Travis Collins has the pandemic lockdowns to thank for the sound and direction of his eighth studio album. The enforced time at home provided the singer-songwriter with the opportunity to dig deep into his record collection, resulting in some unusual influences seeping into his anthemic brand of modern country. “I listen to ‘Any Less Anymore’ and I hear touches of Roxette in the production. It feels like ‘The Look,’” he tells Apple Music. “I really wanted this record to not be confined to a funnel. If it felt good, we were going to do it.” On a deeper level, the extended period away from the spotlight meant the usually hard-touring Collins had, for the first time in years, an opportunity to sit still and look inwards. “I was really figuring out who I was as a person,” he says. “A lot of these songs came from that.” Here, Collins walks Apple Music through Any Less Anymore, track by track. “One of Them Nights” “I wrote that one in eagerness to play live gigs again. It spoke about everything I missed, which was that tipping point of the night when people go out. There’s that point where half of them fall off and call it a night. Then there’s the other half who go, ‘What are we doing now?!’ This song really is pinned on those people, just deciding to pull the trigger on a good night out or a good time.” “Gettin’ Old” “The longer I’m in this marriage, the more humbled I am and the more grateful I am to have it. Because I think there’s an amazing thing that happens when you let [your partner] know you totally—the good, the bad, the ugly. I just love this woman, and I get excited about the prospect of watching the kids grow up in the front yard, and catching as many sunsets as we can.” “Good Time Found Me” “This song’s about a real place that I’m at in life. I’m trying to settle down, I’m trying to think a little more straight and narrow, but someone’s just got to look at me the right way or stand at the bar and raise their eyebrows and I’m in for one more. I want to be the guy who has more balance in my life, but I just can’t say no to a good time.” “Hard on This Heartbreak” “It’s about when you’re in a small town and you’re reeling from a breakup, but you have the same haunts and it’s pretty hard to avoid [your ex]. You’re both trying to respectfully move on from the relationship, but you just keep running into each other. And damn, if she doesn’t come in looking like a picture from your wildest dreams. My favorite line in the song is, ‘If we’re going to keep running back to our love/Why the hell did we ever even break up?’ There’s a romance in that that is absolutely tragic.” “Any Less Anymore” “I was caught in my own rabbit trap when I met my wife. She came along and showed me different ways to approach things, different ways to think. I have a saying about her that she keeps one foot in the mud and my head in the clouds, which is really cool, because she keeps me grounded and dreaming at the same time. But ‘Any Less Anymore’ is about somebody just coming and taking the blinders off, because you never thought to do it for yourself.” “Raise Me” “It started as a letter to my unborn child—she was still about a month away from being born. I was worried that I didn’t feel a connection yet. So I carried that vulnerability and fear right up to a month before she was due. Then, one night, I was putting her nursery together, putting all the clothes in her cupboard, and suddenly it was a real-world thing that she was going to be here soon. That night was absolutely overwhelming. And the connection happened, which has only grown.” “Runnin’ the Country” (feat. The Wolfe Brothers) “The people that we grew up around, and the people that we live around now in regional Australia, seem to have this real direct, no-bullshit way of sorting out problems. Nobody takes offense—there’s an issue, it gets sorted. It was around about the time that the big bushfires were on in Australia [in 2019], and our then prime minister went missing. [The Wolfe Brothers and I] just went, ‘We need some farmers in Parliament House to call a spade a spade and sort it out.’ So we wrote a song that was about the most basic, no-bullshit people having the top job and how different it would be.” “Chill” “‘Chill’ came from a desire to go somewhere and do something during the pandemic. It’s a bouncy, beachy little pop thing. Maybe not something I’ve ever done before—it’s even got a little hint of reggae about it. It’s the kind of song where I can see myself in Fiji with my feet in the sand, lying back in a beach chair with some ridiculously strong rum and just living life up. That’s the song that I hear over that picture.” “Bottle Up” “It amazes me sometimes, how with just a couple of beers—and I’m not saying this is a great thing—[we], particularly blokes, can talk about things. It’s probably not something that should be abused or taken too far. But this is about admitting that sometimes we have to break the top off a couple of beers to be able to open up and talk about it. Of course, that’s where the play on words comes from—things that we’ve bottled up come out when we tip a bottle up.” “Just the Way” “It was written by Brett Eldredge, another country star. It’s pinned in a place of, like, ‘What do you want to do?’ Basically, the lyrics are just different variations of that—we can do this, we can do that, we can go here, we can stay home. And I’ll tell you, as a married dude, if we get a Friday night off, that’s what it’s like—we end up talking about what we want to do all night and never actually doing it.” “You Think It Will” “Maybe four or five years ago, I had an opportunity to move to Nashville. I had a lot going on in Australia that I was really grateful for, a career that was emerging, and being close to my own family was really important to me. I also wanted to start a family around the same time. I had a lot of reassessing to do. So that song came from a conversation that I had with a fellow that I looked up to my whole life, and it’s kind of the transcript of the old bull talking to the young bull and saying, ‘Don’t forget to look around at your life now and be grateful.’”