Greylan James Warned His Ex-Girlfriend He Wrote a Song About Going to Her Wedding: 'Just Prepare Yourself' (Exclusive)
But that's not the only secret he's been keeping.
'No comment,' James, 29, tells PEOPLE with a laugh about the identity of the ex-girlfriend who undoubtedly plays the lead role in the eye-opening track. 'The fun thing about this song is people wanting to know the truth behind the story.'
Granted, the co-writer of hits such as Jordan Davis' 'Next Thing You Know' admits the story behind 'Water at a Wedding' is a real one he experienced at an ex-girlfriend's wedding..
'It was really fun to write and really easy to write because it was such a wild scenario,' says James, who penned 'Water at a Wedding' last September alongside fellow songwriters Chase McGill and Matt Dragstrem. 'We were just literally painting the scene.'
At one point in the song, the story goes from sad to shocking.
'We were talking about the whole twist being in the second verse,' remembers James, who's already been gaining attention this summer on the strength of his debut radio single 'Wait Til You Have Kids.'
He adds, 'But then we were like, 'No, let's keep people hanging.' I felt like we gave the listener a minute to really process the story that was going on before we twisted it even further in the bridge.'
It's a twist that James decided to tell his ex about before the song even came out. 'I told her, 'I wrote this song about your wedding,' and we had a conversation about it,' he recalls. 'And then fast-forward, the song is coming out, so I told her to 'just prepare yourself.' So yeah, the heads up was given.'
And while James gave his ex a heads-up about the release of the song, he didn't quite grant the same courtesy to his label. "My label had told me specifically to not post it,' James laughs. 'And I was just like, 'F--- it, I want to do it.' They weren't sure if the country listener was ready to hear a song like that come out of me. But then I'd have a couple Jack and Cokes in my house, and I'd be like, 'I just want to listen to it and just close my eyes and go through it again.''
Despite his label's advice, James got sneaky in June and teased 'Water at a Wedding' on his burner account. 'I made a fake TikTok account, and I turned the brightness all the way down, so nobody could see my face,' he says. 'It was the first TikTok I ever posted on that account, and it got a hundred thousand views.'
The label forgave him, and the rest is history. The teasers for 'Water at a Wedding' garnered nearly 10 million views across platforms, including 6 million on TikTok alone.
What makes the story of 'Water at a Wedding' even more intriguing? The story looks to be just beginning. 'I've got songs to keep explaining what happened after that song, and I already got to part two, part three, and so forth,' says James. 'So, that's kind of what we're working on.'
In fact, James says the second song in the story has already been recorded. And while stepping from behind-the-scenes songwriter to front-and-center artist has been scary, it's a process that felt necessary to truly become the artist he wants to be going forward.
'Other people have been telling my story with their own albums and their own voice,' says James, who will head out on tour with Cole Swindell this fall. 'And I guess I was kind of scared to really lean into my personal stuff. That's a scary thing to do because I've got friends and family and exes and all that stuff. But that's what people want to hear. They want to know you.'
Read the original article on People
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Horror's middle class is vanishing – and that's bad news for all film fans
Does no one want to watch people get butchered any more? Horror, long recognised as one of Hollywood's most reliable cash cows, is in a panic: few scary movies are breaking through financially in 2025, many more are cratering completely, and questions are being asked about the future of a genre that once seemed as durable as Jason Voorhees. Forget the death of the archetypal movie star: if sassy psycho-cyborg M3GAN can't open a movie, who can? Back in 2022, the first M3GAN – about an artificially intelligent doll with a bloodthirst – grossed $182m (£135m), including $78m of pure profit for its backers at Universal Pictures and the micro-budget horror studio Blumhouse, off a production budget of just $12m. Thanks to smart marketing, which turned its leading lady's incongruous dancefloor skills into a spooky meme, M3GAN ended up exemplifying the dream outcome of the modern studio horror film: low-cost, big-brain thrills with such inescapable dazzle that audiences couldn't not seek it out. Why, then, did last month's M3GAN 2.0 go so badly? In four weeks, the more action-oriented sequel has grossed a measly $38m worldwide, a result so mortifying that the head of Blumhouse put his hands up within days of its release and admitted to having totally missed the mark. M3GAN 2.0 isn't alone, either. This year has seen a staggering number of horror films die at the box office, among them Blumhouse's reboot of Wolf Man ($34m gross on a production budget of $20m), the Ayo Edebiri horror comedy Opus ($2m gross/$10m budget), Jenna Ortega vehicle Death of a Unicorn ($16m gross/$15m budget), the well-received adoption chiller Bring Her Back ($23m gross/$15m budget), and last week's revival of the Nineties hit I Know What You Did Last Summer, which opened to a flat $13m in the US. Yes, these films' production budgets are lean (though the extent of marketing budgets is largely kept under lock and key), and many of the above titles will ultimately break even once video-on-demand grosses are factored in – but none of their respective backers will be happy with what amounts to loose change. On the other end of the spectrum, meanwhile, are this year's handful of out-and-out horror smashes, most significantly the Michael B Jordan vampire film Sinners, which cost a reported $100m to make but has grossed $365m. There's also been Final Destination: Bloodlines ($285m and counting on a budget of $50m) and Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later, which has so far grossed $145m on a budget of $60m – not wildly profitable, by any means, but decent enough. So people are still going to see horror on the big screen, but – echoing the Western world as a whole – horror's middle class is evaporating. The genre seems to either go big or collapse entirely. Any kind of financial in-between is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. All this leaves a film such as next week's Weapons carrying undue levels of pressure. A missing-persons thriller starring Julia Garner and Josh Brolin, it revolves around the disappearance of a class of children in small-town USA, and serves as filmmaker Zach Cregger's follow-up to his 2022 sleeper hit Barbarian. Promotion for the film has been strong – lots of abstract and eerie imagery in trailers, and attempts at virality via the publishing of two hours of 'surveillance footage' from the night of the children's 'disappearance'. But the stakes feel particularly high. Weapons sparked a bidding war between rival studios when Cregger first unveiled his script, with Warner Bros so eager to get the up-and-comer on side that they coughed up a $38m budget for the film, and allowed him final cut. If Weapons underperforms, this kind of investment in a young, ambitious filmmaker's original ideas may become even rarer than it is already. Why this is bad for everyone is that, in the last decade or so, horror has been one of the few genres to wholeheartedly embrace fresh ideas and fresh voices. The likes of Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017), Coralie Fargeat's The Substance (2024), Ari Aster's Hereditary (2018) and Robert Eggers's The Witch (2015) proved that audiences will turn out in droves for intriguing new concepts, no matter how wild they might seem on paper – and in the process, an entire generation of buzzy new filmmakers developed fanbases, industry clout, and (relative) name recognition. Speaking to The Town podcast shortly after M3GAN 2.0 bombed, Blumhouse head Jason Blum suggested that there is simply too much horror being released for many films to break through, and that the cheap-to-produce movies that were Blumhouse's bread and butter (their biggest hits have included Get Out, Us, The Invisible Man and the Purge franchise) no longer cut it. 'We need to up the budgets,' he insisted. 'People need theatrical events.' Which is, I suppose, accurate. This year's most successful horror films had heavy promotional spends behind them, while even the most financially lucrative horrors of 2024 – meaning the low-cost, high-return likes of The Substance and Oz Perkins's Silence of the Lambs pastiche Longlegs – were transformed into must-see 'events' via relentless and effective marketing. But just as important is the actual quality of material on offer, with far too many modern horror movies settling for tedious mining of intellectual property and repetitive premises (Knives Out and Midsommar have created an unfortunate cottage industry of star-studded, eat-the-rich, religious-cult disappointments). Blumhouse have been particularly guilty of this over the last 18 months, tossing out a raft of movies that felt as if they were formed backwards from an already unimpressive elevator pitch: Night Swim (haunted pool!); AfrAId (haunted Alexa device!); House of Spoils (Ariana DeBose!). Things may, however, be looking up. As much as it pains me to slander a film that made smart use of Nineties stalwarts Freddie Prinze Jr and Jennifer Love Hewitt, it is something of a relief that I Know What You Did Last Summer couldn't get people in cinema seats last week. A largely serviceable but poorly directed slasher pastiche, the film may have lifted the story beats and faces from the 1997 original, but it failed at the things that truly matter: character development, suspense, memorable chase sequences. It seemed to prove that, when it comes to horror, box-office success in 2025 requires far more than just dusting off some old IP and hoping for the best. Hollywood does have a knack for taking all the wrong lessons from its success stories. (Just look at how Barbie's gargantuan box office has led to the development of loads of other movies about toys.) But wouldn't it be lovely if the triumph of Sinners sparked an influx of expensive, original horror movies moving forward – and not, well, Sinners 2. 'Weapons' is released 8 August
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Happy Gilmore 2 subtly honors Adam Sandler's late co-star Cameron Boyce
Adam Sandler managed to sneak in a subtle, yet heartwarming, tribute to his late Grown Ups co-star Cameron Boyce in the new Happy Gilmore sequel. Happy Gilmore 2, out now on Netflix, follows Sandler's titular retired golfer, Happy Gilmore, as he returns to the sport in order to pay for his daughter to attend a Parisian ballet school. It comes nearly 30 years after the original 1996 classic sports comedy. In one scene, Happy is seen walking up to a golf course check-in booth with a bag of clubs on his shoulder. As he nears the desk, the attendants inside are watching what appears to be an episode of Disney Channel's sitcom Jessie. The screen quickly flashes to show Boyce's character Luke Ross, whom he played throughout the show's entire 2011 to 2015 run. The brief nod to Boyce — who starred as Sandler's on-screen son in the 2010 family comedy Grown Ups and its 2013 sequel before his sudden death in 2019 — has left fans overcome with emotion. 'Adam Sandler honoring Cameron Boyce in Happy Gilmore 2 melts my heart,' one said on X, while a second added: 'Excuse me while I sob.' A third commented: 'Adam Sandler subtly including Cameron Boyce in this scene from #HappyGilmore2 hits different.' 'Happy Gilmore 2 was great,' another praised. 'The honoring of Cameron Boyce was such a cute and awesome Easter egg. Bottom right of the screen they're watching them on TV. Adam Sandler you killed it. Family is very happy.' Someone else on TikTok wrote that the tribute 'is hurting and healing my heart at the same time.' Boyce was only 20 when he died after experiencing a seizure in his sleep. At the time, his family released a statement, explaining the seizure 'was a result of an ongoing medical condition for which he was being treated.' 'The world is now undoubtedly without one of its brightest lights, but his spirit will live on through the kindness and compassion of all who knew and loved him. We are utterly heartbroken,' they added. Sandler was among many celebrities to honor Boyce after his death, posting on X: 'Loved that kid. Cared so much about his family. Cared so much about the world. Thank you, Cameron, for all you gave to us. So much more was on the way. All our hearts are broken.' Boyce isn't the only celebrity to make a surprise cameo in the new movie. Dozens of other cameo appearances from professional golfers, athletes and celebrities — some of which were announced when the film was in production — are also featured. Happy Gilmore 2 is streaming now on Netflix.
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Wife hits $500,000 lottery jackpot after husband forgot to buy tickets
After her husband forgot to buy their lottery tickets, a woman took matters into her own hands — and hit the jackpot. The unidentified woman recently stopped at a Redi Mart gas station in Lyman, South Carolina, and bought herself three Money Madness Extra Play scratch-off game lottery tickets. She told the South Carolina Education Lottery that the 'bright, shiny, and glittery tickets caught my eye.' She didn't win anything from the first two tickets after scratching off the hidden numbers. However, she said her third ticket was 'magical,' since it won her the top prize of $500,000. 'I felt like Jed Clampett when he discovered his bubblin' crude,' she said, referring to the character on The Beverly Hillbillies discovering oil on his land. This resulted in Jed's family's new wealth and their move to California. The woman also shared her plans for her earnings, adding: 'I'll have a little fun, take some trips, and retirement will come sooner rather than later.' As a result of her win, the gas station where she got the lottery ticket received a commission of $5,000. According to the South Carolina Education Lottery, the odds of winning $500,000 in the Money Madness Extra Play game are one in 1.152 million. This isn't the first lottery player in the U.S. who ended up winning big. Earlier this month, school bus driver Russell Ruff, who's based in Connecticut, discovered that his lost lottery ticket was worth $150,000. He lost the ticket shortly after purchasing it on Friday, June 13, at a gas station. So, it was 'miraculous' that his 16-year-old cat was the one who later discovered the Powerball ticket. 'We lost the ticket at home. It went behind a headboard, and we didn't think too much of it,' he said in the release shared by the Connecticut Lottery. 'We didn't really check the numbers.' Ruff said he had to move his bed when he realized the cat was stuck behind it. With the ticket back in his possession, he realized he had four of the five winning numbers, plus the Powerball number. He also had Power Play added to his ticket, which allows you to multiply your non-jackpot winnings by a specific amount. As a result, Ruff's prize increased from $50,000 to $150,000. In June, a Kentucky woman, Pamela Howard-Thornton, also won the state lottery after nearly losing the winning ticket by throwing it in the trash. Howard-Thornton bought four tickets for the Flamingo Bingo scratch-off game at a rest stop store in nearby Lebanon Junction after having a dream about winning a large jackpot. 'The first three were not winners, so I put them in the trash,' she added. 'Then I was like 'Where's my fourth ticket?' I looked in the trash and I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, I threw it away.'' Luckily, Howard-Thornton was able to recover the ticket and won the game's top prize of $80,000, or $57,600 after taxes.
