NEW YORK (AP) — The lead single from Grammy Award-winning duo Dan + Shay's forthcoming album “Young” is a hard pivot from the wedding songs that make up so much of the country pair’s discography.
“Say So,” with its big-hearted and hopeful chorus, is about suicide prevention. It was written in tribute to Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney's late mentor Ben Vaughn, head of Warner Chappell Music Publishing, who died by suicide a year before.
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Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
“If you’re going through hell, you’re not alone,” Mooney sings. “If you need somebody, say so.”
“For one of the first times in our career, I was like, ‘I’m not like sure if we should tackle this,’” Smyers told The Associated Press.
But in the studio, it became an inevitability — even though they were uncertain. “We were just sharing stories about our friend. And it just fell out of us. A verse and a chorus in, and I think we were all just like, ‘I don’t know, man. Is this too heavy to tackle?'” Smyers continued.
Creating the demo together, alongside co-writers David Hodges and Jimmy Robbins, became therapeutic.
“We owed it to our friend Ben,” he said. “We owe it to the community, who he meant so much to. And I feel like we owed it to ourselves to at least see that one through to the finish line.”
What they didn't realize is that the day they started work on the song was also what would've been Vaughn's 50th birthday. “It was more than a coincidence,” he said. “That was the sign that this song could help somebody.”
“Say So” may be the heaviest song off “Young,” but it is also a thematic center for the record — 10 autobiographical tracks of crossover country that reflect their lives, now, with new emotional vulnerability — what Mooney labels “a very life-giving thing.”
The album opens with its title track, the stripped-back acoustic arpeggio “Young,” what Smyers describes as “a message from your future self to your present and past self, about the passage of time and appreciating the moment.”
But there's an additional, gendered resonance. “Men — I just think, maybe I’m generalizing — don’t do as good of a job of sharing their feelings and emotions. And I’m saying that because that’s me,” he said.
“You’re tough. You bottle it up. But when I finally broke down that wall, it changed my life. And I think that song just talks about aging as a man.”
That's yet another difficult subject, which might also explain why, before creating the 10 songs that make up “Young,” Dan + Shay wrote and scrapped an entire album's worth of material. The tracks that made up the final collection took time, open and honest conversation, and a hearty dose of self-reflection.
It's why there may be more religiosity to this album than in the previous works — from the single “Her, The Kids and Jesus” to the album's two mentions of a King James Bible.
“'Her, the kids and Jesus,' that’s kind of a snapshot at what my life looks like right now,” Mooney said.
Grief — and affection — take on many forms across “Young." From the ode to a young adult's first pet (“Dogs in Our Twenties”) to a twist on the traditional love song format and praying your partner dies after you (the ‘90s country-channeling “The Old Guys"), the songs are delivered with tenderness. The latter includes the album's sole feature, Cody Johnson — a neo-traditionalist in country music that, on paper, may seem at odds with Dan + Shay's genre-hybridity. After all, these are the same guys who recorded the multiplatinum crossover hit “10,000 Hours” featuring Justin Bieber in 2019.
“We occupy a very different space in country music,” agrees Smyers. Even vocally — Mooney's got a high register, Johnson sings low, and when they're all singing together, “It's, like, perfectly meeting in the middle.”
It also highlights the range of this album. “There’s kind of a song for everybody, for whatever you’re going through,” says Mooney. “Whatever people need to get out of this album, I hope that they get that.”
Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Dan Smyers, left, and Shay Mooney of Dan + Shay pose for a portrait on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)
Iran on Thursday dismissed U.S. President Donald Trump’ s threats of economic pain and isolation, while the U.K and other nations condemned Israel over a controversial settlement project.
In Gaza City, a mass funeral was held for 50 people killed in Israeli airstrikes nearly three years ago but whose remains were just recovered. Meanwhile, Syria’s foreign minister visited Pakistan, which is seeking to defuse tensions between the United States and Iran.
Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East on Thursday. Full coverage can be found here.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has rejected the economic threats made against his country, saying that such “failed policies” will stir more hostility among Iranians and “bring more failures.”
Araghchi's comments came a few hours after President Donald Trump threatened “crushing economic measures” against Iran. Trump promised “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” but provided few details.
In a social media post, Araghchi maintained the threats aim to divert the attention of the U.S. public from domestic financial problems, adding that U.S. “economic terrorism threatens the global economy and the national sovereignty of countries around the world.”
Several countries condemned the latest development in a contentious Israeli settlement project near Jerusalem that would effectively cut the occupied West Bank in two.
Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing issued a tender for constructing several compounds with more than 1,200 homes in total in an open tract of land east of Jerusalem. It’s the latest step in a project under consideration for more than two decades, which critics say would prevent the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state in the territory.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called the publication of the tender “an unacceptable and destructive act” and denounced “settler violence and terrorism.” In a statement released on Wednesday, he added that the British government “demanded an immediate reversal” and had summoned the Israeli chargé d’affaires.
Egypt and Jordan also condemned Israel’s move, which Cairo said would isolate east Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar responded on Thursday by defending “the historic right of the Jewish people to reestablish their national home in the Land of Israel — including in the area in question.” Saar criticized Britain’s government for “blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism.”
A mass funeral Thursday in Gaza City remembered 50 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in the opening months of the Israel-Hamas war but whose remains were only recently recovered from under rubble.
Dozens of mourners carried the remains, draped in Palestinian flags, through debris-strewn streets before lowering them into graves. Some held portraits and posters with photos of the deceased.
“We were able to recover them after three years of war, after three years of anguish, pain and torture. We were able to recover them, and dignify them in their final resting place. We were able to pray over them and bury them,” said Lina Karam, who lost her father and other members of her family.
The 50 bodies were from three families who were killed in airstrikes in November and December 2023.
The nearly three-year war has killed more than 73,400 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, which was part of the Hamas-run government, maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and international organizations. It doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants, but says women and children make up around half of the toll.
Turkey has denied that a Turkish military delegation had visited an air base in northern Syria that was hit by Israeli airstrikes, and vowed to continue supporting Syria in its efforts to rebuild its military.
The Israeli strikes targeted the Abu Duhur base early on Tuesday, causing damage but no casualties. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had attacked the base because Syria was “on the verge of breaching” an agreed-upon “status quo in security matters” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there.
Syrian officials have said that a Turkish delegation visited the base before the Israeli strike to review rehabilitation work underway there.
Syria's Foreign Minister Assad al-Shibani arrived in Islamabad for talks expected to focus on regional issues, Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
The visit comes days after Israeli airstrikes targeted an air base in northern Syria, causing damage but no casualties.
Pakistani officials say the country's political and military leadership remains in contact with both Iran and United States over efforts to de-escalate tensions and push for the resumption of talks after a 60-day deadline under a June memorandum of understanding expired. The agreement was brokered by Pakistan with help from regional countries.
The bodies of two Pakistanis killed in last week’s Houthi attack on a Tanzanian-flagged commercial vessel in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have been repatriated to Pakistan.
Six Pakistani sailors who were injured in the attack have also safely returned to the country, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said in a post on X.
Mourners carry the flag-draped bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes during the war with Hamas, whose remains were recently recovered from the rubble, in Gaza City, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Mourners carry the flag-draped bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes during the war with Hamas, whose remains were recently recovered from the rubble, in Gaza City, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Mourners attend the funeral Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes during the war with Hamas, whose remains were recently recovered from the rubble, in Gaza City, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Mourners carry the flag-draped bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes during the war with Hamas, whose remains were recently recovered from the rubble, in Gaza City, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
In this photo released by the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, left, shakes hands with his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar before their meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs via AP)
