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The Smooth Late Show with Martin Collins 10pm - 1am
4 July 2024, 10:30
Riley Green is about to potentially score the biggest hit of his career with his latest track.
The American singer-songwriter recently teamed up with up-and-coming star Ella Langley on the track 'You Look Like You Love Me', which is starting to rise up the charts with impressive streaming numbers.
Not only that, but his solo track 'Worst Way' is also proving popular, meaning that Riley could be about to have the best year of his career so far in 2024.
Riley is currently in the UK as he will be opening for Morgan Wallen on his BST Hyde Park show tonight (July 4), and he caught up with Smooth Country's Eamonn Kelly about the show and his new music.
Speaking about working with Ella, Riley explained: "Well, Ella's from Alabama, where I'm from, and I've always heard her name. A promoter that I used for several years would bring her out. She'd open for me, and she's got a great voice, very country, which I enjoy.
Ella Langley & Riley Green - you look like you love me (Official Visualizer)
"And she went out on tour with me this year. It was her and Tracy Lawrence and me. And, you know, when you're out like that, that's one of the most organic ways things can happen with songs and writing and everything else is just kind of being around somebody.
"And we ended up coming across that song, and a buddy of mine played it for me, and I ended up writing the second verse for it, and it's really taken off. I don't think anybody expected the song to be as big a hit as it is."
Riley also teased that he has collaborated with Luke Bryan, which could end up on his new album.
"Collaborations are probably supposed to come about through managers and agents and all that. I just text them, you know, I'll just say, 'hey, man, what do you think about this song?'
"And I'll say, 'I'll send a song that I wrote and I'm pretty proud of' to Luke Bryan and, you know, maybe he might want to be a part of it."
In the interview, Riley also opened up about how he first found fame on the reality show Redneck Island.
"You know, I'm certainly not a big fan of reality shows," he said. "I've never thought that was an avenue that I would go down, but I was doing construction work and somebody came to a show and they asked me about being on the show on CMT, and I assumed if they mentioned I played music, it might help me in some way.
"It's not something I would do again. It was kind of a tough process. You're stuck in a house for a month, no phones, nothing like that. But I'm sure it didn't hurt. But I didn't see a huge spike in anything from it.
"I don't think the show was a huge success, but it certainly gave me some knowledge of what that world's like, you know, the production that goes into something like that. And, you know, you become a little bit more business-minded when you're on something like that.
"Because I was thinking, man, I don't want to do anything stupid on the show, you know, to ruin something that I've got going, because they tend to make people look a little bit insane on some of those reality shows.
"So it worked out fine for me. I think I was pretty boring. I slept most of the time!"