Albums with upward of 20 to 30 songs may be de rigueur for many artists in today’s music landscape — but when it came to crafting their new Stoney Creek Records/BMG album Fell in Love With a Cowgirl, out Friday (April 4), country group Parmalee had other ideas.
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“We wanted to give everybody a break,” Parmalee lead singer Matt Thomas tells Billboard of the album’s succinct seven tracks. “We wanted different stuff — not putting three versions of the same song on an album just to fill up the album.”
“And we just wanted to pick the best of what we had and do songs we love, and love to play live,” adds Parmalee drummer (and Matt’s brother) Scott Thomas.
The North Carolina-born brothers, alongside their Parmalee bandmates, their cousin Barry Knox (on bass) and Josh McSwain (on guitar/keys), are also tasked with extending their hot streak of recent chart hits. In the past four years, the group has earned three No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay hits — “Just the Way,” “Take My Name” and most recently, 2024’s “Gonna Love You” — as well as the No. 3 hit “Girl in Mine.”
This year, they balance out the serious-minded ballad “Gonna Love You” by veering into up-tempo territory with the new album’s first release, “Cowgirl,” the summer-ready, danceable song that certainly picks up on the “cowgirl” vibe that has swept culture over the past year.
They launched their headlining Fell in Love With a Cowgirl Tour in February, and “Cowgirl” is already making its impact known. “Man, to see [the audience] already know the song is pretty exciting,” says Matt.
A range of sounds from rock-oriented songs such as “Miss Me When You’re Drinkin’” to pop-tilted love songs like “Day One,” “God Knew Better” and “Feels Like Home” scaffold the album around the group’s sinewy harmonies. Matt Thomas is a co-writer on every song, with other Parmalee bandmates contributing writing to various songs.
“We know our lane and what our fans expect from us,” Matt says. “The easiest thing to write about is love, and I think that’s kind of a thing that works for us. So, it always ends up coming back to that. We like to make people feel good.”
Listening to Parmalee’s carefully sculpted harmonies surrounding Matt’s high-flung lead vocals easily conveys the influence of vocal-forward groups from the rock, R&B and Americana worlds.
“Growing up in North Carolina, you go in any gas station, and you hear Motown and beach music and soul. Classic rock, and the Temptations,” McSwain says. “We still play Boyz II Men on the bus sometimes, all the ‘90s R&B stuff. And you had the bluegrass with the high harmonies.”
“I grew up thinking the harmony was the lead,” Knox recalls. “My mom would never sing along [to the melody] with the radio — she would harmonize to everything, so I grew up just thinking that’s how you sang.”
“When I’m singing at my best, it’s at a high register so these guys can come in at the middle register,” Matt says. “We’ve always done the three-part harmony thing where it needs to be. That’s the learning curve, too, of going from the studio to the stage. You can make anything sound good in the studio. You get up there and start playing it live, you only nail that thing one time and you got to do it every night. That’s something I think about, too, when I’m writing a song.”
Parmalee has seen its share of successes and lulls since releasing its Stoney Creek debut, Feels Like Carolina, in 2013. Debut single “Musta Had a Good Time” cracked the top 40 on the Country Airplay chart, but the group followed it with their first bona fide Country Airplay chart-topper, “Carolina.” However, subsequent songs failed to match the success of “Carolina,” and by 2019, the group found itself at a creative — and career — crossroads.
The following year, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Parmlee teamed with labelmate Blanco Brown to release “Just the Way.” The song became the group’s second Country Airplay No. 1 and a pivotal launchpad for its current string of musical success.
“It’s the miracle of timing, of working and not giving up,” says Scott. “Then ‘Just the Way’ gave us direction. After that song [became a hit], we were like, ‘The sound’s got to be right,’ and had ‘Take My Name’ and ‘Girl in Mine.’ That song was just as big for us as when ‘Carolina’ first came out. It’s had a huge impact.’”
There’s more music on the way, as Fell in Love With a Cowgirl is the first of a two-part project. The second half could possibly see the release of the song “Boots on Broadway,” a collaboration with Jelly Roll that the group first teased two years ago.
“It almost made this album, with the seven we have. It was a contender,” Knox says.
“We have to get with Jelly — he’s been so busy,” Matt says. “It’s a conversation of, ‘Is this what you want this collab to be, or do you think we might do something different?’”
They connected with the “I Am Not Okay” hitmaker more than a decade ago, long before Jelly Roll signed with BBR Music Group and broke through in the country space with songs like “Son of a Sinner.”
“When we moved to town, we had the same attorney and he was like, ‘There’s this guy and I think you guys will hit it off,’” Matt says. “We’re both hard workers and just coming from independent backgrounds and stuff. He came to our house, and we wrote together and everyone was just chill.”
With their string of radio hits and headlining shows, it is staggering to consider that the group has yet to garner even a nomination in the group of the year/vocal group of the year category at either of country music’s two most-coveted awards ceremonies, the CMAs and ACMs (their lone nomination came a decade ago, for the ACM’s new vocal duo or group of the year).
“I mean, I don’t know what the criteria is,” Matt says. “Radio has always had a big play in it — if you had a hit, you were probably going to be nominated, right?”
But they take the group’s continual absence from the final nominees in the group-honoring categories with the same dogged determination that’s seen them through previous peaks and valleys this far.
“We’re right there, it’s almost our time,” McSwain says. “We just have to keep having hits, get our crowd coming in and build it, and then it’ll hopefully happen.”
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