Matthew Ramsey recalls the “Sweet,” unexpected beginning of Old Dominion's next record

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RCA Nashville What happens when Old Dominion heads into the studio without a plan? Well, the answer is their new single, “Make It Sweet.”

Lead singer Matthew Ramsey says the band’s only agenda that particular day was to start work on their follow-up to Happy Endings.

“We went into the recording studio back in January, and we didn’t talk about what songs we were going to record or anything,” he tells Billboard. “We just wanted to start making the next album and we had some dates — the dates snuck up on us.”

He continues, “We hadn’t talked about what songs to record so, we said, “We have this time, why don’t we just see what we can write that day and see what happens?”

Of course, it helps when you have five talented songwriters in your band who’ve written number ones for everybody from Kenny Chesney to Luke Bryan.

“That [final] recording is probably the second time we’ve ever played that song,” Matthew confesses. “You can kind of hear the excitement and the energy we have for it right there, because we had just created it and said, ‘Okay, let’s record it.'”

Old Dominion clinched the ACM Vocal Group of the Year title back in April in Las Vegas. We’ll see if they can lock in the comparable CMA trophy on November 14, when the 52nd annual awards air live on ABC.

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