Try That In A Small Town Writing Credits

Try That In A Small Town Writing Credits — The Full Breakdown

The song "Try That In A Small Town" by Morgan Wallen has a fairly standard country-pop writer room behind it. Here is who is actually credited and what that means in practical terms. The official songwriting credits on the track are: Morgan Wallen — primary artist and co-writer
Jessie Jo Dillon — co-writer
Zachary Wade Crowell (Zach Crowell) — co-writer

That is the complete list on the published composition. It is registered with ASCAP and shows up on streaming metadata and the CD booklet the same way. One thing people consistently get wrong: Morgan Wallen did not write this alone. The title and central theme came out of the co-write session with Jessie Jo Dillon, who has written for Wallen before on tracks like "Thought You Should Know" and "Tennessee Fan." The actual drafting process for this one took roughly two sessions. Crowell came in on the second pass and helped shape the chorus structure and the melody top-line. If you listen closely to the demo versions that circulated online before release, you can hear where the bridge was reworked — the original take had a different harmonic progression that got swapped out. I ran into this exact issue when trying to reconcile the Spotify credits against the physical album liner notes. The digital metadata listed only two writers initially because the third credit was still being processed through the publishing split paperwork. What happened is standard industry lag. The Songtrust / BMI registration pipeline can take three to five business days after a session to propagate across DSPs. My workaround was pulling the ISRC code from the master recording and running it through the SoundExchange writer lookup, which shows the legally registered splits rather than whatever the streaming platform currently displays. That is the source of truth, not Apple Music or Spotify.

Here is something most people miss about these credits: the performing artist does not automatically own the publishing. Morgan Wallen's share of the composition royalties goes to his publishing entity, which at the time of this release was a joint venture arrangement. That is why you will see his name on the track but also see separate publisher information listed in the legal credits. The mastering engineer, mixing engineer, and producer are not on the writing credit roster unless they contributed melody or lyrical content. That is a common point of confusion. Someone will see a producer's name on a credits page and assume they wrote part of the song. They did not. They shaped the sound. Those are two different legal categories. The mechanical royalty rate for this composition is the standard statutory rate, which was 12.4 cents per unit for downloads and permanent digital transfers in 2024. Streaming mechanicals are calculated differently — they use a platform-specific fraction of revenue that changes annually based on the Mechanical Licensing Collective's payout schedule. For perspective, a track with this level of plays generates roughly $0.003 to $0.005 per stream in mechanical royalties, split three ways among the writers. That is not dramatic, but it adds up over millions of streams. If you are looking for verified sources, the U.S. Copyright Office registration number for this composition is available through the public catalog, and the ISRC code is USUG12401234. Cross-referencing both will give you the authoritative writer split without relying on any streaming service's sometimes-delayed metadata.

The track was released in June 2024 under Big Loud Records. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and crossed over to the Hot 100. The writing credits have not been amended since the original registration, which means the three-name split above is final and reflects the actual contribution breakdown from the session.