Written by Samuel Kaplan
After the breakout success of his heartfelt single “Keeps Me Sane,” Tyler Nance is back with a track that proves he’s not afraid to dig even deeper; literally and figuratively. His new single, “Shovel,” trades the redemptive glow of his last release for something rawer and more confessional, capturing the feeling of being buried by life’s pressures and still finding the grit to keep clawing upward.
From the opening verse, “Here we go again / It seems like I’m always hitting a dead-end road / I’m rock-bottom low,” Nance sets the stage for a song about desperation, debt, and disillusionment. The imagery is stark but relatable: a broke man paying off what he owes, losing hope but still moving. It’s the kind of blue-collar poetry that feels born from long nights and real struggles rather than Nashville conference rooms.
The bridge circles back to the whiskey-fueled wishful thinking of the pre-chorus, but now it sounds less like self-pity and more like confession. By the final chorus, Nance’s voice rises above the instrumentation with a kind of exhausted hope, making “Shovel” as cathartic to hear as it likely was to write.
If “Keeps Me Sane” introduced Tyler Nance as a rising artist with a gift for heartfelt storytelling, “Shovel” cements him as one who’s unafraid to tackle the darker corners of that narrative. It’s a gritty, unflinching portrait of struggle and one of his strongest releases yet.
You can listen to "Shovel" here: