Zach Crowell and Jelly Roll have been friends long before either one of them became country powerhouses — Crowell as a Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter and Jelly Roll as one of the most compelling and successful artists to emerge in the genre over the last few years.
“In the real music business, Jelly might be the person I’ve known the longest,” Crowell, 44, tells Billboard. “I started out making rap music in the mid-2000s around Nashville. I’m born and raised in Nashville, and so is Jelly. Jelly was just a rapper who used to buy beats and studio time from me back in the day.”
By the time Jelly Roll shifted to country music, Crowell was already an established hitmaker, having written and/or produced songs for artists including Carrie Underwood, Sam Hunt, Luke Bryan and Keith Urban. He co-produced much of Jelly Roll’s breakthrough country album, 2023’s Whitsitt Chapel, and then produced the bulk of follow-up Beautifully Broken in 2024 — featuring “Heart of Stone” from the latter set, which becomes yet another No. 1 hit on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart and reaches a new No. 53 high on the Billboard Hot 100 on charts dated Oct. 11.
Below, Crowell reflects on crafting the thumping, emotionally charged single, from the recording process to the biggest challenges along the way.
You co-wrote “Heart of Stone” with Jelly Roll, Blake Pendergrass and Shy Carter. How did it happen?
There were a couple of writing camps; we rented a house just outside of [Nashville]. There’s three or four producers in various rooms, and in each, three or four writers with them. You do that for a couple of days, and Jelly bounces from room to room. I had made a little track: a chord progression and a drum loop and sang a little bit of a melody and a lyrical idea. It was just one of the ideas that I brought into the camp — a lot of times you try to be strategic about what rooms you bring it to. Some combinations of writers are better for certain ideas. When I pitched that idea, they loved it. I’m pretty sure we finished it that day.
How did you get the tone right for the track? Were there a lot of takes?
Most hit Nashville songs I’ve recorded with bands in studios, but that I did in pieces. I initially made the basic track, then I brought [in] guitar player Nathan Keeterle. At that point, it’s still a demo. Once it made the cut for the album, I realized it needed live drums, so I took it to Aaron Sterling. We thought it’d be cool to have live strings — David Davidson put together a string section. It was pieced together, which was inspiring. Sometimes it can get stale when you’re recording a band in the studio and everyone’s playing at the same time. This made it a little bit fresher.
The song blends the spiritual and the secular and in many ways is a prayer.
One hundred percent and that’s the brand of Jelly, the thing that he established. That goes as far back as the rap music he used to make back in the day. He was always in that world, blending prayer with music and hope and pain. Jelly’s music is not [for] the party guy. That’s just never really been his thing when it comes to music. When you have the idea of a heart of stone, it’s then just down to Jelly to do his thing, which is talk about his struggles and turn it into a song of redemption. This is a theme throughout Jelly Roll’s music forever. I think he nailed it on that one.
When did Jelly Roll come in to do the vocal? It’s a very vulnerable song.
It still blows my mind that the rapper who I used to work with comes over and sings at the house. For this, I flew out to Los Angeles. We spent a couple of days in the studio cutting vocals on a bunch of songs. Jelly is such a workhorse of a singer; it’s not toying over every little thing. Everything he sings is emotional — that’s one reason he connects so well. The songs are so honest, and his fans feel him in the performance. It’s not hard to get that out of him. He just sings and there it is. It’s very easy to connect to.
What was the biggest challenge for you in producing this track?
The biggest challenge, 100% truthfully, would be just tracking down Jelly Roll. This album came out a year or so ago and [before that, Whitsitt Chapel] put him on the map, [and] he got super-duper famous. So, he’s just not available. That just is what it is. But everybody got it done and it’s working very well.
A version of this story appears in the Oct. 4, 2025, issue of Billboard.
