MITCHELL TENPENNY - Not Today - Riser House/Columbia Nashville

As “Bigger Mistakes” is still making impact at country radio and “Breaking My Heart” is continuing to resonate playlists, Platinum selling artist Mitchell Tenpenny has created an extremely heightened anticipation for his forthcoming album.

He now furthers the tease of things still to come with his latest release, “Not Today,”.

Co-written by Mitchell, Chris DeStefano, Michael Whitworth, and Claire Douglas, the song intriguingly offers a flash of insight into Tenpenny’s earliest years of crafting songs as its inception pulls back to his college days, interestingly, to when this now up-tempo song was in its infancy as a ballad.

Bringing the flavors of who he is today as an evolved singer-songwriter into the perspective of the song adds an intensity to the “not getting over you” lyric as he trails the grit that’s naturally embedded into his voice against the drive of the melody in a blended accent to the many ways that he’s trying to numb the pain of losing her.

Tallying each of the verses with a list like fashion of his efforts to try and get over her, he confesses that he’s letting it burn, has tried going back to church, hit the town for a late night out with the boys, offered up a drunk prayer from a barstool, and found a “heart in the downtown lost and found.”

But as the drums pound into the chorus amid Tenpenny lifting his voice, there’s an expert smashing of frustrations that combine into a cohesive sonic blast of sound to engulf the full emotional struggle of knowing your losing the fight of mending your broken heart while falling into the acceptance that one day you’ll get through it, just not today:

“I'll find a way to forget you

With a bottle, a bible, or a mistake

I know I'm gonna move on, I know I'll be ok

I'll find a way to forget you

I'm gonna give my broken heart a break

Baby, gimme some time

I'll get you off of my mind

Just not today”

Anyone who’s played the game of love and lost has felt the sting of a broken heart and the helplessness of feeling stuck on what was while you’re failing in your efforts to move forward. Tenpenny masterfully uses the honesty in the edges of his voice to create a flow between melody and lyric in a songwriting clinic on “Not Today,” but he also provides an anthem to the broken hearted that reminds them that they aren’t alone in their battles.

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis)

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