When singer/songwriter Max created “Lights Down Low,” he wrote the song for his now wife, Emily. Max eventually proposed to her with the song before releasing it as a single. The track is now platinum and cracked the top 10 this week at pop radio. Of course it’s significant on a lot of levels to the artist, but what has its success meant to his wife?

“It’s so insane,” Emily told me after her husband performed at Hackensack Meridian Health Stage 17 as a part of GRAMMY Week. “It’s coming up on 3 years now when I got first sent the original file. Listening to it in my bed, under my covers by myself, to now we’ve traveled the world because of the song together and met so many amazing people, shared so many amazing stories… it’s insane. I never imagined this life.”

“If a song doesn’t mean this much to me, I wouldn’t want it to be this heard,” Max added. “In that way, it’s been very healthy because yunno it’s like, ‘Oh well, maybe somebody should write your new single,’ or something like that and it makes me realize: no. It has to come from my heart because I can’t imagine spending my entire life, every day talking about a song that isn’t something that means so much to me.”

So as the song continues to climb up the chart, Max, nee Schneider, is embracing the pressure of a follow-up as he continues work on his sophomore album. The artist entered a rare stretch during GRAMMY Weekend where he was actually able to hang out at home in New York for a few days – catching up with family, hitting up the studio and even stopping by The Garden to watch his beloved Knicks.