Frankie Ballard Won’t Forget the First Time He Heard His Song on the Radio

Nobody forgets their first time, not even Frankie Ballard.

Every artist, if they get lucky enough, has that moment where time stands still and they hear their song blasting through the speakers like never before. One day, Ballard got his shot at the life-changing memory when he was just going about his regular routine. The feeling, though, has stayed with him to this day.

“I was in the car. I had heard it before, but this was the first time that it was random,” Ballard recalls to Sounds Like Nashville. “I was in Nashville heading back from a writing appointment in town and sometimes when you’re in town and you’re working sometimes you can get in that headspace of, ‘I don’t know if any of this is working.’ Maybe I wrote a bad song that day and I’m just in a mood like that and all of a sudden the song, ‘Tell Me You Get Lonely,’ which was my first single, came on the radio and I turned it up.  I was in traffic and I was looking round and I was like, ‘I know a lot of these other cars are tuned into this station right now and they’re listening to my song,’ and I’m looking at them wondering if they’re listening to it. And I just thought then on a national level of all the radio stations and the power of it.”

Ballard took time to enjoy the moment, as he still does to this day.

“It was cool because when I grew up I listened to the radio and it’s magical to be a part of it. It never gets old,” he says. “It doesn’t.”

Fans can listen to Ballard’s current single, “You’ll Accomp’ny Me,” off his latest album, El Rio, now.