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Dan+ Shay Stay In Focus Despite Their Success

Dan + Shay are following up the success of their latest number-one song “Bigger Houses” with their new single “Always Gonna Be” – which is one of the 12 tracks…

Dan + Shay posing for a photo.
Terry Wyatt/Getty Images

Dan + Shay are following up the success of their latest number-one song “Bigger Houses” with their new single “Always Gonna Be” – which is one of the 12 tracks on their album, Bigger Houses. 

With the success they have achieved since becoming a duo, it might be easy for Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney to lose focus, but Shay says that it’s more important now than ever before in their lives or the careers of his and Dan to keep things in perspective. 

Shay Mooney told us in a recent interview, "You have all these big dreams of things and markers that you think are going to be… ‘OK, If I get this then…then I’ll feel like a star. Then, I’ll you know, I’ll feel a certain way’ and that usually never happens." 

He added, "You know, life happens when you’re making other plans. We want to make sure that we’re living in the now and making sure that we appreciate what we get to do today, you know, not what we did yesterday, what we might get to do tomorrow.” 

Mooney recently told us of the duo's 10-plus year career as Dan + Shay, and admits that at the heart of it, he’s always gonna be that kid who loves country music and still chases his dreams. 

He said, “I still feel like that same kid, you know that was coming to Nashville at 8 years old and seeing a tour bus pass me on the street and think it was probably George Strait, you know. (laugh) I still have that same excitement about music." 

The country star concluded, "There’s something about Nashville that just…that holds a special place in everybody’s heart who lives here and who chases after a dream.” 

Nancy Brooks has been working in the country music industry for almost 30 years. She has interviewed pretty much any country star you can think of. In the late 1990s, she started working with Dolly Parton. And yes, Nancy reports that Parton is as sweet as you would think. She loves her life in country music and has been backstage at every CMA Awards show since the late 1990s. Many of her stories are from her one-on-one interviews. She was there at the beginning of the incredible careers of many music superstars today, including Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, and Blake Shelton, and has interviewed them multiple times throughout the years.