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Dan + Shay’s talk throwback ‘Bigger Houses’ album cover, intention to trick fans

By Jeremy Chua + Stephen Hubbard Jan 5, 2024 | 5:00 AM
Courtesy of Warner Music Nashville

Perhaps unbeknownst to fans, Dan + Shay were hoping to evoke nostalgia and curiosity with their Bigger Houses album cover.

“It’s a throwback to when we were on the roof of a very crappy house, the house that I moved into when I moved to Nashville,” Dan Smyers tells ABC Audio. “I moved here, had no money to eat or whatever [and] did the whole thing. We found this house on Craigslist. It was like 150 bucks a month in Berry Hill before Berry Hill was cool. No locks on the doors, no heat, no AC. It was a bad, bad place.”

“It was 507 Morton Avenue if you want to go check it out,” he shares. “It’s a lot better now.”

Dan + Shay also envisioned the trippy setup would have fans questioning the actual size of their humble abode.

“We wrote a song called ‘Bigger Houses,’ which is the title track of the new album. We had this vision. It was just going to be this weird, kind of playful, small house where we’re sitting on top of it, where it’s like is it a small house or are the guys giants?” says Dan.

“It’s a normal house. Really, just messing with our fans’ minds,” he notes. “We weren’t planning on sitting on it, I don’t think originally. We were just planning on the house being on the cover and we saw it. It [had the] built for the music video. We’re like, ‘We got to sit on this thing.’ So we went up there with a guitar and we shot a video and it ended up being the album cover.” 

Dan + Shay are currently #2 and ascending to the peak of the country charts with “Save Me the Trouble,” the lead single off Bigger Houses.

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