Jimmie Allen Talks About Country’s Collaboration Caution, Teases Pitbull Song

Jimmie Allen opened up about his dream collaborators on a recent episode of his Apple Music Country Podcast, Wildcard Radio, revealing that he’s got a new song coming out with hip hop star Pitbull. But he also drilled into the fact that country is just now coming around to collabs.

Interviewing fellow country hitmaker Lindsay Ell for the episode, Allen shared that his top three collaborators would be the superstars Elton John, Rob Thomas (of Matchbox 20) and Adele. He’s already done some work with Thomas, and now has an exciting song in the works with ball-of-energy rapper, Pitbull. But even if it’s a long shot to work with those big names, he figures there’s no harm in asking.

“I just been hitting up random people because I look at it two ways: They can say no, or they can say yes but if they do say no, that means somebody in their team is going to let them know I reached out,” Allen explains. “Then at some point they’re going to reach out and not even reach out, but research and see who I am anyway. So, either way it’s a win-win.”

Jimmie Allen goes on to say he feels like country is behind the times in terms of collaborations. Even though it’s becoming more and more common, with stars like Kane Brown crossing sonic borders on a regular basis, other genres have been doing it for years … if not decades.

“Every other genre does it all the time. It’s just Country. Country and Christian that just don’t do it,” he says. “That’s how you share fans with each other. That’s how you create different musical experiences for people. You learn so much from other people from other genres and music and other artists in your genre. You can learn so much from working with other people because I’m like, collaboration happens [over the] entire process until you get to the recording. The songwriting is collaboration most of the time. The production. The mixing. The bands playing on it. The live show’s a collaboration with you and your band on stage. The touring process in itself is a collaboration between your crew, local crews. Everything except for the recording is a collaboration.”

He’ll do his part to change that with the upcoming Pitbull song, but it won’t be Pitbull’s first foray into country. The Miami hit maker teamed up with Blake Shelton on the explosive “Get Ready” in pre-pandemic 2020. Allen also chatted with Ell about the unlikely genesis of his biggest hit, revealing that “Best Shot” was inspired by a TV romance on the show One Tree Hill.