Josh Ross Looks to Flip ‘Hate’ Into a Hit With His Newest Single: ‘It’s Nothing Like Clickbait’

When Josh Ross peaked at No. 2 with “Single Again” on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated July 26, it marked his first appearance in the top 5.

Now he’s back with a single, again, and the lyric finds his character single. Again.

And it comes with a title, “Hate How You Look,” that appears to be something it’s not. It’s kind of like an online headline that entices people to read the story, only to find out the contents aren’t quite what the title suggested. Ross bristles at the comparison.

“It’s nothing like clickbait,” Ross says. “That does not work.”

True that. Clickbait annoys readers once it’s clear they’ve been duped. But with “Hate The Way You Look,” the “dupe” is the whole point, and the listener is likely to appreciate it once it’s obvious.

“You wonder,” Ross says, “is it actually just going to be a mean song? Like, ‘I just hate how you look.’ And then you listen to it, you realize that it’s a guy that’s like, ‘Dang, she looks good,’ and you’re actually kind of complimenting her. I’m a fan of titles like that.”

The title comes compliments of songwriter Christian Yancey, who brought it to an appointment at Nashville’s Combustion Music with Nick Sainato, Chris McKenna and Jessica Farren in February 2024. “Hate How You Look” was intriguing – “It’s kind of an abrasive title,” Farren notes – but it was also a title that might make a consumer click “Play” when it appeared on a Spotify screen.

“Especially with the Nashville flip,” Farren says, “it’s like, how can the title make you think something when you see it that is completely the opposite of what it means? And we were like, ‘Oh, that feels like money.’”

Sainato developed a rock-leaning guitar background that seemed appropriate, then brought the whole session to a brief halt when he choked on Sour Patch candies.

“I was sweating so bad,” Sainato recalls. “I texted my wife immediately” ‘I literally almost choked!’ And then we went and wrote the rest of the song.”

They focused initially on the chorus, starting most of the lines with the word “hate” to tie in with the “I hate how you look moving on” hook. The first line was a doozy: “Hate how you look in that one, that you know I love red dress.” Even reading the lyric sheet, it’s arguably confusing.

“My favorite songs have lines like that,” McKenna says. “Like, ‘What did he just say?’ Or, ‘Why did he say it that way?’ I think that’s kind of one of those lines. It almost doesn’t sound like perfect English.”

Perfect punctuation helps. The lyric makes more sense if it’s presented, “Hate how you look in that one-that-you-know-I-love red dress.” It’s a mouthful to sing, but the words all fit sonically with the phrasing, which matters more than how it looks on a screen.

“We’re all kind of syllable Nazis,” Farren quips, “like, making sure the words fit that perfectly and not compromising.”

They constructed a relentlessly melodic chorus, each phrase built with a series of singable, stair-step notes. “I’m not really a great singer,” Sainato says. “So whenever you get to a chorus and I can sing it, I’m like, ‘That’s something. This feels like something real.’”

In the middle of that chorus, the melody took a short breather, and they inserted what’s arguably the hookiest part of the song – the word “I” stretched into two syllables – before the lines kick back into their original relentless pace.

When they turned to the verses, they pitched them an octave lower, which makes the chorus seem even more energetic. And in that smokier tone, they fashioned several vignettes of the woman coaxing attention in the room. Unusually, they left the setting a mystery until they developed a bridge, finally informing the listener that the song occurs in a bar. “I don’t think we really knew until we wrote that line,” Farren says, “that it was just the moment in time.”

Yancey sang lead on the demo, which used a banjo with a Keith Urban vibe. Yancey pitched it to Ross, and he took to it right away, putting it on a playlist of potential new songs he could listen to periodically and play for others. “That was one that just kind of kept sticking itself out,” Ross says.

Producer Matt Geroux (Matthew West, Chris Housman) thought highly of it, too, though no one from Ross’ team responded when they sent it. Subsequently, Geroux used artificial intelligence to replace Yancey’s voice on the demo with a semblance of Ross’ sound. The writers were a tad surprised when they heard the revision.

“I’ve never had a label or a team send back a version of A.I. with their own artist on it like that,” McKenna says. “I feel like that can get a lot of songs across the finish line.”

It certainly helped with “Hate How You Look.” The team thought it could be a hit, though Ross and Geroux determined they should segue from the demo’s Urban vibe to something harder.

They cut the instrumental tracks in Geroux’s studio, toughening up the supporting instrumentation as they built it. “Even the guitar riff, I just doubled that and found a unique sound,” Geroux says. “I did a 12-string guitar patch and just fucked it up as much as I could – put it out of tune and put a warble effect on it.”

They tried an obvious electric guitar solo, but opted instead for Justin Schipper’s atypical steel. “I think that’s the coolest part about that song,” Ross says. “It really rocks and moves along, but then the solo is a pedal steel solo, and it kind of all blends together in a perfect balance.”

The A.I. vocal on the revised demo presented a small problem – Ross got used to that sound and instinctively emulated it when he cut his final vocal. Geroux encouraged him to re-think it.

The faux Ross “sounded like he was pushing too hard,” Geroux says. “When the real Josh vocal was trying to do that same push, I was like, ‘That’s just not like you.’ We had to bring him down 20%, let’s say, in energy.”

At Ross’ request, engineer Jim Cooley mixed the choruses so that most of the parts create a pile of sound, leaving his voice and the drums as the most distinctive elements during that section. It was loud, but smooth enough that none of the supporting instruments competed directly with him. “One of my biggest pet peeves is not being able to make out what somebody’s saying because the guitars are too loud or there’s a wall of sound around the vocal,” he notes.

Mercury Nashville released “Hate How You Look” to country radio via PlayMPE on Aug. 18 with an eye toward building on the momentum of “Single Again.”

“It’s the coolest thing when the lyric is really meant to be a sad lyric, but it still like feels aggressive,” Ross says. “It feels like if I was to hear it on radio, it kind of sticks out a little different.”