‘Hitmaker’ songwriter Ben Johnson stars on new Netflix series

• The Meridian native, whose songs have become hits for Luke Bryan, Dierks Bentley and others, is branching out in Music City.

One of the most prolific hitmakers to come out of Mississippi in years just made his screen debut on Netflix alongside 11 other behind-the-scenes heavyweights in the music industry.

Meridian native Ben Johnson stars on the new docu-reality series “The Hitmakers,” a six-episode look at how hit songs are made today. 

The musician and songwriter, who’s worked with artists like HARDY, Morgan Wallen and Luke Bryan — and co-wrote Jelly Roll’s recent Platinum-selling hit “Liar” — participated in “songwriting camps” for the show where the writers divided into three teams and penned songs for John Legend, Shaboozey, Usher, and Lisa from Blackpink in exotic locales like the Bahamas and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

“The show is about how your favorite songs are made, and it highlights songwriters from across all different genres,” says Johnson, who just landed back in Nashville after participating in a camp hosted by Jelly Roll (not affiliated with the show). “They filmed us every step of the way, and you get a glimpse of how the industry works.”

Johnson may be pegged as the “country guy” on “The Hitmakers,” but he actually works across genres and had his first hits — “Patient” by Charlie Puth in 2018 and “Believe” by Meek Mill and Justin Timberlake in 2020 — on the pop charts. And his first Grammy nomination came in 2022 for the Weezer song “All My Favorite Things,” showing yet another side of him. 

“We’re chameleons a bit for a living,” he says. “It’s like we can embody a lot of different genres and different voices. The fun part of being a songwriter is you can be something different every day.”

Johnson’s success has been percolating for years. As a kid, he performed bluegrass and country tunes throughout the region with his sisters Jenna and KK as Track 45 (which has evolved into a new group called Whynot). The trio took their talents to Nashville more than a decade ago, where they attended college and began networking and playing gigs where they could find them.   

Although Johnson was the first of the three to land a songwriting deal, they’re all writing professionally now and in April landed their first No. 1 co-written by all three siblings. “All the Way,” performed by BigXthaPlug featuring Bailey Zimmerman, which he calls “a life-changing song,” also reached No. 4 on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100, making it a bonafide crossover pop hit. “It represents a lot of years of hard work,” he says.

Talent can only get an artist halfway, especially in Nashville, where every other Uber driver is either chasing down a dream or trying to claw their way back to it. Hard work and sacrifice are two other important ingredients, but the X factor is often luck. When the siblings moved to Nashville in 2012, for example, one of their first performances at the tiny Basement club led to a collaborative partnership for Johnson that continues today.

“We played a song that had a lyric about the Neshoba County Fair, and a guy who played bass for another band came up to me and said, ‘Man, I’m from Philadelphia. I grew up going to Neshoba County Fair. We should write sometime,’” he says. “And that ended up being HARDY.”

After that meeting, the pair began co-writing songs like “Give Heaven Some Hell,” which turned into a double-Platinum hit for HARDY in 2021. They’re now working on a docuseries called “Music Row,” which aims to show viewers the inner workings of the country music machine. 

“If we hadn’t put the Neshoba County Fair lyrics in there, I might never have met HARDY,” he says. “We might never have written all these songs that ended up being a lot of my favorite songs and launched this career, so it’s kind of great.”

While the hits pile up and accolades follow — Lee Brice’s hit “One of Them Girls,” a song Johnson co-wrote, won the Country Song of the Year in 2021 from ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, the big three music publishers — Johnson is already onto the next thing. 

“I’m songwriting. I’m producing artists. I’m doing TV shows. I’m in a band,” he says. “What’s amazing about music is that there are so many different aspects of the industry that give you an excuse to create.

“I hear about colleges where you can build your own major, and that’s what I feel like I’m doing,” he adds. “I’m building my own job, and for me it’s always been a way to trick the universe into allowing me to stay a kid.”