Kolby Cooper Talks Meeting Blink-182's Mark Hoppus, Reveals Story Behind New Single 'Kill Me' (Exclusive)

Kolby Cooper Talks Meeting Blink-182's Mark Hoppus, Reveals Story Behind New Single 'Kill Me' (Exclusive),The country rocker co-wrote his new song with Michael Whitworth and Jelly Roll producer Andrew Baylis.

Kolby Cooper Talks Meeting Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, Reveals Story Behind New Single ‘Kill Me’ (Exclusive)

Country rocker Kolby Cooper is living his dream in so many ways that you could very easily call him the luckiest man on Earth. The 24-year-old and his wife recently welcomed their third child — making Cooper a “boy dad” for the first time — and he has a brand new song out now, “Kill Me,” an epic guitar-driven anthem that crowds are already signing back to him. If that’s not enough, he also recently met one of his music heroes, Mark Hoppus of Blink-182, who Cooper says is one of his “top three bands ever.”

PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Cooper about all he has going on, and it was clear that seeing Blink-182 live for the first time and meeting Hoppus were a formidable moment for him. Explaining the story behind his big meeting, Cooper explained, “Lisa Mastrianni at BBRMG/Wheelhouse Records, my label, when we first started doing radio tour, man, you go out with these people for three days sometimes all across the country. You get to know them pretty well, and Lisa, we hit it off real quick. She’s worked with so many cool motherf—ers in just the music industry. She worked Snoop Dogg records, she worked with Mac Miller, she worked New Radicals and Blink 182, and so many more.”

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He continued, “It was probably October and we were in the car, she was like, ‘Hey, Blink just announced their tour and they’re playing, Bridgestone [in Nashville, TN] is the last day. You want to go?’ I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ She’s, ‘All right, well, I’ll hit Mark up and I’ll get some tickets.’ I was like, ‘You’re just going to hit him up?’ So I was like, ‘All right, sounds good.’ I put it in my calendar, and I mean, she hit my manager up and had him put it in there. The date came and I was like, “S—, I guess we’re really doing this.” I went to her house, we showed up and we went back there and dude, I mean, to get to meet Mark, he was such a nice guy. It was so f—ing cool just to meet someone who makes music that I care so much about and that is so f—ing good.”

Cooper added, “And for him to be so nice also. It was just great. It was great all around. And they were. The show was great. It was my first time seeing them. It was 10 out of 10.” The singer-songwriter also shared that his love of rock has been creeping into his sound more and more, saying, “As far as influences too, man, I think you can definitely, really in the new music hear more and more my rock side coming out, finally.”

This brings us to “Kill Me,” a song that is as addictive as its subject matter. “The thing that I love about trying to write songs, I guess not necessarily open-ended, but to where people can have their own interpretation,” he said of his approach to songwriting, and “Kill Me” specifically. “We wrote it in the way of almost, I guess you’re addicted to love. But it’s really the first two lines of the chorus from the first two lines that I had: ‘There’s a wildfire on top of this hill. I don’t know why I’m climbing still.’ And it was about just life in general and all the vices in life: drugs, alcohol, love, and really just any cheap thrill, f—ing gambling, all that s—.”

Reflecting on what “Kill Me” is meant to say, Cooper offered, “Life is a very addictive thing, which is, I think, the reason that the highs can be so high and the lows can be so low. That’s what we were writing about was I think that there are more people in the world that struggle with some sort of addiction, big or small. I mean, TV or your phone? It doesn’t have to be drugs necessarily, but there’s plenty of people who do struggle with drugs and alcohol and people who struggle with their love life and with settling down, with not being addicted to f—ing chaos and just blowing things up. That’s really the angle we wrote it from. Yeah. I really just wanted to, I guess, show everybody that everybody struggles with something, dude. It’s a tough life regardless of who you are.”

Elaborating on his love of songwriting, Cooper confessed, “That’s the beauty of it, man, is that everybody finds their own story in a song. That’s my favorite thing about writing them and my favorite thing about listening to songs is finding my own story… So you don’t get every single detail that you need. You let your brain paint the rest of it.”

The fact that he’s accomplished so much in what seems like a brief amount of time, is not lost on Cooper. “I just turned 24 back in May, and been doing this since I was 18,” he said, “And man, as an 18-year-old writing and making music, it’s so much harder to…,” he then quipped. “I mean, when you’re 18, you don’t know what the f— you’re doing, man.” He continued, “So just like most kids don’t know what they want to do with their life, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with music. I was just pulling for music that we’ve been writing since we were 13, 14, 15, 16 and all this stuff.”

Fast forward six years, Cooper has been working with musicians and producers such as Michael Whitworth and Andrew Baylis, who is known for his work with artists such as Jelly Roll and Koe Wetzel. “Halfway through this process, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is f—ing it. This is what I’ve been looking for since I was 18. This is the sound.” I think you can hear from 18 to now, there’s a progression.”

Cooper went on to point out, “With our last album [Boy From Anderson County To The Moon] there’s a couple songs that are heavier, like ‘Are We On Fire’ and ‘Storm’s Coming,’ and then this new stuff is just kicking the f—ing door down of that. That was just right on the edge of what we wanted. Then we finally locked it in and I was just like, ‘Man, this is it.’ We wrote all of my favorite songs over the past year. God, I’m so excited for people to hear them.”

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“Kill Me” could very well be considered the beginning of a new era for Cooper, and it comes as he gets closer to what he wants, as opposed to being at the cost of compromising. “I’ve always considered myself a songwriter since I was a kid. It’s always been my favorite part of doing it. I would say it’s tied with playing. I love them equally in their own way, with playing live,” he said. “Every day that I get older, I care more and more about what I say and how I say it.”

Cooper added, “Not in the way of I’m going to stop cussing in songs or anything, but more in the way of, I just want to make sure that whenever I put s— out, that I really, really f—ing mean what I say before it’s out, because one day my kiddos are going to be 20 years old and probably going to be listening back to dad’s music every once in a while. I want that s— to mean something.”

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