Post by BeachTenant on Oct 22, 2008 14:18:17 GMT -5
Kenny's Lucky Old 1More Introspective CD Tops Billboard's Top 200
Nashville: As his Calypso-tinged "Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven" ends its multiple week run at the top of the Country Singles chart, Kenny Chesney's deeply personal Lucky Old Sun debuts at 1 on Billboard's all-genre Top 200 Album chart. For a record that is more about soul-diving than good-timing and looking back, Lucky Old Sun - with its collaborations with Willie Nelson, the Wailers, Mac McAnally and Dave Matthews - has struck a chord with fans.
"When you do something that's a little more intimate, that's a little bit less about the party and the good times, you're not sure how people are going to respond," allows the man who has topped the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart 5 times. "But somewhere between going in the studio with Willie to cut 'Lucky Old Sun' and making Moment of Forever with him, I knew this was a record, I needed to make… for a lot of reasons.
"It may not be the most obvious thing that people would expect from me," continues the man who's the 21st century's top North American ticket seller in any genre. "But I think that's one of the many reasons I say I have the best fans in the world: they not only come to party with us, I think they want to know what's going on in my life and they don't see the down parts of my life as all that different from the disappointments they feel in their own lives."
Singled out by The New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today and People as well as an in-depth profile in The Tennessean, the 4-straight Academy of Country Music and 3-time and current Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year took Lucky Old Sun to a more personal place - and the response has been unprecedented. Beyond the kudos, the CMA's leading nominee - he has 7 - has arrived at a more honest place as an artist.
"I think you get to a place where you realize your fans want more from you, want to listen to what's really going on in your life…," Chesney says. "Every night when I go down front with my acoustic guitar and it's just me and them… that's always one of the most intense moments of the show. You can tell they're really listening, and it's like that when we do 'Better as a Memory' or 'There Goes My Life,' too. Quieting things down onstage really showed me I could open up to the fans, that that was something they wanted.
"And with it hitting 1 on the Top 200, it's a nice place to be with something so personal."
Chesney will also be at "The 42nd Annual Country Music Association Awards," telecast live on ABC Nov 12th, where he's to perform "Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven" with the Wailers Band. Beyond his nomination for Entertainer of the Year, he is also up for Album of the Year for Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates, Single and Video of the Year for "Don't Blink, Male Vocalist and a pair of Vocal Event nods for "Shiftwork" with George Strait and "Every Other Weekend" with Reba McEntire.
