It’s not often that a family contains more than one high-achieving musician. But for gifted actor/singer-songwriter (and Nashville native) Chord Overstreet, whose father Paul has penned No. 1 hits for the likes of Blake Shelton and Randy Travis, artistic success is a family tradition. His band, Overstreet, unveiled their latest, dirty-danceable track, “My Ex,” at the end of 2019, and there’s more to come over the next few months.
Devyn Vaughan
Age: 30
Switching it Up:
Overstreet moved from Nashville to Los Angeles the fall after he graduated high school, and he found success as an actor with roles in films and television series, even starring as Sam Evans on the Fox network’s Glee. But his musical roots were always present.
“Growing up I did impressions of every country artist there is,” he says. “I wasn’t really doing music seriously yet, because I didn’t know if I liked my voice at the time. But then I got injured playing football, and post-knee surgery I was lying around playing video games, and my dad said, ‘Turn that game off and write a few songs.’ After that, I couldn’t stop."
Cranking it Up:
Although Overstreet has been releasing solo music since late 2016 (and writing songs long before that), he didn’t assemble his band until last year. The endeavor was for want of more creative freedom, as he was performing in front of exponentially enthusiastic audiences.
Jack Buster
“The stuff I was doing was more acoustic singer-songwriter stuff,” he says. “Which has a lot of heart and emotion, but I wanted to put on a rock show. I wanted to have as much fun onstage as people are having in the audience.”
Keeping It Real:
“My Ex,” which follows the band Overstreet’s debut EP, Man on the Moon, released this July, is based on a real-life experience for the frontman. Atop a slick, stylized blend of synth pop and indie rock, he sings about a romantic assignation with his ex-girlfriend, who’s now dating someone else.
“I ran into an ex at a bar,” he says, “and there was a moment between us where I was like, ‘I can’t tell, but this might go somewhere.’ Then her boyfriend showed up, and the whole vibe changed.” Nothing happened between the two, but the song, he admits, is a “hypothetical of that happening.”
Listening to the tracks from Man on the Moon, it’s clear that Overstreet writes from a very honest place, reflecting on life experiences with a pop prosody gained from years spent on the stage—and in front of the camera.