A month ago, when holiday shoppers were scrolling through websites for gifts and rockin’ around the Christmas tree, it was easy to miss the quiet release of a three-song EP by the developing sister trio The Castellows.
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But tucked onto the end of Alabama Stone, issued Dec. 6 by Warner Music Nashville (WMN), was an exquisitely melancholy song, “Girl That Boy,” that’s a bit of a mystery. Even though the listener doesn’t know it’s a mystery the first time through until the last few seconds.
At the end of its three-and-a-half-minute run, “Girl That Boy” employs a lyrical flip, unexpectedly changing its innocent meaning. It’s jarring, refreshing – and practically demands a second listen, if for no other reason than to figure out how the storyline ended up in such a surprising place. It’s such a fluid revision that the song’s conclusion can be seen in at least five or six nuanced ways, a scenario that’s entertaining to the group.
“People will talk to me about our songs and be like, ‘Oh, I love what you meant when you did that lyric,’” says The Castellows’ Ellie Balkcom. “I’m like, ‘That’s not what I meant, that’s not what I was intending.’ But also seeing alternate meanings from what other people have [imagined] is so cool.”
The inverted finale in “Girl That Boy” isn’t just a surprise to the audience. All five writers were likewise shocked when the song’s narrative wrapped with an unplanned meaning. “It just turned into a completely different song,” says Kendell Marvel (“Either Way,” “Right Where I Need To Be”).
Marvel and The Highwomen’s Natalie Hemby (“Bluebird,” “Pontoon”) started building the mystery with all three of The Castellows – 20-something sisters Ellie, Lily and Powell Balkcom – on Nov. 29, 2023, in Nashville. Marvel didn’t know much about the group, but he was quickly impressed by their skill set and demeanor.
“They were super-smart, you can tell – very respectful and just talented musicians, so far ahead of their time for their age,” Marvel says. “I was really blown away by how grown up they were with their songwriting. And I just had that title, ‘Girl That Boy,’ and had this idea on what I thought it should be, and I thought they were the right artists for it. They were the right age to be saying something like this.”
He envisioned “Girl That Boy” as a mother warning her daughter about the pitfalls of dating a specific guy. But instead of drawing on The Castellows’ firsthand dating experiences, the writers instead focused on a long-established relationship. “They’re very close to their parents,” Hemby notes, “and we all started talking about what their mom would say about their dad. It was an interesting journey.”
Hemby started playing piano in the key of D, easing into a musical progression with a handful of major-seventh chords and minor triads that created a frail framework. She also launched into a melody that emphasized the moody notes in the chords. The text opened with a conversational line that incorporated the hook: “Mama said, ‘Girl, that boy will try to hold your hand.” They repeated the “Girl That Boy” title at the beginning of each successive section of verse – that boy would “try to kiss you” and “try to change your name.”
“We were using things we see in our parents to write that song,” Ellie says, “even if we weren’t [doing it] deliberately.”
But at the end of the last verse, as Mom tells her daughter that this guy is actually good for her, she suddenly changes the relationship: “Girl, that boy, he was your dad.” Suddenly, it was clear that “Girl That Boy” wasn’t really the romantic song it seemed; instead, it celebrated the protective nature of a typical father-daughter relationship. “We didn’t write the song thinking, ‘Oh, let’s flip it at the end,” Hemby recalls. “That was something we just ended on. It was kind of an accident.”
Though they’d written the verses in linear fashion, they struggled with the chorus that day and ultimately tabled it for another two weeks, meeting up again at 9 a.m. on Dec. 14 to tackle it again before they headed off to other writing sessions. “Just because you started that day doesn’t mean you’re supposed to finish it that day,” Hemby says. “It’s good to let it breathe for a minute.”
When they reassembled at Concord Music, the work went fairly quickly. They developed a chorus that suggested youth – “He’s gonna make you mad and act a fool/ ‘Cause he’s got a lot of growing up to do” – but would fit the eventual flip. To match it, the center of the chorus melody landed about six notes higher than the verses, providing a lift, though it concentrated on the related key of B-minor, emphasizing the mystery sonically. And that chorus never once included the hook.
Marvel recorded a gruff-but-emotional work tape, and the Balkcoms made their own work tape with three-part harmony that was, Ellie says, “rough around the edges.”
WMN tapped Durham, N.C.-based producer Brad Cook (Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Bon Iver) to produce two songs. But once they got into Sound Emporium, they expanded the work to five tracks, including “Girl That Boy,” which Cook hadn’t previously heard. After Ellie played it through, the studio group – including Cook on bass, Powell on banjo, Ellie and Mike Harris on guitar, and Eric Slick on drums – instinctively chased down the arrangement without any real planning. Not that they needed any.
“A big part of my job is reharmonizing things,” Cook says. “Maybe we can pull out a different emotion if we reharmonize a part of the song, or switch up the changes here and there. But that one was definitely as-is.”
The musicians applied a less-is-more approach, with minimal fills and swells while The Castellows’ parents watched from the control room. Once those spare instrumental parts – including Ellie’s piano overdub – were completed, the Balkcoms cut their vocals facing each other with three different mics in the center of the main studio with Lily on lead vocal, Ellie singing high harmonies and Powell on the low end. It created more of a unified dynamic than had they worked in separate vocal booths.
“I’ve had this happen with young people before, where most of their entire experience has been them hearing each other in proximity,” Cook notes. “To separate that can take out an element of what they understand at this stage. I hadn’t done that, frankly, in a very long time, trying to get isolated group vocals with minimal bleed in the same room.”
At a later date, Cook had Thomas Rhett’s steel guitarist, Whit Wyatt, put a little more melancholy on the track, and Cook overdubbed a cello part he wasn’t sure The Castellows would appreciate. “We told him to turn it up,” Ellie says.
The result is a gorgeous, haunting performance that sounds a tad harmonically like the Trio: Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. It may have made just a small ripple during the holidays, but some those who unwrapped “Girl That Boy” have flipped out over its flip, and its sweet vulnerability.
“I try not to pay attention to it too much,” Ellie says, “But people who know us personally [were] like, ‘I cried when I heard the end of the song.’ My cousin sent me a picture of her in tears. We’ve gotten a really positive reaction from it. I’m happy – really happy – it’s out.”
