bridge that consolidated teen exploits into another four-line passage with a big-picture observation: “For every bad decision there’s a good memory.” “That’s kind of the takeaway,” Tucker says.

Goodloe started building a demo during the writing session, giving it a John Mellencamp guitar sound and throwing on gang vocals to enhance the party spirit. They had created a problem, though: The “Born in the U.S.A.” line didn’t just reference the Springsteen title — it actually used the melodic part of the hook, too. They would need the Boss to sign off on it. Fortunately, he granted permission, along with a message that he liked “Seventeen.”

“I can’t even believe that he heard a song I wrote,” Goodloe says. “Then, just selfishly, for all of us to have our name next to his on a writing credit was extra special.”

Dann Huff (Riley Green, Thomas Rhett) produced “Seventeen” at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio just weeks after it was written, enhancing the classic-rock signposts Goodloe had packed into the demo. “It’s ‘Glory Days,’ but written with the notion that the freedom you were seeking was what you had all along,” Huff says. “You just didn’t understand it.”

In particular, Huff played up the Mellencamp component, using The Lonesome Jubilee as a guide. He bolstered the signature guitar riff with a Charlie Judge accordion part, a la “Cherry Bomb.” Marlowe wasn’t crazy about it, so Huff blended in an overdub of the same line from Jacob Naggy, the fiddler from Marlowe’s road band.

“Kam is much more vocal about what he wants and more confident in it, and that makes the collaboration so much stronger,” Huff says. “We laugh about the thing about the accordion, but I think years ago, he would not have said anything to me. Right now, I think he feels empowered, so I think we’re making some good music.”

Drummer Jerry Roe messed with the tempo on the bridge, seemingly playing on the beat with one hand while playing behind the beat with the other. Marlowe dragged just a hair on his phrasing, too, creating the illusion that the whole track was on the edge of a breakdown. “Jerry Roe is a human metronome,” Marlowe says. “The rest of us are just holding on for dear life.”

Rob McNelley nailed the first half of the guitar solo at Blackbird, but in the aftermath, Marlowe persuaded Huff to take a swing at the back half. He ended up playing a twin-guitar part that emulates the Eagles’ On the Border era. Marlowe’s lead vocal came entirely from the tracking date. “When he steps into a vocal booth,” Huff says, “literally — and this is not an exaggeration — you could take any pass on its own.”

The demo’s gang vocals made the final track, and Gail Mayes provided the final piece of the puzzle: gospel-inflected, three-part backing vocals. Columbia Nashville released “Seventeen” to country radio via PlayMPE on June 16, with July 14 pegged as the official add date. Arriving after Sad Songs for the Soul, it’s Marlowe’s first solo radio single in four years. 

“I wanted it to be completely different, and it kind of says that without saying it,” Marlowe notes. “It felt right to lead off with this one.”

He seems to know what he’s got.