Country music star MattStellMusic gave WWD an inside look at his journey from medical school to Music City.
Matt Stell doesn’t fit the mold of the typical country singer. He grew up listening to alternative rock, played college basketball — he’s 6 feet 7 inches tall — and after a medical mission trip to Haiti, was accepted into a pre-med program at Harvard University’s Extension School.
To say he’s well-spoken and a bit of a brainiac — he’s partial to books on science — is an understatement. But his smarts have served him well as he systematically builds his career in music rather than medicine. And he has no regrets about his decision. “I had gotten a master’s degree in communications and then applied for a pre-medical program.
The latest single, “That Ain’t Me No More,” also tells a story about a lost love who has moved on to another guy after being treated poorly by the singer. The song was actually written by Hunter Phelps, Jake Mitchell, Michael Hardy, Nick Donley and Smith Ahnquist and is the first single he’s released that he didn’t write.“I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter and implicit in that is the idea that the best song wins,” he said.
One silver lining of the lockdown was the opportunity it afforded him to concentrate on writing music. “I wrote nearly every day and because of the technology it afforded us, we were able to do that through Zoom,” he said. “It’s not ideal but it certainly beats the alternative of sitting at home and writing by yourself. I still write by myself, but collaborating with people is a lot of where country music comes from now. I think music is going to be better for that time off.