Riley Green

“I think there’s a little bit of the message I’d want to share in every song I’ve got,” songwriter Riley Green tells Apple Music. “‘Don’t get too far away from what started country music.’ And that’s storytelling.” Born in 1988 in Alabama, Green would know a thing or two about country. His grandfather Buford Green ran The Golden Saw Music Hall, where the younger Green was able to cut his teeth with countless elder musicians. His neotraditional sound reflects the musical history he was exposed to, and you can hear elements of bluegrass and traces of Southern gospel in the down-home instrumentation and arrangements of his tunes. After a slew of well-received EPs in the late 2000s, Green released his debut full-length, Different ‘Round Here, in 2019, raising his profile with the strength of its first single, “There Was This Girl.” But it was “I Wish Grandpas Never Died”—a nostalgic track about Green’s vision of an ideal world that tells a poignant story in its five-word title alone—that proved his breakthrough moment and cemented his mission statement. The title track of his 2020 EP If It Wasn’t for Trucks continued the storytelling tradition, turning the machine into a symbol of freedom and self-discovery.