New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Having recently celebrated the first anniversary of his ambitiously groundbreaking
Heart & Soul triple album release,
Eric Church fans everywhere can now enjoy the middle installment of the project, with the & album previously available only to the Church Choir now offered publicly via standard CD, black vinyl and digital platforms.
"Small but mighty, the six-song collection simmers on vulnerable hits," praises Entertainment Weekly of the Jay Joyce-produced project, with The Wall Street Journal celebrating Church as "knowledgeable and respectful of Country's history, but not shackled by it" and Forbes acknowledging his penchant for "super-serving his loyal Church Choir crowd."
Like chart-topping bookends
Heart and Soul, & is the result of the famed marathon session Church spent sequestered in rural North Carolina, writing and recording a song from start to finish each day for nearly a month. In addition to earning massive critical acclaim and a Best Country Solo Performance GRAMMY nomination, the initial trifecta release also made waves atop the Billboard charts. Church replaced himself atop the all-genre Top Album Sales chart in back-to-back weeks, with all three albums landing in the Top 10 concurrently and Church becoming the first country artist to simultaneously occupy the two top spots on the Billboard Vinyl Albums chart since its inception in 2011, with Soul and & respectively.
As well as the poignant "Through My Ray Bans," dedicated to the fans he played for at Route 91 Harvest Country
Music Festival, the & album also features four new-to-the-public songs - "Do Side," "Kiss Her Goodbye," "Mad Man" and "Lone Wolf" - plus the 2020 CMA Entertainer of the Year's latest single, "Doing Life With Me."
Written by Church together with Casey Beathard ("Mr. Misunderstood," "
Hell Of A View") and Jeffrey Steele ("Stick That In Your Country Song"), the reflective song sees Church expressing gratitude for those by his side through the journey of a musical career:
I don't pray much anymore
For this old troubadour's
Happiness, wishes, wants and needs
End of my ropes, hopes and dreams
Spend my livin' giving thanks
For the ships I never sank
Every big, every little in the everyday things
The notes and the words and the songs I sing
To the ones doing life with me
Track List (songwriters in parentheses):
Through My Ray-Bans (Eric Church, Luke Laird, Barry Dean)
Doing Life With Me (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeffrey Steele)
Do Side (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
Kiss Her Goodbye (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
Mad Man (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
Lone Wolf (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell)
Eric Church's most recent critically acclaimed and chart-topping albums, from his
Heart & Soul three-part project, are available everywhere now. Featuring the results of a marathon session during which he spent nearly a month writing and recording a song per day while sequestered in rural North Carolina, the project features his latest Gold-certified No. 1 "Hell of a View" and recent Top 5 hit "Heart On Fire" as well as brand-new single "Doing Life With Me," impacting radio now.
He recently wrapped his 55-city The Gather Again Tour, visiting full-capacity arenas for an in-the-round show on the Billboard
Music Awards' Top Country Tour, in addition to a headlining spot alongside
George Strait and
Metallica during the ATLive festival at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and his own one-of-a-kind headlining stadium shows at Milwaukee's American Family Field and Minneapolis's U.S. Bank Stadium. Church also took to the field at Tampa Bay's Raymond
James Stadium to perform the
National Anthem with R&B star
Jazmine Sullivan ahead of Super Bowl LV in 2021 and during 2019's
Double Down Tour he played back-to-back nights of two unique shows in each market sans opening act, giving every city's fans six-plus hours of his iconic music. The tour also featured a massive stop at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, where he broke the venue's concert attendance record with more than 56,000 fans in attendance and became the first artist to sell out the venue with a solo lineup.
A seven-time ACM Award winner, four-time CMA Award winner (including the 2020 award for Entertainer of the Year) and 10-time GRAMMY nominee, Church has amassed a passionate fanbase around the globe known as the Church Choir as well as a critically acclaimed catalog of music. His previous project, the Gold-certified Desperate Man, earned a GRAMMY nomination for Best Country Album (his third nod in the category). Prior releases include the Platinum-certified Sinners Like Me ("How 'Bout You," "
Guys Like Me"), Carolina ("Smoke a
Little Smoke," "Love Your Love the Most") and Mr. Misunderstood ("Record Year," "Round Here Buzz"), the Double-Platinum certified The
Outsiders ("Like a Wrecking Ball," "
Talladega") and the 3x Platinum-certified Chief ("Springsteen," "
Drink In My Hand"), as well as 30 Gold, Platinum and multi-Platinum certified singles.
