Stephen Wilson Jr. + Brothers Osborne Song Arose From Heartache

Stephen Wilson Jr. was a guest on Taste of Country Nights, where he revealed how a heartbreaking phone call from his sister ultimately led to him co-writing a song for Brothers Osborne.

When Wilson Jr. told me the story behind the song, “Make It a Good One,” it gave me goosebumps.

“We actually started writing this other song — I don’t even remember what it was called — and my sister called,” Wilson Jr. said. He noted that she rarely called him in the afternoon, so he immediately knew something was wrong.

Wilson Jr. explained that he told John and TJ Osborne to hang tight while he stepped out of the writer’s room to take the call. On the other end of the line, his sister delivered devastating news.

“‘Dad’s at the doctor right now, and he’s telling me a lot of really bad things,’” she told him.

The country newcomer said his sister was overwhelmed and looking to him for support.

“She’s freaking out, and she needs support,” Wilson Jr. recalled. “And here I am at this write, and she’s like, ‘I’ll let you know in the next 45 minutes — we should get some results back from these scans.’”

“I was really distracted. We got back to sort of writing a song, but I was shell-shocked,” he said. “I couldn’t think about anything else. I was just nervously existing in that room.”

Read More: T.J. Osborne of Brothers Osborne Comes Out as Gay

The “Gary” singer explained that about 45 minutes later, he received a text from his sister that said, “Make sure you’re home for Thanksgiving this year.”

“That told me everything I needed to know,” he added.

When Did Stephen Wilson Jr.’s Father Die?

Stephen Wilson Jr.’s father, Stephen Wilson Sr., died in September of 2018 at the age of 59.

After Wilson Jr. returned to the writer’s room with Brothers Osborne, he recalled something significant happening at the exact moment he was questioning whether the writing session should continue.

“I remember John Osborne turned around and said, ‘Boys, I’m not sure I’m feeling this idea we’re working on,’” Wilson Jr. recalled. “Then he said, ‘I’ve got a chorus I’ve been working on — we wrote it the other night on the bus.’”

Wilson Jr. then sang the hook from the song on Brothers Osborne’s 2020 Skeletons album:

Make it a good one / Make it a long one /
If you’re gonna pour one / Make it a strong one.

He went on to explain that the lyric was exactly what his father would have said to him in that moment.

That was his mentality. Wilson Jr. said, “It became very apparent in that moment that for me to leave that room and not write a song, my dad would have said, ‘Don’t you dare leave that room.’”

He concluded by saying, “When they put that out, that was the song that really meant so much to me, just because of how it started. My whole life changed from that point forward.”

Check out some pictures from Brothers Osborne winning the Angels Among Us Award back in 2023.