Change is one of the few inevitabilities in life. Feeling the pressure, McMillin splashes into a cosmic soundscape, as he grasps onto how things used to be. “What It Was” finds him accepting the present but still yearning for the past. “Maybe it’s just better off this way / Some say you begin to die when you refuse to change,” he sings.

A self-written track, “What It Was” makes an unexpected stylistic swerve into blues-rock territory. “It wasn’t intentional at first, but I think it makes sense for the setting of this song being in Nashville,” he says in a press statement. He then notes how it also mixes in hip-hop for good measure – evidenced through “drums switches from straight-ahead quarter notes to a J Dilla style swing beat,” he explains.

McMillin’s latest calls to the work of Marcus King and Gary Clark, among others, who were seeing constant rotation in his playlists. “And then it hits you all at once / It never will be what it was,” he sings over a throbbing, electric backbeat. It’s a low-smolder that’ll get your body moving from side-to-side and breathing in the moment.

Listen to “What It Was” below.

McMillin currently serves as the frontman for the Rolling Stone Rock Room, as featured on Holland America Cruise Lines. Current plans are to sail through the Mediterranean and to Scandinavia, as well as the Caribbean.