CHASE MCDANIEL - Made It This Far - Big Machine Records

Though songs like “Project,” “Your Daughter,” and “Relapse” provided firm steppingstones for the acceleration of Chase McDaniel’s career, “Heart Still Works” quickly became the cornerstone anthem that connected his frayed heartstrings with the many who needed a voice to represent their brokenness.

He now returns with the next anthem to play on repeat, “Made It This Far.”

Wrapped around ultra-modern flares that blur genre lines stylistically between a rock edge and country sensibilities, McDaniel carries conviction in his voice that comes from an understanding place of been there too honesty, reaching into the heart of the struggle to not pull you out of your battle, but to hold your hand and walk through it alongside of you.

Lamenting in the opening verse how well-meaning words of encouragement often fall flat when you’re in thick of it, he instead pulls into the knowing of what it feels like to seemingly have nothing working out when you’re trying so hard to build it all up only to have it fall back down again. 

Understanding the anxiousness that comes in that moment of staying put and weathering the storm or throwing in the towel, “You wanna give up but you can’t let go,” he unashamedly doesn’t shy away from the tough conversation of the mental health toll that gets taken on your self-esteem, “feel so worthless, think it’ll hurt less, if you go to bed don’t wake back up.”

But as Chase McDaniel so eloquently does, he never leaves you stranded in the mud. Raising an empathetic fist bump of keep on going encouragement throughout the song, he motivates glowing inspiration through the idea of looking back on all that you’ve overcome to get to where you are right now.

Singing in the bridge:

“We ain’t got to start over

Look how far we’ve come

We’ve been through the worst already

Still got time before we’re done”

While in the chorus:

“Can’t turn back when we’ve made it this far

There’s a little more beat in our broken hearts

From where we’ve been to where we are

We can’t turn back we’ve made it this

Made it this far”

Using the cracked path of his own story to become a beacon of hope, what thought-provokingly isn’t lost on McDaniel is where to look for the unconditional beam of light as he highlights in the extremely important line early in the song, “then your back to your knees,” softly reminding to turn your eyes and heart upwards for true comfort whenever you’re thinking of giving up.

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis/Artwork c/o Big Machine Records)