Country singer Brad Paisley has teamed up with the folk-rock band Dawes to release an emotional new song about mental health, dedicated to those grappling with depression.
Written by Paisley, Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith, and country music songwriter Lee Thomas Miller in 2024, the single, titled “Raining Inside,” debuted on March 7.
A portion of the song’s lyrics go: “It’s raining inside; it’s really coming down. It’s raining inside; there ain’t a sky in the clouds. Nowhere I can run; nowhere I can hide. It’s raining inside.”
Paisley and Goldsmith touched on the inspiration behind their new track during a recent Instagram Live.
“Usually in a song, it’s ’my baby left‘ or ’I lost my job,' or whatever it is that causes the darkness, or at least it’s implied there’s a reason. And we’re really clear in this in saying sometimes there isn’t,” Paisley said, referring to depression as “an epidemic.”
“As you look around, there is a problem,” Paisley said. “There’s a lot of people unable to shake the clouds and the rain.”
Goldsmith agreed, noting that some people are unable to pinpoint the root cause of their depressive feelings.
‘Raining Inside’
Although Goldsmith helped to co-write Paisley’s new song, he didn’t initially sing on the track.Paisley was inspired to collaborate with Dawes, which also features Goldsmith’s younger brother, Griffin Goldsmith, on the drums, after performing with the band last month at the 2025 Grammys.
Paisley, Dawes, and several other artists, including Sheryl Crow and John Legend, opened the awards ceremony with a moving rendition of Randy Newman’s 1983 song “I Love L.A.”
“Being such good friends with Taylor, I just said, ‘What happens if you guys and me become a band? If my thing becomes part of yours and vice versa?’ And so that’s what it is,” Paisley told Country Now on March 7.
“It’s them as the band and me fronting that. And then Taylor takes the second verse, and I think that collaboration, it’s always really fun these days to see artists do that and become something new by combining forces.”
Paisley told the publication that Goldsmith incorporated his band’s signature 1970s California sound into “Raining Inside.”
“There’s such a great vibe to Dawes ... No matter what they’re doing there, there’s a prevailing Jackson Browne, Eagles thing with them and I love it,” Paisley said.
“So in our case it was like, let’s do this in a way that feels like the way they arranged songs back then and the way the Eagles would trade guitar licks and you got Joe Walsh, Don Felder or Bernie Leadon or any of those guys playing,” he added.
“And that’s kind of how we did this … the whole song just becomes this cacophony of guitar riffs and dueling, and it feels a bit like a storm to me.”
Dawes rose to fame in the late aughts with the release of their first album, “North Hills,” in 2009. They launched their sophomore album, “Nothing Is Wrong,” two years later.
The Southern California band’s most recent album, “Oh Brother,” debuted in October last year.
Paisley, who released his debut album, “Who Needs Pictures,” in 1999, is set to hit the road on his “Truck Still Works World Tour,” which kicks off at the Mountain America Center in Idaho Falls, Idaho, on May 21.
