Dan + Shay Artistfacts

Dan + Shay song list

Dan + Shay Artistfacts

2012-
Dan Smyers
Shay Mooney
Before they formed the Dan + Shay duo, Pennsylvania native Dan Smyers was a member of a group called Bonaventure and Arkansas born Shay Mooney was a solo artist on rapper T-Pain's Nappy Boy Entertainment label.
Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney first met at a party at the formers'' house in Nashville on December 7, 2012.

"I was living in a terrible house; it was the worst house of all time. I found it on Craigslist for $100 a month when I first moved to town. No locks on the door, no heat, no AC. It was rough," Smyers recalled to The Boot. "Shay came over with a buddy. We started singing together, singing cover songs and making stuff up on the spot … It was about four in the morning, and we were like, 'We should write together.'"

"A couple hours later, we woke up and wrote a song," Smyers continued. "The first song we wrote got put on hold."
Dan Smyers married Abby Law on May 13, 2017. She made a cameo in Dan+Shay lyric's video for their 2014 single "Nothin' Like You." That song was about Mooney's then girlfriend country singer Veronica Ballestrini.
Shay Mooney's fiancée Hannah Billingsley gave birth to their son, Asher James Mooney on January 24, 2017. Dan + Shay's song "When I Pray For You" was written in anticipation of the baby boy's arrival. Mooney and Hannah later got married on October 20, 2017 in Arkansas. Asher went on to appear in the music video for the Dan + Shay's 2026 song "Young."
They weren't always Dan + Shay. When Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney first got together, they called themselves Ragtop Red after Tim McGraw's 2002 single "Red Rag Top."
Why the "+" instead of an ampersand or the word "and"? The pair had high hopes and thought it would be useful in their stage shows. "The vision from day one was that, if someday we ever got to headline arenas, we'd have a "+" stage in the middle of the floor and make it do all kinds of crazy stuff," Smyers said on Instagram in 2021.
Dan + Shay are concerned about how AI is shaping the future of the music industry and the magic that gets lost by sacrificing the creative process for the sake of efficiency.

"I think AI can take you from point A to point B very quickly and you miss all of the good stuff in between," Shay Mooney told the Off The Record podcast in 2026. "It's important, the creation of those things. We can't lose that as songwriters and as people in general. The creation of art is just as important as the actual art itself. Way more important. That is what it teaches us. I think from A to B, all the good stuff is in here. Nobody wants to take a helicopter ride to the top of Mount Everest. You can't say you climbed Mount Everest if you take a ski lift up there."
Over the years, the duo have turned down several opportunities to sing the National Anthem for one simple reason: They were afraid. "The National Anthem is a tough thing to sing," Smyers said. "It's not usually a lot of upside, but tremendous potential for downside. If you forget the words, it's like you think you know the words of the National Anthem till you get up there and try to sing it in front of millions and millions of people."

That all changed when they were asked to sing the anthem at the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup in 2026. They were still nervous, but it was too good a gig to pass up.

"It kind of reminded me of when we performed 'Tequila' at the Grammys for the first time," he continued. "Got out there and I could literally hear my heart beating through the microphone into my in-ears."
Smyers gets himself pumped up for a show by listening to "Hit The Wall" by Gracie Abrams.
Dan + Shay have been friends with Ed Sheeran for more than a decade, having first met the "Shape Of You" singer when he lived in Nashville for six months in 2013. Smyers said Sheeran helped him loosen up his meticulous songwriting process by encouraging a free-flowing style. After they wrote a few decent songs, Smyers was surprised to learn they were just warm-ups. "It's like, get the bad ideas out to get the good one," he said.

The takeaway is there's no right or wrong way to write a song. "If somebody comes in and wants to write six songs in one day and that's their pace, you have to meet them where they are and they have to meet you where you are to have that magical synergy in the room," he continued.

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