Here’s what will compel Chris Young to record a song he didn’t write

If you’re wondering if Chris Young records songs he didn’t write, the answer is yes, as evinced from his latest and 14th #1 hit, “Young Love & Saturday Nights,” an interpolation of David Bowie‘s “Rebel Rebel.”

But it comes with conditions.

“It’s got to be something I’m looking for that I haven’t been able to write yet or something that just makes me go, ‘God, I wish I’d thought of that first,'” he tells ABC Audio.

“That’s really sort of the songs that I’ve ended up cutting,” adds Chris. “I’ve been really lucky to have an incredible run of songs that have been really big hits for me that I did not write. Most of them I wrote or co-wrote.”

The “really big hits” that Chris didn’t pen include two singles from his 2013 A.M. album.

“‘Who I Am With You’ is a big #1 in my career. That one just went multi-Platinum. ‘Lonely Eyes’ is a song that one of my friends wrote,” the singer shares, before recalling what led him to record “Lonely Eyes.”

“We were going to write a song that day. We did. I still don’t know what the song we wrote was because he played me [‘Lonely Eyes’] first, and I was just like, ‘What? Why would you do that?’ Like, ‘Man, this is great.’ Like, ‘I want that song,'” recounts Chris.

“But it’s part of being in Nashville,” he notes. “I mean, it’s such a huge close-knit but also really spread out community of creatives.”

You can find “Young Love & Saturday Nights” on Chris’ album of the same title, out now.