Grammy Award-winning country music songwriter Brett James was flying on his private jet with his new wife and her 28-year-old daughter, who had just celebrated her birthday, when the plane crashed and killed them, officials said Friday.

James, 57 — who wrote songs for Taylor Swift, Dierks Bentley and other stars — was with wife Melody Wilson, 59, and her daughter, Meryl Maxwell Wilson, on the hitmaker’s Cirrus SR22T when it crashed in an open field in Franklin, North Carolina, Thursday afternoon, according to the Daily Mail.

Wilson, who had lived with James in Nashville since at least 2020, had wished her daughter a happy 28th birthday just one day before the plane went down. 3

“Happy Birthday my Love!! How Blessed am I to be your Momma!” she wrote on social media Wednesday.

“You’

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