Last year, singer/songwriter Forest Blakk released his ballad “If You Love Her.”  This year, he opened up his DMs to find that a Grammy-winning artist had reached out to him to collaborate. They created a duet in just a few days — after he realized it wasn’t a prank, that is.

“Every interview that I’ve done, people had asked me…has anybody [famous] slid into your DMs that you’re like, ‘Wow!’…and y’know, I didn’t have a really great story,” Forest tells ABC Audio. “And then, next thing you know, it’s like, Meghan Trainor slides into my DMs on, like, I think it’s a Thursday or Friday…and I’m like, ‘This can’t be real!'”

What’s more, Meghan already had it all figured out.

“It was very simple,” Forest laughs about Meghan’s message. “It’s ‘Yo, I’m your biggest fan…I love your song. I recorded a version of it. Here’s my number. Text me.’ And I had to go ask my girlfriend, like, is this real? And it was real.”

“I texted and Meghan, true to her word, sent a version of the song with her vocal in it and lyrics already written!” he explains. “And I was taken aback. I was like, ‘This is absolutely incredible!’ So the song was recorded on a Friday and pretty much done by the Monday. It was wild.”

Released in April, the song’s been climbing the charts since then.  Forest says he’s happy that Meghan was able to use his song to inspire lyrics reflecting her own relationship.

“Her version of the story is different, but that’s another point of the song: It lends itself to everyone to share their version of it,” he notes. “I love the fact that she did it. I love the fact that people out there are singing it!”

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