While Thomas Rhett‘s 2021 album Country Again, Side A, is a largely self-reflective project, his collaboration with songwriter-turned-artist Hardy, “Put It on Ice,” is both nostalgic and a party-ready banger.
Written by Rhett with his father, acclaimed songwriter Rhett Akins, as well as Matt Dragstrem and Josh Thompson, the song takes listeners to a field party where “girls bring the pretty / Boys bring the Yeti / Everybody’s circled up in a Ford or Chevy.” It’s likely soundtrack to plenty of those kind of gatherings now, too.
Below, Rhett shares the story behind “Put It on Ice,” in his own words.
That song was one of those ones that just kind of kept hanging around, and I noticed that it was a song that I went back to a lot to listen to. I can kind of judge songs by the way of, like, when I’m in my truck on a 30-minute drive, what are demos that I just keep going back to? What are songs that my kids keep asking to hear?
And, gosh, if you had heard the original version of that song, you would laugh so hard, because we we wrote that song at, like, two o’clock in the morning, to a track that my friend Matt Dragstrem had made. And then the song just started morphing into all these different versions.
When it finally came to a version where I thought, “Okay, this is really cool” — I’ve always wanted to do a song with Hardy, and I remember sending him that track one day, taking my kids to school. He said, “When do I sing on it?” And I was like, well, that was easy.
And then, literally, like, the week after, he put his vocal on it, and he just brought such an energy and such a life to it. It’s a party song, you know? It’s fun. And, to me, Hardy’s voice was the one thing that that song was missing.
That is going to be a really fun one. If me and Hardy ever get to do shows together, that will be a lot of fun to play live.
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