It’s been four years since Nashville outlier Jelly Roll dropped the soulful country ballad “Save Me,” and in that time the revival of his genre has kept pace with his rise to pop superstardom.
For three months, 2024 Country Music Association Awards Entertainer of the Year nominee Jelly Roll has played to sold-out houses in nearly all of the approximately 60 venues where he toured his current album Beautifully Broken.
At the end of every concert, a house structure is burned down with the artist inside. The fire inside the house dies with a plume of water from the ceiling. In each instance the neighborhood of Nashville’s native gets a fresh baptism.
The song he sings that moment is “Save Me.” And while Jelly Roll has been nominated for the biggest prize of Wednesday night’s CMA Awards-Electronic Act of the Year isn’t the category with which he’s most invested.
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“‘Lainey Wilson and I for ‘Save Me,’ for ‘Musical Event of the Year,'” he told The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. “It’d be like ‘Musical Event of a Lifetime’ because it’s changed my whole life three times.”
Need A Break?
In four years, the ballad of broken souls “damaged beyond repair” has moved from being a Music City industry outlier to a globally beloved classic, touching all manner of artists – from Wilson to rap icon Eminem.
David Ray, lifelong friend of Jelly Roll’s and co-writer of “Save Me,” as well as Jon Loba, president of Frontline Recordings for The Americas at BMG, JoJamie Hahr, executive vice president of recorded music at BMG Nashville, and Entertainer of the Year Wilson break down how this song has affected them.
The Recording Of ‘save Me’
While working on his October 2020-released album “Self-Medicated”, Jelly Roll striking the distribution deal with BMG Nashville.
It was on the last day of that album’s 17-day recording run between May and June 2020 in Nashville, Ray recalls sitting in the corner while playing the guitar riff and singing the chorus of what would eventually be “Save Me.”
“Somebody save me.save me from myself,” was all Ray had. Jelly Roll was scrolling through messages on his cell phone in the studio, and he froze.
The friends just stared at one another in amazement. They immediately began quickly writing and composing it into a bluesy, near-dirge of a ballad.
It was a far, far cry from anything the duo had worked on together in over 20 years. It was recorded the same day, June 3, 2020.
It was two weeks after that, on June 16, when Jelly Roll excitedly called Ray to make a proposal as the Nashville area native, songwriter, and owner of his own construction company was out on his tractor mowing the grass on his 30-acre property in Dickson, Tennessee-an hour west of Music City.
“I went from bush-hogging my property to pulling out my acoustic guitar and being at the music video shoot for ‘Save Me’ at Sound Emporium within an hour,” reflects Ray.
“This one’s a little bit of a curveball for me. I don’t do these stripped-down acoustic videos too often, but writing this song made me feel something and I felt y’all needed some insight into the more vulnerable side of the music business,” Jelly Roll wrote in file’s description as he posted the video he recorded for his millions of hyper-engaged YouTube followers.
Rap Roots Connect Jelly Roll, Eminem
For Jelly Roll, though, the roots of “Save Me” go back much farther. He was arrested in the ninth grade for selling drugs at his high school-and two dozen times afterward-and was in prison when he received news of the birth of his daughter Bailee Ann.
They find their way back 20 years to the Outer Limits nightclub.
Freestyle rap battles popularized by the Eminem movie “8 Mile” were a staple there, and still-active rappers gaining regional and national recognition in the era, such as Haystak, began to take notice of Jelly Roll’s skills.
“Jelly was the best rapper,” Ray recalled. “No one could touch him. He was the freestyle king around these parts.”
Immediately after the emergence of “Somebody Save Me”-sounding cut produced by Eminem, Jelly Roll made his opinion known on social media.
“As a teenager (and still today), I could recite every song on the ‘Slim Shady’ album, the ‘Marshal Mathers’ album and the ‘Eminem Show.’
When I bonded out of jail at 17 years old and was sneaking into cyphers and battles in Nashville, they would also play the ‘Lose Yourself’ beat when I came out on stage at the freestyle battles.
I felt like he understood me; I can relate to every word Eminem wrote. This was rare because until well into my teens, I spent most of my life feeling misunderstood.”
Ray said Eminem’s sampling of the track was the moment of validation for a couple of guys who for years, bought every one of his CDs and remained inspired by them to figure out how to make it in the music industry.
How Jelly Roll Found His Voice
As an artist, “Save Me” will be Jelly Roll’s turn from the braggadocious battle emcee to America’s favorite gospel blues crooner.
Longtime listeners have gotten to associate his signature sound with him through early tracks featuring frequent falsetto vocals.
It’s an endearment to his earlier sound much like Struggle Jennings growl in the hoarse baritone for his closest confidant and “Waylon and Willie” mixtape partner.
Ray remembers meeting Jelly Roll, when, as broke independent and underground rappers their shared tastes for artists including Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, Al Green, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson, among many others began to give a glimpse of the emotional ranges to which he’d someday be willing to gravitate.
He has managed to do exactly that, catching an enormously more lucrative career as a rapper-turned-crooner with influences in a myriad of genres.
Wilson Speaks ‘save Me’
By 2023, “Save Me” had already proven to be a humongous hit. Together with his 2021 album “Ballads of the Broken” singles “Dead Man Walking” and “Son of A Sinner,” it accounted for five million in singles sold.
Cutting “Save Me” as a duet was a brilliant move. This song did have that bluesy sound and exudes the two vocalists’ growing confidence and maturity amid their shared rise to country stardom.
“Save Me works as a duet because although Jelly and I come from two different walks of life — I am a little country girl from Baskin, Louisiana and he’s this rough around the edges city guy from Nashville with tattoos on his face,” Wilson said.
“But the magic happens in that song because we’re humans, first, we speak because we have something to say, second.”
The shared pain of embracing trauma creates an obvious connective tie to country’s fans. Alongside “Save Me,” Wilson collaborated with HARDY on the 2022 song in a similar vein of darkness and melancholy murder ballad “wait in the truck.”
However, Jelly Roll and Wilson have achieved phenomenal gains in popularity after this “Save Me” collaboration. A stronger association is thus represented by the song.
The duo are not saviors carrying the world’s grief. Rather, they appear to be representatives of healed souls celebrating the delight of an accidental lifeline to something better.
“Women have always worn the shoes that song describes but hadn’t heard themselves sing that type of song in country music in a long time,” she said.
“Hearing me on that song pulled them into a story they believed they needed to see themselves in how it finished.”
A ‘Unique, Beautiful Power’
“Save Me” is one of the country songs that have had three “lifetimes” in modern musical history.
Less than two years old when Bobby Bare finally recorded it in Oct. 1977, “The Gambler”, by Don Schlitz-written would also soon be cut by Schlitz in March 1978.
The song would eventually become one of the classics for Kenny Rogers and was cut back in Oct. 1978, a month shy of Johnny Cash’s recordings.
Bare’s cover failed to chart. Schlitz’s peak was to No. 65. Rogers used the hit to become a Grammy-winning and pop-crossover country chart-topper.
David Allan Coe recorded “Tennessee Whiskey” in 1981, although that’s as high as that version climbed on the country charts, to No. 77. By Aug. 1983, the version of the song George Jones cut in the same Sound Emporium Studios where Jelly Roll first recorded “Save Me” was released. That reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in three months.
In 2015, Chris Stapleton performed the R&B-styled version of “Tennessee Whiskey he’d released earlier that year on his star-making album “Traveller” at the CMA Awards as a duet with Justin Timberlake.
Within less than six months of that performance, it was a platinum-selling chart-topper. Fast forward ten years and it’s an over 14-time platinum-selling career and genre-redefining track.
It was 2020; a fever dream of a solo album cut. Then, three years later, it served to platform and cement Jelly Roll and Wilson’s ascension to stardom.
Now, in 2024, it is yet one more in the lineup when rap and pop legend Eminem needed one final track for what rumor says is his 12th and last album, “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce),” “Somebody Save Me” emerged.
While performed largely by Eminem, the chorus of “Somebody Save Me” samples from “Save Me.”
“Regardless of the subject matter, said BMG president Loba, (Save Me) is a special, relatable, and universal song that has already connected with many people.
In each of its forms, the song has the unique, beautiful power to absorb pain from both its vocalist and listener.
Eminem Jumps On Board
Loba excitedly recalled receiving word from the team of Eminem that the hip-hop legend wanted to use a sample of “Save Me” for his final album.
Jelly Roll and Eminem longtime manager, Paul Rosenberg, had been on those phones for a pretty long time before the final recording of “Somebody Save Me,” Ray said.
After signing a publishing deal with Warner Chappell, B.J. Hill, their senior vice president of A&R, let Ray know that Interscope Records (the label to which Eminem is signed) would be contacting him.
He was in a songwriting session when word came down that Eminem needed Ray’s approval before he could continue with the sample he intended to use with his track.
“My high expectations for what the song could be were definitely met. Like hearing Lainey’s version, hearing Eminem’s take reduced me to chills and tears,” Loba said.
“Sometimes, the best cover song is one that captures the magic of an original version,” he said. “But this rare song compounds and amplifies the previous version.”.
Jelly Roll says he cried when he heard Eminem would be using the song “to talk about the other side of what could’ve happened if he had let his demons win.”
Save Me allowed Jelly Roll to grow from being a personable country outsider, now being an honest, certifiable superstar who can “push the envelope of country music by saying big, scary things that everybody feels but are afraid to say,” said BMG Nashville Executive Vice President of Recorded Music JoJamie Hahr.
That, to Hahr, is the current pop stardom of Jelly Roll, how the modern era of country has aesthetically and sonically evolved from “polished” artists like Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw to artists like Jelly Roll and Luke Combs, among many whose blue-collar edginess makes them entertainingly approachable.
“Real people sing about real problems,” says Hahr bluntly.
‘A Bargain I Made With God.’
“If it doesn’t feel right, Jelly doesn’t do it,” says Ray when asked why Jelly Roll has allowed “Save Me” to have so many incarnations.
“Jelly Roll’s still all heart,” he said. “And because he’s all heart and his career goals never had a plan B, he worked himself to a place where his (aspirations) became his destiny.”
Asked the same question, Jelly Roll revisits his tumultuous childhood lived in and out of prison.
“My musical career and the rest of my life was built upon a deal I made with God while sitting at rock bottom and afraid that, even if things improved, I wouldn’t know how to handle success,” he said.
“I told him I’d. blown every opportunity I’d ever been given. I promised that if things ever got better, I’d give him credit and do right at every opportunity.” Says He: “Moments like ‘Save Me’ are me honoring my end of the deal I made with God.”