Ryan Griffin Makes Acting Debut in New ‘Heart to Break’ Music Video [Exclusive Premiere]

Ryan Griffin always knew he wanted to make his acting debut in his new music video for his addictive new single, “Heart to Break.”

He just wasn’t sure which role he should take.

“I ended up playing ‘the ex’ that watches it all go down,” Griffin says with a laugh in a recent interview with Taste of Country. The video treatment has him playing the curious bartender watching as an ex-girlfriend — played by fellow country music artist Jennifer Hart — thwarts the advances of a bunch of good-looking guys during a night on the town with her girlfriends.

“Sometimes you just don't have anything left to give, you know?” he muses.

Indeed, “Heart to Break” touches on the real possibility that there is a deeper reason why that girl isn’t interested. Because maybe, that girl has just had her heart broken a few too many times.

“From a woman's perspective, I've never heard it said this way, and from a guy's perspective, I've never heard it said this way,” says Griffin of “Heart to Break,” which serves as the Florida native’s first release that he did not write. “It's really interesting hearing people's first take on it.”

Griffin also says he is looking forward to seeing people’s reactions to the video, premiering exclusively on Taste of Country, seeing as the story ends with a bit of a mysterious feel when the leading lady seems to hand her number to the bartender, played by Griffin.

Or, does she?

“You see it's a picture of them, and from there, you start to understand the history and it all kind of makes sense at the end of the video,” Griffin explains of the video of the song written by Adam Hambrick, Ben Stennis and David Fanning. “I thought that was a really cool way of doing it.”

So, does the bartender end up with the girl at the end?

“I don't know,” says the “Salt, Lime & Tequila” hitmaker who ignited his country music career as the co-writer on Kelsea Ballerini’s #1 song “Dibs” with another laugh. “That's up to the viewer's discretion of how you want it to end."

He pauses before adding, "I feel like as much as everybody's been through this sort of story and has that heartbreak in their journey and in their history, it's all different. So, we didn't want to put too much of a pin on the end, so it could me more relatable to more people and their own situations.”

Griffin releases his new EP, Phases, on July 14.

“This collection of songs seems to cover all of the different ‘love’ phases that you go through, from finding the one to the heartbreak to the missing you to finding that ‘I live for’ kind of person,” says Griffin. “Once I sat down with all of the music and played it back, I realized we just wrote an entire record that talks about all the phases of love.”