After making its chart debut on June 24th, Nate Smith’s World On Fire is officially #1 on country radio. This marks the Californian singer/songwriter’s second #1 hit on Billboard’s US Country Airplay chart, joining Whiskey on You which went #1 back in February.
One would think that the song would have been the number one priotrity to be released after Smith and co. penned it; however, that’s simply not the case.
In an exclusive interview with Country Chord, Smith tells Hannah Lane how the song was actually never intended to be released, “I mean, it’s really the song that wasn’t supposed to be. We weren’t going to be putting it out at all.”
That all changed, however, when Smith posted it to TikTok, prompting fans to beg for an official release:
“We shifted gears when the fans were saying that they wanted to hear it, so we ended up putting it on a deluxe album and releasing it the same day as my regular album to get the song out.”
The track, written by Smith, Ashley Gorely, Lindsay Rimes and Taylor Delmar Phillips, always felt like a big song to the Wrecked singer, “I always loved it. It felt like a really big song, and it’s cool to see it go through all this to get to this point.
To say it’s a big song would be a bit of an understatement for Smith. It is currently sitting at over 49 million streams on Spotify, over 45k videos using the sound on TikTok and it obviously secured him his second straight #1 hit in his young career.
Watch the clip with Nate here: