Divorce Isn't Always Pretty — but Kasey Tyndall Created a Pretty Powerful Song About It

Forty-four miles stood between the two people Kasey Tyndall loved the most. And for most of her childhood, it was those 44 miles that she would travel, sitting in the backseat of one of her parent's cars, watching the world go by and waiting for the moment she would arrive at the other parent's house for yet another visit.

And with every mile, she learned something.

"In my mom's car, we would listen to Heart and Pat Benatar and Joan Jett, and in my daddy's truck, we would listen to country and bluegrass," remembers Tyndall, 25, in a recent interview with PEOPLE. "I mean, I learned how to sing by listening to Alison Krauss while I was riding back and forth to their houses."

It's a memory countless kids of divorced parents share with the singer/songwriter that now finds a home in Music City. But often those memories are tinged with a little bit of pain and a whole lot of resentment, resentment that comes when Mom and Dad aren't together anymore.

But in the case of Tyndall, that scenario was simply not the case.

"My parents divorced when I was really young, and if they ever fought, I didn't know about it," she remembers. "I mean, every basketball game and every show, both sides of the family were there. Honestly, I was blessed."

Nevertheless, the memories of those car rides back and forth between parents is a part of Tyndall's story, a story she began to tell her roommate and fellow country star in the making Lainey Wilson on the back porch of one starlit night in Nashville.

"We started talking about our upbringings and I started talking about my parents being divorced, and I remember saying 'I loved it, except for being the middle man,' and Lainey said, 'Go get a guitar,'" remembers Tyndall, who first picked up the instrument back when she was in the sixth grade. "The first thing I said was, 'I hope Mamma never hears this song.' Everything I said ended up being in 'Middle Man.' We wrote it together right then and there."

Following in the footsteps of divorce-heavy songs such as RaeLynn's "Love Triangle" and the Zac Brown Band's "Highway 20 Ride," "Middle Man" serves as a lyrical account of the times in life when the puzzle pieces don't exactly fit together, and the picture of what you expected turns out to be the one you never expected.

And from the moment the North Carolina native began to play the song around Nashville and such, Tyndall quickly realized that the story she tells in this tune of truth is one that countless people can relate to.

"I didn't realize that so many people had negative experiences until I started playing this song," explains Tyndall, who got her first big break when she won the chance to sing alongside Keith Urban at one of his shows back in 2015.

"I feel like I wrote this song for other people. I didn't know this was going to be a single. It just turned out to be a really well-written song. So, I kept playing it and I kept getting standing ovations and people coming up to me telling me that the song painted a picture of their entire childhood, and I knew I had to put it out."

In fact, soon after playing the song out at various writer rounds around town, Tyndall released it on TikTok, and it went viral.

"It's a matter-of-fact sort of song," she says, who has spent years opening up for artists such as Kane Brown, Kelsea Ballerini and Parmalee. "And everything is true except it was a Hess gas station instead of a Texaco. Texaco had the right number of syllables."

It's also a song that could finally throw Tyndall into the much deserved and much overdue spotlight of country music.

"This one just felt right. I'm the only one who can sing it. It's my story. It's my vulnerable moment that I'm so excited to share with the world."