“He’s built like he could move your couch but sounds like he could heal your childhood.”
MCA Nashville senior VP of promotion Miranda McDonald highlighted Jacob Hackworth’s contrasts during Country Radio Seminar (CRS), introducing him to attendees in a lunchtime label showcase at the Ryman Auditorium on March 19. His appearance mirrored her description, and the song he sang – his inaugural MCA single, “What Took You So Long” – was full of contrast, too, its classic-country chorus melody riding atop an alt-rock set of chords.
Performing for an influential room of influential broadcasters was intimidating – “I don’t know if I blacked out a couple times in the middle of it or not,” Hackworth quips in retrospect – but he made a connection with the audience that day that he was able to build upon as he continued a radio promotion tour the following week.
“They have definitely brought up CRS and the Ryman show,” he notes.
“What Took You So Long” seemed to captivate the room at CRS, but that’s not unusual – it’s won people over from the day it was written, Jan. 22, 2025. Big Machine writer-producer Daniel Ross (“Friday Night Heartbreaker,” “Lies Lies Lies”) hosted the appointment with Hackworth, Jaxson Free (“After All the Bars Are Closed,” “Thank God”) and Steph Jones (“hole in the bottle,” “Espresso”).
Neither Hackworth nor Free had fully developed their artist paths at the time, so the goal was simply to write the best song possible. And they did.
“There was something in the room that day,” Jones says. “I think it was Diet Coke. We all share a big love for fridge cigs.”
Ross introduced the alt-rock-flavored track — “I sort of naturally lean towards a darker thing,” he says — and everyone was on board. It was trickier than it sounds: the logistics between the first two chords aren’t actually well-suited to a typical fretboard.
“You can’t actually play it on guitar,” Ross says. “I had to do it in two parts, so I did the first part of the riff, and then I tuned the bottom string way down to be able to reach that [second] note.”
Ross also offered a two-word title, “So Long,” that they batted around a bit, ultimately stretching it into something larger. Jones came up with a hook that fit the dark undertow – “What took you so long to tell me goodbye?” – in a plot about a couple that raced into commitment, only to have it come crashing down with no real warning.
“I love a question as a title personally,” Jones says.
They built the entire chorus around a series of questions that go frustratingly unanswered. While the lyrics matched the music’s mood, the phrasing – dominated by long, melancholy notes – took an opposite tack. “The guitar progression is kind of grimy,” Hackworth notes, “but then that melody over the top of it is just so silky.”
As they put together the first verse, they gave it more contrast, using faster-paced phrasing to provide some separation from the chorus’ held notes. But it also reflected the speed of the relationship the song represented.
“We were like, ‘Okay, well, if we’re going to do all long notes in the hook, the verses have to be really fast – like choppy – just to convey the emotion of ‘We moved really fast, we had all these plans going,’” Free recalls. “Then when that chorus hits the long notes, you feel the story even more.”
The first verse illustrated that the couple had been talking marriage, though it never comes out and says that directly. The second verse needed to express the singer’s anger that the relationship was prolonged unnecessarily. After tossing a few ideas around, Jones came up with a line that floored the rest of the crew: “There’s a real short line from the back of your mind to the tip of your tongue.”
“There’s no giant inspiration for that,” she says. “It just came out.”
The rest of the write went smoothly from there. Jones and Free both had to split, which left Hackworth to sing on the demo. He wrapped himself in the story and caught all the nuances of the song’s anger and disappointment with a sense of authenticity.
“His vibrato is so tasteful,” says Ross, who produced the demo. “The way that he [captures emotion], I don’t think it’s cerebral at all for him. Sometimes, I don’t think he knows when he does it.”
Ross built it out in a way that framed Hackworth’s vocals. He used several effects to create depth in the production and gave it a sense of motion by introducing a new instrument, or by changing the tone of an existing one, about every eight bars. Ross also enlisted a woman who sings at his church, Olivia Abdou, to join him on background vocals.
Ross was, at the time, producing Conner Smith, who showed up to track his own vocals when Ross was working on “What Took You So Long.” Smith asked to hear it four times, then asked if he could cut it, and since neither Free nor Hackworth were in artist mode yet, they let Smith take it. Hackworth ended up writing with Smith about a week later, and Smith essentially gave it back.
“I walked in,” Hackworth recalls, “and he just walks up to me, and he goes, ‘Bro, that’s your song, man. I loved the way that I sounded on it, but you can definitely tell that that’s yours.’”
“He’s just,” Hackworth adds, “one of the best guys ever.”
Songwriter Jessie Jo Dillon (“10,000 Hours,” “Am I Okay?”) had co-written another song, “Bad As I Do,” that Hackworth released independently in December. She took it to MCA chief creative officer Dave Cobb, just to make him aware, and Cobb gave Hackworth a surprise call that lasted 30 minutes. “In a matter of a week,” Hackworth says, “I had a deal from MCA.”
In their first official meeting, he played them “What Took You So Long,” and suddenly, MCA had moved on from “Bad As I Do.” Hackworth’s performance and Ross’ production were so well-suited that the label asked him not to make any major changes to the demo. Ross did hire guitarist Derek Wells to layer in a baritone guitar and provide atmospheric sounds. And he brought in drummer Aaron Sterling, who was sensitive to the song’s emotionality.
“He tracked on a smaller kit, and not one of his big, loud, massive ones,” Ross says. “The tones needed, in my opinion, to stay small – not necessarily wimpy, but they needed to be delicate.”
The moody character and universal message of “What Took You So Long” seemed to work for everyone involved, including Free, who heard an almost-finished version of it while he was in Los Angeles.
“Hack sold it so well,” Free says. “I really felt it, because I’ve been in a relationship like that before. And I was like, ‘Holy fuck.’ I almost started crying at my hotel, at the pool deck, because I was like, ‘This feels so special.’ I feel like a lot of people are gonna hear this and it’s gonna help people feel like they’re not alone.”
MCA and Goat Island released it to country radio via PlayMPE about an hour before the March 19 Ryman performance with an official add date of April 27. But it’s already airing on numerous stations, including KMLE Phoenix, WGKX Memphis and KAYD Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas.
The world at large is responding as Hackworth’s team had hoped.
“Sometimes,” Hack says, “it happens like it’s supposed to.”
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