Max McNown

Singer/songwriter Max McNown creates the kind of songs that soundtrack our most
intimate moments: times of intense heartache and tremendous loss, immense upheaval
and life-changing revelation. Within just a year of teaching himself to play guitar, the
Nashville-based artist set off on a meteoric rise largely fueled by his breakout single “A
Lot More Free”—a RIAA Gold-certified track whose explosive success includes peaking
at #1 on the iTunes singles chart and earning him a #1 spot on Billboard’s Emerging
Artists chart. Following the release of his widely lauded debut album Wandering, the
Willfully Blind EP, and his acclaimed sophomore album Night Diving, the 23-year-old
Oregon native continued his fast ascent to stardom and made his TV performance debut
with an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show in early 2025, in addition to selling out
his first-ever headline tour within just hours. Named a 2025 Artist To Watch by Amazon
Music, Holler, and Country Now, McNown now embarks on a thrilling new chapter with
Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up): a 21-song powerhouse that shows the complete
depth of his artistry like never before.
A drastically expanded edition of his sophomore LP, Night Diving (The Cost of Growing
Up) features 11 never-before-heard tracks built on McNown’s quietly potent form of
folk/country. “Even though Night Diving was the length of a full album, in my heart it never
felt complete to me,” he reveals. “All of these songs were written in the same time period,
and my intention was always to have them be one body of work.” Still, McNown points
out that the previously unreleased songs surfaced from a recent evolution of his
mesmerizing sound, spotlighting an earthy tonality informed by his upbringing in the
Pacific Northwest. “Since my first EP I’ve been on the hunt to find myself as a musician,
and with this album, I’ve officially made something that fully represents me, both sonically
and in my songwriting,” he says. Produced by Jamie Kenney (Colbie Caillat, Laci Kaye
Booth) and made with an A-list lineup of session players, Night Diving (The Cost of
Growing Up) ultimately provides an extraordinary vessel for his profoundly moving and
soul-baring storytelling.
Anchored in the charmingly warm vocal presence that McNown partly honed by busking
at the beach in Southern California, Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up) takes the latter
half of its title from a gorgeously textured track that perfectly exemplifies his newly refined
sound. With its rootsy yet ethereal instrumentation—luminous steel guitar, lush mandolin,
soulful organ—“The Cost of Growing Up” arrives as a clear-eyed but melancholy
meditation on the inevitability of pain (from the second verse: “Ain’t it interesting/That
diamonds come from coal, and steel gets sharper the more time spent in the flame/And
there’s consistency/Between heartbreak and ashes/Scraped knees and taxes/One step
back for every two you gain”). “To me, the cost of growing up is an acceptance that difficult
things are going to happen—from minor inconveniences to devastating loss, it’s all a part
of life,” says McNown. “But there’s also beauty in that because, without those hard
moments, you wouldn’t be able to truly love.”
In the making of Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up), McNown revisited the title track
from the original album: a lived-in meditation on cycles of addiction, set against a
spellbinding backdrop of otherworldly textures, moody guitar tones, and strangely
haunting rhythms. This time around, he includes a feature from Cameron Whitcomb—a
rising singer/songwriter who’s written extensively about his personal history with
addiction, and whose force-of-nature vocals add a raw and fiery intensity to the new
version of “Night Diving.” “One of the things I respect above all else is authenticity and
honesty in music, and Cam is the epitome of that,” says McNown. “When I started thinking
about a feature on that song, I knew there was no better person than Cam to join me. He
gave it so much energy and his voice is so distinct, and now the song has a whole new
life to it.”
Elsewhere on Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up), McNown lets his inner hopeless
romantic shine on songs like the unstoppably joyful “Forever Ain’t Long Enough.” A
glorious counterpart to “Better Me For You (Brown Eyes)”—a lilting and dreamlike
standout from Night Diving, written when he’d first started dating his girlfriend—“Forever
Ain’t Long Enough” rushes forward with a pulse-pounding velocity as McNown lists off all
the places he hopes to travel with his beloved (“Let’s chase horizons off the Catalina
coastline/Jeep ride all the way to Santa Fe/Sip a coffee to a Montana sunrise/Say
goodnight to the Colorado rain”). “It’s about finding somebody who makes it seem like
even your entire lifetime isn’t long enough to spend with them,” McNown explains. “It’s
saying, ‘Let’s love each other to the best of our abilities and take advantage of every
single day, because we know the next day is never promised.’” Meanwhile, on the heavy-
hearted but exquisitely catchy “Same Questions,” McNown writes from an outside point
of view and explores everything that’s lost when a love story ends. “It’s about going
through a breakup and not wanting to deal with the process of going back to square one
and getting to know a new person,” he says. “That’s a brutal but relatable experience,
and I liked the idea of writing something sad but putting it to a happy folk melody.”
In August 2022, McNown headed for Southern California and crashed with his aunt and
uncle in San Clemente, where he soon learned to play his dad’s guitar (a gift handed off
just as he was leaving home) and showed a friend a song he’d penned in high school. “I
didn’t have a lot of faith in myself, but my friend encouraged me to go down to the San
Clemente Pier and play that song and see what happened,” he says. “That night I made
93 bucks, and also got a free taco and a girl’s phone number folded into a $5 bill.” As he
gained greater confidence in his guitar and vocal skills, McNown started posting covers
online and quickly amassed a devoted following while building up a stash of original
songs. Released in April 2023, his first official song “Freezing in November” surpassed a
million streams in just a few months, paving the way for his signing with Fugitive
Recordings. Along with delivering his debut EP A Lot More Free that August, McNown
turned out a series of rapturously received singles—racking up 80 million streams in his
very first year of releasing music. The following April, he released Wandering and earned
critical praise from the likes of People and Holler, with the LP later landing on Whiskey
Riff’s list of the year’s best debut albums.
Since the arrival of Wandering, Willfully Blind, and Night Diving, McNown has fully claimed
his place in the music spotlight. To that end, Kelly Clarkson covered “A Lot More Free”
on her show just a month before inviting him on to perform “Better Me For You (Brown
Eyes).” Over the past couple of years alone, he’s also shared bills with Wynonna Judd,
Wyatt Flores, Michael Marcagi, Sam Barber, Billy Currington, Trampled by Turtles,
JOSEPH, and more; toured with Briscoe and Blake Rose; traveled overseas to perform
at the C2C: Country to Country festival; and made his debut at the legendary Grand Ole
Opry. With his 2025 schedule including his debut headline tour (a massive soldout run
with stops across the U.S. and in Europe, the UK, and Australia)—as well as spots on
major festivals like Lollapalooza, Boston Calling, and CMA Fest—McNown has
undoubtedly cemented his reputation as a captivating live act. “I feel like I’ve found myself
as a performer and gained the courage to enjoy the moment,” he says. “One of the biggest
highlights was going to C2C and playing for upwards of 15,000 people and hearing them
sing along to ‘A Lot More Free.’ It always takes my breath away to look out and see the
crowd belting that song at the top of their lungs.”
Looking back on Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up), McNown notes that the newly
added batch of songs embody a far more hopeful mood compared with the album’s
original tracklist. “Even on ‘The Cost of Growing Up,’ which is one of the saddest songs,
there’s an undertone of optimism and a clear silver lining,” he says. And while that
optimism was entirely intentional on McNown’s part, he’s highly aware that his music
tends to stir up incredibly complex emotions in listeners. “I’ve heard some heavy stories
from fans, including someone nearing suicide and feeling as though they were saved by
‘It’s Not Your Fault,’” he says, referring to a particularly poignant track from Night Diving.
“It’s amazing how a song can be written about a specific experience, and then you can
be told a hundred different stories about the experiences that other people hear in that
same song. But I’d never invalidate anyone’s story—the important thing is that people
relate to the song and feel heard and less alone. That’s exactly what I’m doing all this for.