Dan + Shay Are the Most Romantic Guys in Country Music Right Now

Sometimes it takes more than a country minute for the world to take notice of the next big thing.

Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney, the artists otherwise known as Dan + Shay, have been toiling away on the country scene for almost a decade, but now... Now, they're pretty much everywhere, and they have the six Billboard Music Award nominations—a reward for those who are out-selling and out-streaming the competition—to show for it.

So far in what has been a stellar 2019, the pals from Pennsylvania (Dan) and Arkansas (Shay) have picked up their first Grammy, for Best Country Duo/Group Performance on "Tequila," and their first-ever Academy of Country Music Awards, for Vocal Duo, Single and Song of the Year for "Tequila."

"We're just fans of country music," Smyers told reporters backstage at the ACM Awards, where they also performed "Keeping Score" with Kelly Clarkson, per The Boot. "We moved to Nashville in 2010 because we wanted to write country music. We never imagined this would happen. This is so surreal. It has been such a cool moment, and we are just honestly so thankful. We are still trying to process it all."

They only have two more days till they join Tori Kelly onstage at the Billboard Music Awards, but we have a feeling they've become pretty efficient at processing, considering all the new milestones they've been reaching lately in rapid succession.

"After the second [award]," Mooney added, "I was just like, 'This is absolutely crazy.' You work so hard every single day back in Nashville, and we both families, we live our lives, and we experience things, and we write about them, and you spend years sometimes putting together a record."

The duo have become known for packing emotion into their songs, such as their intensely personal 2016 tune "From the Ground Up," which was inspired by their respective grandparents' enduring marriages. It was their third single to go platinum,

"Right off the bat, we mention our grandparents, who were actually both married for over 65 years," Smyers told Rolling Stone. "This song began with a discussion as I was just returning from my grandpa's funeral in Ohio. We shared stories about the true love of our grandparents, and the song basically wrote itself."





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