Background and release
MacKenzie Porter and her husband Jake Etheridge met during a songwriting session, but "Happy Ever After You" marked their first songwriting collaboration in ten years. [3] Porter remarked that the couple had sometimes joked before leaving home for separate songwriting sessions, with one of them asking "got any good hooks I can steal?", and that "Happy Ever After You" was a hook that one of them had suggested several months prior to them writing it together. [4] While the two had long elected to keep their careers separate, Porter was facing challenges after her longtime team at Big Loud closed their artist management division, and she asked Etheridge to write a song with her one night to make her feel better. [5]
Porter initially shared a clip of the two playing the song together on TikTok in December 2024, which received positive comments from a wide variety of fellows artists, including Luke Combs, Ella Langley, John Mayer, Brandi Carlile, and Ernest. [3] [6] The two subsequently released the song in January 2025, and it was later serviced to country radio stations in Canada and Australia. [7] [6] Porter and Etheridge weren't initially sure whether their collaboration would be temporary, but after deciding to pursue a project as a duo, they chose the name "Thelma & James". Thelma is Porter's middle name and her grandmother's first name, while James is Etheridge's legal first name, and was his grandfather's first name. [5]
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