Chase McDaniel on Using ‘Heaven’ to Process His Own Private Hell

Today’s music executives pay particular attention to on-demand consumption. If a listener chose a particular song, rather than simply hearing something that came up randomly, it’s fairly safe to assume that the song had greater value to them.

But, new artist Chase McDaniel argues, real-time listening might very well have more impact on listeners in certain situations since there’s a surprise element involved in the experience.

“There’s probably three times in my life that I can say a song changed my life, and it was always on country radio,” he says. “In this day and age, when you can go and select the song and play it yourself, or you go to some playlist and it’s this [artificial intelligence]/robot thing, it takes away the meaning. But when you hear it played on the radio, and it’s at the right time, and you don’t know why it’s on right now, and it feels like it’s for you, it feels divine.”

McDaniel hopes his first radio single — “Burned Down Heaven,” released by Big Machine to country radio through PlayMPE on March 17 — has that kind of effect on those who hear it. It certainly had psychological value for McDaniel, since it forced him to confront a painful chapter from his past.

“[It was] this low point, just covered in shame and in guilt and loneliness, knowing what you’ve done and not being able to fix it,” he says. “That’s truly what that lyric’s kind of pointing to.”

Just as McDaniel’s been surprised a few times by a song on the radio, he was surprised by “Burned Down Heaven.” It emerged from a conversation with his grandfather, who was reflecting on his relationship with his wife.

If he were forced to choose, his grandfather said, “I think I would turn down heaven for your mamaw.”
Preparing on Feb. 13, 2024, for the next day’s writing appointment, McDaniel started working with that “turn down heaven” phrase as a possible title. But on one run-through, he was shaken by a small mistake.

“I accidentally said the phrase ‘burned down heaven,’ as if it fell from the sky,” he remembers. “It was like it came from my subconscious. I literally felt like I got struck by lightning, because saying the phrase ‘burned down heaven’ felt like the worst imaginable thing that anyone could say.”

If the thought hit him that hard, then it might have some emotional value for other people, too, so he considered bringing it up the next morning, though he had some reservations: The idea of setting fire to heaven might offend some listeners. So he held it back when he showed up to write with Jon Nite (“Dancin’ in the Country,” “Break Up in the End”) at the Nashville studio of writer-producer Lindsay Rimes (“World on Fire,” “Heaven”). After they ran through some other ideas, McDaniel finally brought up “Burned Down Heaven,” and when he explained the metaphor, both co-writers were up for it. They started with the chorus, to make sure they landed the idea effectively, and to make the best use of McDaniel’s range.

“He’s got some of the [Jon] Bon Jovi [power] up there, but he’s also got some of the Josh Turner [richness],” Rimes says. “It’s those kinds of dynamics in his vocals. I wanted to bring both of those through, because they’re kind of a strong part of his brand.”

They pitched the chorus in a high range to create an explosive effect. They also massaged the stanza’s opening lyric to better address McDaniel’s nervousness about the title.

“It was really Jon’s idea to say, ‘Hey, let’s bring this back to Earth,’” McDaniel recalls. “When I said, ‘Feels like I burned down heaven,’ he said, ‘Where was it at?’ And I was like, ‘It was in this driveway.’ He’s like, ‘There it is: Feels like I burned down heaven in that driveway.’ It brought it back to planet Earth. It made it real.”

They focused on the fiery part of the title in the chorus, incorporating “matches,” “ashes” and “smoke,” though the words were slipped in subtly. When they got to the lower-pitched verses, they shifted to the spiritual part of the title, though they handled the religious allusions so lightly that they almost go unnoticed. “You want to feel like it’s real,” Nite says. “You want to feel like you’re in the emotion of this moment, rather than cute little sayings about heaven.”

McDaniel didn’t talk much about it during the write, but he built the storyline around a difficult breakup from his past. “It was definitely the best thing — I realized that over time — but it was something that I still hadn’t forgiven myself for,” he says. “Anytime that I feel like I’ve made a mistake or hurt somebody, it just weighs on me, and so I carried it for years.”

Despite all of McDaniel’s concerns going into the appointment, it all developed easily. They started at 11 a.m. and had a demo and vocal performance of the completed song by 1:30 p.m. In fact, while Rimes and McDaniel worked on the demo, Nite went to the backyard and started another song that also got finished that day.

The “Burned Down Heaven” demo was so well developed that they used it as a foundation for the final tracking session at Nashville’s Sound Stage with drummer Evan Hutchings, bassist Tony Lucido, keyboardist Alex Wright and guitarists Ilya Toshinskiy and Sol Philcox-Littlefield.

“I don’t think a lot changed once the band was on there,” Rimes says. “Obviously, there’s live drums and stuff like that, but the basic bones of the song were in there.”

McDaniel recut his vocal for the master version, singing the first verse and first chorus separately, so that his voice could overlap with itself as he transitioned into that chorus. The final touches were provided by Gideon Klein, a musician that Rimes hired to arrange strings and overdub all of the parts.

Big Machine released it on Valentine’s Day — exactly one year after it was written — and it performed well enough that the label issued it to radio a month later as fans presumably gravitated toward the honesty in McDaniel’s story.

“All the guys that listen to it are like, ‘You know what? I’ve been this sometimes, and I just have been too proud to say it,’” Nite says. “All the girls are like, ‘I’ve had five boyfriends that do this, and they’ve been too proud to say it, and it’d be amazing if somebody actually said it was their fault.’ I think that’s why it’s caught fire a little bit.”

For his part, McDaniel hopes that someone might hear “Burned Down Heaven” on the radio and have the same unexpected life moment that he’s experienced with the platform.

“I’m on a mission now in country music to spread the light and tell people that they matter and that they’re important,” McDaniel says. “This song isn’t straight up about mental health and survival, but it is reflective of shame. Anytime that you can’t live with your mistakes and you can’t accept the past and you can’t forgive yourself, it makes it hard.”