Joey Myron Is Flipping Country on Its Head With “Smile”

Joey Myron isn’t your standard cowboy strumming three chords under a neon beer sign. He grew up on Johnny Cash and Nina Simone just as much as The Weeknd and Post Malone, and you can hear it. His baritone cuts through like the lovechild of a dive bar and a jazz lounge, and he’s got the Berklee training to back it up.

Myron isn’t just dabbling in country; he’s dragging it through the mud, polishing it with R&B, and handing it back to Nashville with a cocky grin. And somehow, it works.

His new single “Smile” flips one of the most irritating clichés, men telling women to smile, on its head. This time, it’s a hardworking man who gets told to lighten up by a woman who sees husband material under all that grind. The playful vibe, sticky chorus, and genre-fusing production make it feel less like a lecture and more like a flirtatious wink.

The track was co-written with Lucky Dog (James Shelley and Michel Heyaca—the same team behind some of the buzzy AI-driven projects making waves in music right now), and together they’ve built something that feels both familiar and disruptive.

Plenty of country artists claim they’re pushing boundaries, but often that just means they've added a trap snare. Joey actually does it. He’s not afraid to blend R&B smoothness with honky-tonk grit, and he can pull it off because he’s got the range. Producers in both LA and Nashville have called him one of the most versatile artists they’ve worked with, and when you can channel Johnny Cash one moment and croon like Sinatra the next, it’s not just talk.

“‘Smile’ was a fun one to make, blending country music elements with some R&B,” Joey explains. “We wanted to flip the script on that tired saying—this time the woman’s the one telling her man to smile while hinting that he’s marriage material.”

If you think country music is only beer, trucks, and heartbreak, Joey Myron is here to mess with your head. “Smile” proves the genre can flirt, groove, and stretch way past its stereotypes without losing its storytelling roots.

You’ve been compared to Johnny Cash and Post Malone in the same breath. Be real, do you think country purists are ready for what you’re doing, or are you out here to piss them off a little?

I have a lot of respect for traditional country music, so I don’t find the need to piss off country purists by any means! The sound I create is genuinely what comes most naturally to me and is representative of the music I grew up with! Being a baritone is not as common, so it invited comparisons to other baritones for sure. Sonically, artists need to offer up something fresh in general to push music forward.

“Smile” flips a tired cliché on its head. What was the moment you realized you could turn a played-out saying into something fresh and romantic without it feeling corny?

The moment came in the studio after coming up with the phrase “smile for me” in a cheeky sense to directly counter the old-fashioned, demeaning connotations. Sometimes it’s important to push the envelope lyrically and challenge the listener! Part of being tongue-in-cheek is taking something corny and flipping it on its head.

You’ve gone from Berklee to L.A. to Nashville. Which city actually shaped you the most, and which one tried to box you in the hardest?

Berklee was fun in the sense of meeting other musicians, collaborating, and really honing in on songwriting and performing. L.A. is that place where I felt most “boxed,” in the sense of music becoming a metric of success rather than a true creative expression. Although I released my first and some of my most successful music there, it wasn’t until moving to Nashville that I tapped into why I started making music in the first place, and truly found my “voice” and sound. Being around country music really enabled me to create the music I was made to create.

You’ve got the chops to sit behind a piano and play classical, but you’re out here dropping genre-bending country tracks. Do you ever feel like you’re holding back a “different” side of Joey Myron, or is this the full picture?

I truly believe I am offering the full picture - minus maybe some piano solos! That being said, a goal of mine is to include more piano textures in upcoming songs. Music is all about conveying emotion, so if an artist is making music they are not connecting to emotionally, that would result in them holding back. 

Are AI collabs the future of music, or just a hype wave Nashville hasn’t caught up with yet?

My honest take about AI is that it will become a tool for people who wish to use it, but by no means will it replace true creation. What I love about Nashville is that we respect the roots of music and the importance of human creation and creativity to ultimately capture the human experience. Nowhere else on Earth respects and props up live music, real instruments and voices, and real stories. Like all other technologies, I think AI will be present but not a replacement (like electronic musi