"Mess That Marlboro Made" starts with a teenage Jacob Hackworth getting grounded over a pack of cigarettes and follows that purchase into a romance and the breakup after it. He called the July 2026 single the epilogue. It closes What Took You So Long, his seven-song debut EP for MCA and Goat Island Sound, released October 23 and sequenced as a chronological account of the breakup that sent him to Nashville. He has said he didn't set out to write a breakup record; it came together on its own.
MCA says the title track set a record for first-week adds by a new artist when it went to country radio in April, and it has kept climbing. He made his CMA Fest debut in June, opened for Tucker Wetmore for the third time, and this fall has been out with Zach John King, Corey Kent and Dylan Scott. Next spring he's on select dates of Vincent Mason's When You're Not Around Tour.
He co-wrote "Jack and Jill" for Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem with Jared Mullins and Ned Cameron, a song that turns the nursery rhyme into two lovers sliding into pills and alcohol, and has called hearing that Wallen had cut it a "Holy S***" moment.