Elvie Shane may be new on the scene, but his rise has been steady since the release of his debut single ‘My Boy’ in June 2020. The song is already in the Top 40 on Country radio and was the No. 1 song on Sirius XM’s The Highway Hot 30 on February 15th. In less than a year, the heartfelt song gained momentum with the help of an innovative approach to a radio tour and the app, TikTok.
Elvie’s introduction to the world, ‘My Boy,’ is about as genuine as it gets. He wrote the song alongside Nick Columbia, Russell Sutton, and Arthur Leon Star III about his own experience with his stepson. The title and inspiration came when Elvie was prompted to tell the guys about his son, he exclaimed, ”Dude, he’s my boy!” Before he could go on, they decided to move forward with that idea. It didn’t take long for the sincerity of the lyrics to get the guys a little misty-eyed. “It turned into four grown men on the porch in tears writing a song,” Shane recalled with a laugh.
Although the song is deeply personal to Elvie, the emotional tribute to his little boy quickly connected to fans across social media. “It’s been incredible. There’s not a day that goes by where someone doesn’t message me,” he said. Shane has even found that the extra time at home has allowed him to connect with fans on a more intimate level. “I try to answer five to ten people a day. I will read the long messages. I care. And it’s awesome to see how many people from different walks of life have been able to connect to this song.”
‘My Boy’ has been used in over 22,000 videos on TikTok and landed in the No. 1 spot on the platform’s Country chart. BBR reported that user-created videos accumulated more than 15 million views and more than 775 million uses of #MyBoy. The popularity of the song actually drove Shane and his buddies to tweak the lyrics and release a ‘My Girl’ version. There’s plenty of content about this single out there if you’re in the mood to happy-cry your eyes out.
In addition to social media, ‘My Boy’ has seen commercial success on terrestrial radio and especially on XM radio. When the song was released, plans for a traditional radio tour were off the table due to the COVID-19 pandemic. His team at BBR got creative and set Shane up in a state-of-the-art studio to perform high-quality live shows for stations across the country.
Elvie learned that streaming shows turned out to be a lot of hard work. “We did about a week’s worth of rehearsals and proceeded to do, I don’t know, somewhere between 130 and 150 shows in about six and a half week’s time. It was grueling but at the same time, the best 9-to-5 I’ve ever had in my life,” Elvie told us. It paid off, as the virtual radio tour was a success. BBR reported “With 26 first-week stations on, the tearjerker became the second most-added song in its debut week.”
The single’s prosperity has landed Shane on MusicRow’s and Pandora’s 2021 artists to watch lists – so what can fans be on the lookout for? Shane told us, “They can definitely be expecting an EP – a five to six song EP to come out sometime soon. I am so excited about it! It is very much about how I grew up, where I grew up, what’s important to me, love lost, love found… It is my story from birth to my early 20s. There’s a little bit of current theme peppered in there, but for the most part this project is about where I come from.”
Elvie is a proud Kentucky native who grew up surrounded by hard-working, blue-collared folks. “I hope that I can be the guy that’s the voice for them, that hasn’t been around for quite a while. If they’ll let me, I’ll sing their songs.” Having the ability to collaborate with co-writers through online sessions led Shane to move back to his home state. “I like to be here in the middle of it and see the daily lives. And also, take a little bit of what I learned from being embedded in a more culturally diverse area and bring it back to small town America,” he shared.
Sonically, Elvie’s style is equally as genuine as the lyrics he sings. If you’re a fan of Luke Combs’ 90s influence and the blues that comes through in Stapleton’s tracks, you’ll likely find a place on your playlist for Shane’s music. “My big thing was the heartland vibe, you know – Steve Earle, Tom Petty, and Dwight Yolkham. I’m hoping that people get the same emotions from my music as I did when I was a kid hearing that stuff for the first time.”
Even for listeners who can’t directly relate to Shane’s songs, it won’t be difficult for folks to make a connection to his heart and soul. The success of ‘My Boy’ proves just that. The honesty and authenticity that drove this single to success are going to fuel Elvie’s career, we’d bet on it.
If you haven’t already, you can stream ‘My Boy’ here.
If you like what you hear, follow Elvie Shane on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.