Niko Moon’s ‘Rich Man’ Mines a Valued Country Theme, Brings Perspective to Priorities: ‘The Kind of Thing That We Like to Be Reminded Of’
Categoria: Musica
Billboard's Makin' Tracks column looks at the writing and recording behind Niko Moon's "Rich Man."
Por Billboard | 24/09/2026
Family and finances make strange, but necessary, bedfellows. Parents want to provide for their kids, but too much working can create distance between the breadwinner and everyone at home. Conversely, if there’s not enough income, that has its own intensity, particularly at the end of the month. Against that backdrop, Niko Moon offers “Rich Man,” a song he wrote on the road in the Midwest. Touring successfully is a goal for nearly every working artist, but the separation that goes with it makes that interplay between the people and the pocketbook even more pronounced. “Every time I leave,” Moon says, “my little four-year-old girl runs and she wraps her arms around me, and she holds so tight she just won’t let go. I go on the road every weekend for three or four days, and then I’m home for three or four days, so I’m on the road about half of my life, and it’s never easy. I mean, my heart breaks every three days, you know, because I gotta leave her. But I know I got to because I gotta take care of her, provide for her, you know, be a good dad in that way.” One way Moon decided to maximize his time at home was to do his songwriting on the road during 2025, creating his entire Roots album — released July 17 by Happy Cowboy/EMPIRE — during the American Palm Tour. It launched Oct. 2 at Joe’s Live in Rosemont, Ill., just outside of Chicago. Moon asked songwriter-producer Danny Majic (Shaboozey, Jacob Hackworth) to join him, and Majic in turn suggested they bring along songwriter Fraser Churchill (“Black Like Me,” “High Heels”), who was impressed by the whole songwriting operation. “Danny and I would go into the dressing room, and as the guys were building the stage and getting sound checked, we would set up speakers in Niko’s dressing room, and we would get the laptop up, and we would start working on songs,” Churchill remembers. “I’ve never seen it done that efficiently. Niko is touring his current album while he’s writing his next album.” They started “Rich Man” at that first tour stop, toying with a love-over-money concept. Churchill locked into a hypnotic, midtempo riff on acoustic guitar that resonated with the other two, and it laid the foundation for the rest of the song. “That whole riff kind of pervades the entire song,” Moon says. “I didn’t want it to just be something that only happened in hook moments. I wanted it to kind of continue constantly throughout the song, so you’ll notice in the verses and choruses, even when it’s not the focus, we kind of filter it down and kind of take it underwater and let it live below the surface a little bit in the background.” The process wasn’t particularly orderly, but they got the chorus melody down first, dropping the title forcefully into the first line of that chorus, which automatically gave some direction to the rest of the words and melody. “When he goes to that ‘rich man’ note, we don’t want anything to outshine that,” Majic says. Moon fashioned the first lines of the song’s melody around portions o