Nashville-based folk duo Haunted Like Human released their new single, “Married in Savannah.”
Made up of lead singer and lyricist Dale Chapman (they/them) and multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Cody Clark (he/him), the duo's “Married in Savannah” acts as a teaser for their upcoming album American Mythology, which is due out in October.
American Mythology will mark Haunted Like Human’s first album release since 2021’s Tall Tales & Fables, with the past three years seeing the band work on refining—rather than re-defining—their sound. That’s for the better—the duo have found a winning formula since releasing their best-known track, “Run Devil Run,” which is rapidly approaching a million streams on Spotify.
A stripped-down, bittersweet folk song, “Married in Savannah” is about “watching someone close to you change.” According to Dale Chapman, “‘Married in Savannah’ is, at its core, a song about growing up and growing into very different people from the ones that you thought you knew. The themes are universal, whether describing a lover, a friend, or anyone else.”
A straightforward four-chord folk guitar progression opens the track before Dale Chapman’s husky vocals enter. As he sings, “I saw it in the pictures / it hardly looked like you,"the guitar adds a trill, and the violin gently weaves in.
As the song moves toward the chorus, Dale Chapman is offset by Cody Clark’s deep vocals, and they both sing: “Oh, we were wild once / open road ahead and you in the passenger seat / oh, we were wild once / making promises and swearing we were playing for keeps.”
This lyric particularly paints the picture of two people growing apart, especially punctuated by the duo singing together—mimicking two people realizing the same thing at the same time. The repetition of the lyric “what a shame to see a wild thing be tamed” throughout also feels like a mantra of someone repeating to themself something they deeply don’t understand, as if by cycling through it over and over, it will somehow make sense.
“Married in Savannah” is a promise of more to come, as the duo prepares to explore what it means to be human through the lens of gods, beasts, and demons on their upcoming album.
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