Inside Look: Salt Lake City Americana Songwriter Daniel Young & His New Single ‘The World Ain’t Gonna Wait’

Twenty years is a long time to commit to any sort of fine skill, but singer-songwriter Daniel Young has proven that his two decade commitment to music has paid off.

Guitarist, drummer, sound engineer, and producer are just a handful of the additional titles that Young can add to his long list of musical credentials as well. The artist has been responsible for playing the acoustic, electric, and steel guitar, along with synth, percussion, and harmonica on his recordings, proving he’s a force of talent to be reckoned with. 

Young is from Salt Lake City, where he creates music at a home studio overlooking the Oquirrh mountains. The area serves as a source of creative inspiration for the Americana artist, which is a rather appropriate setting for a genre that’s kind of a “wild west” in itself — a genre where country, rock, and folk form seamlessly together, just like the mountain formations in Utah.  

Young released the debut single for his third studio album, The World Ain’t Gonna Wait on December 6th. The album is a follow-up to his last record, Television Static, released in March of 2020, proving the pandemic hasn’t hindered Young’s creative streak. His latest album is said to “chronicle the urgency and uneasiness of the everyday emergency”- an uneasiness that has become all-too-familiar in today’s current state. The record is set to release in early 2021. 

In the album’s namesake and aforementioned debut single “The World Ain’t Gonna Wait”, Young teams up with guitar player Sadler Vaden of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, and organ player Trevor Nealon of The Band of Heathens. Together, the group created a Traveling Wilburys-esque cut, and a perfect soundscape for driving along the Oquirrh Mountains at sunset with the windows rolled down. With these collaborations, the instrumentation is what makes the track stand out most. The song is highlighted by a stand-out electric guitar solo, along with a b3 organ melody which gives the song a classic rockabilly element so many modern Americana acts seek to reproduce. 

Ultimately, “The World Ain’t Gonna Wait” proves that Daniel Young fits seamlessly into the country-rock blend of Americana music, and that his upcoming album with the same name is one to look forward to.