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Jan 11, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Dave Gillespie

Canadian singer/songwriter Doug Paisley has long been a quietly prolific creative, amassing hundreds of unrecorded tracks since his self-titled debut. In the years since, he has shared a trio of new records, returning most recently with 2018’s Starter Home. This year, he is back with his latest album, Say What You Like, out March 17th via Outside Music.

Culled from 250 unrecorded tracks, Say What You Like captures the breadth of Paisley’s songwriting, taking turns into pastoral folk arrangements, light pop grooves, and poignant country confessions. Paisley first shared the record’s title track last year, and today he’s back with another new single, “Sometimes It’s So Easy,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Sometimes It’s So Easy” leans into both the easygoing folk pop and ambling country sides of Paisley’s songwriting, shaded with nimble fingerpicked acoustics and a twangy guitar solo. Paisley’s performance is light and breezy as if made for open roads and blue skies. However, beneath the track’s golden-hued acoustics and charming melodies lies a darker conflict, as the lyrics examine those who leave another and the hurt that lies in their wake. Paisley reflects on both sides of the experience, never quite taking a side, but instead delivering some poignant lyrical observations of his own.

Paisley says of the track, “This is a song for the leaving kind and the left behind, at the moment when one can seem so cold and cruel and the other so wounded. In the end, to right themselves, the price they pay in their own time is about equal. It makes me think of Bob Marley’s ‘Running Away’ although this song is less sure of having taken its own advice. I’m inspired by the intricacy in simple folk and country songwriting where a little irony can suspend a point or an idea without bringing it down too hard in any one place, like an X-wing in a dogfight. For that reason I hope I haven’t said very much here but if you’re in a situation where there’s blame and hurt then you know you still have a way to go, if you were fortunate enough to be there at all.”

He continues, saying of the accompanying video, “This is the first time I’ve made a music video for one of my songs. I risked my body and my 1950 Gibson guitar for the stunt and in hindsight, I guess it lines up with some of the recklessness in the song itself.”

Check out the song and video below, out everywhere now. Say What You Like is out March 17th via Outside Music.