Nashville, TN. (Top40 Charts/ RCA) - For a guy who's never been reluctant to record other people's songs, when the dust settled on 2007,
Kenny Chesney was the artist who'd spent the most weeks on Billboard's Country Singles chart as a writer. For not only did the triple and current Country
Music Association and three consecutive and reigning Academy of Country
Music Entertainer of the Year pen his 3 week No 1 'Beer In Mexico' all by himself, but he co-wrote Rascal Flatts' month-long chart-topper 'Take Me There,' which launched their brand new, Still Feels Good.
'I think people spend too much time worrying about who wrote what, who published this or that,' says Chesney. 'Maybe it's all the years I spent at Acuff Rose, wanting to write with Dean Dillon and Skip Ewing, talking to Whitey Shaffer and what have you. You spend time with those guys, you get very serious about what a great song is, but just as - or maybe even more importantly - what makes a great song for the person singing it… cause there are hits, and then there are songs that say something about who you are.'
Certainly Chesney has built a career on songs that define his place as Every(young)man in America beyond the urban centers. Whether it's first loves ('Never Wanted Nothing More'), first thrills ('Young,' 'Keg In The Closet'), first real fun ('When The Sun Goes Down'), first heartache ('Anything But Mine'), first maturity ('There Goes My Life,' 'The Good Stuff'), there is an honesty and a song quality that established Chesney as someone who knew how his audience lived, loved and felt. And that commitment to the truth about how it is more than colored his songwriting.
'When you have access to the very best songs out there, it sets the bar pretty high,' Chesney says of his reluctance to just heave songs on his records because he can. 'You look at what's being written, and - at least for me - they have to be as good as what else is out there, or else it's just doing it because you can. When you've been blessed to have sat with the writers I have, to just listen to them talking well, you're not going to dishonor any of that.
'It's also about knowing what's a fit for you versus someone else. 'Take Me There' I knew was a good song, but it seemed like I'd already sung it. It was something I'd done and you know, I don't think I could've done that song near as well as Gary (LeVox) did. He totally got what it was about, he got in there and just tore its heart out. We've all had that love, the one we want to know every tiny detail about and Gary made you feel it. THAT is what a good song in the right hands is about.'
Having just seen his Flip-Flop Summer Tour named by Pollstar as the 2nd biggest tour behind last summer's Police Reunion Tour, Chesney's already had the first sell-out of his 2008 Poets & Pirates Tour - sponsored by Corona Extra - at Boston 's Foxboro , MA Gillette Stadium. With more dates about to be announced and yet another honor under his belt, 2008 is stacking up to be his best year ever.
