Shared Walls
by Tenille Townes (featuring Breland)

Album: Masquerades (2022)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this heartfelt duet, country singers Tenille Townes and Breland ("My Truck") make an emotional connection through the shared walls of their apartment building. Although they may treat each other as strangers on the street, they feel a close bond during late nights when they each wonder what the other is thinking about on the other side of the wall.
  • Townes was inspired by the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic that forced everyone indoors. It was an isolating experience, yet it brought her closer to the people living around her and gave her a sense of community with the world at large.

    "I was living in my apartment building feeling so far from everyone and also closer to my neighbors than I'd ever felt before, and closer to neighbors around the world, who were going through this same, really hard thing," she explained in a 2023 Songfacts interview.

    "I was seeing people singing in the streets in Italy. All of us, locked in our little boxes. I think it felt like, wow, as hard and horrible and dark as this is, there's a commonality that is bringing humans closer through something hard. That's the silver lining we have to look for, otherwise, it's too hard. I just felt like whatever walk of life you come from, there's such a commonality we went through in that experience. And in life in general, what a way to just look at the world as a neighborhood."
  • This is featured on Townes' 2022 EP, Masquerades, which was named Album of the Year at the 2022 Canadian Country Music Association Awards. Townes also took the trophies for Entertainer of the Year and Female Artist of the Year, as well as Single of the Year for "Girl Who Didn't Care." The latter tune earned her and her co-writers, Steph Jones and Dave Pramik, the Songwriter of the Year title.
  • Townes wrote "Shared Walls" with singer-songwriters Eric Leva and Stephen Wrabel, who both have credits on Kesha's 2020 High Road album.

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