Conner Smith earned his first top 20 single when his swampy speedster, “Creek Will Rise,” worked its way to No. 12 onAirplay. Its torrid pace and pickup truck motif likely made more than a few listeners think of Garth Brooks’ “Ain’t Goin’ Down .”But the follow-up — “Roulette on the Heart,” featuring a vocal assist from Hailey Whitters -— resembles a country classic from the other end of the energy spectrum, the Brad Paisley/Alison Krauss duet “Whiskey Lullaby.
“I’ve been writing with him for a long time now,” says songwriter Mark Trussell . “What I’ve noticed is that he does kind of need to step out and step back in. It’s good for him creatively to take a break and come back. And then he comes back real fresh, and he can just pick up a guitar and spit out a whole verse. He’s really good at doing that.”
Verse two focused on an intimate moment between them, mixing a half-dressed sexual inference with another “steel of a Colt” gun metaphor. Alexander had a leading role in that stanza’s tone. “I love provocative, I love edgy -— you know, shock value,” she says. “I’m the girl that put makeup sex in ‘Mine Would Be You,’ so I’m like, ‘Bring it on. Let’s do something kind of edgy.’ ”
Just days after writing it, Smith sang it during a WDAF Kansas City concert at PBR Big Sky on Dec. 7, 2022. A rowdy cowboy bar wasn’t the best venue for an unknown ballad — patrons mostly ignored it — but when Smith was done, fellow artist Whitters leaned over to compliment him on a “brash” song with an uncommon level of vulnerability.