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Nashville chart-topper Luke Bryan releases his eighth studio album

VaselineSeptember 30, 2024

0 7 minutes read

Country superstar and media personality Luke Bryan discusses what motivated his work on his new album ‘Mind of a Country Boy’.

At a press conference on a farm in suburban Nashville, Luke Bryan, dressed in a flannel shirt, takes off his baseball cap and wipes his forehead as if he were still a teenager at hour number 18 of a 20-hour shift at his peanut mill. father in Georgia. .

He doesn’t look worried per se. However, it is clear that in the back of his mind he has everything to prove.

At the end of September, Bryan will release ‘Mind of a Country Boy’, his eighth studio album. Almost at the same time, the lead single, the power ballad “Love You, Miss You, Mean It,” should end a six-month run as his 31st No. 1 single.

‘An artist with substance’

For the past twenty years, Bryan has been at the center of every party that country music has had as it has reinvigorated American cultural dominance. During that same period, he married, raised two children, survived the deaths of his older siblings, and adopted and raised his teenage nephew as well.

By focusing on more of the latter and less of the former, the album could be his best overall work in a decade.

Two years is the longest he has been absent from the top of the country’s charts since he sang “Rain Is a Good Thing” in 2010 and nearly achieved diamond salesman status by telling women in the country to dance in honor of every figure of speech of rural life. which, yes, also includes birds, bees, catfish, crickets, bugs and squirrels.

“The way I have pursued my career, characterized by fun, has at times overshadowed my skills as a singer,” Bryan told The Tennessean. “However, being a successful country artist also means being a substantive artist who is willing to challenge my fans and the industry to connect with me on an emotional and serious level.”

Luke Bryan, in context

The stage of his career that Bryan is in – and its causes – provides the artist with the best context to pause and consider his next steps.

By the end of the 2000s, after a decade of writing an estimated two hundred songs a year and performing more than three hundred shows a year, Bryan had doggedly worked himself into a singer-songwriter on the brink of the abyss of country stardom stood.

In the late 2010s, Bryan was able to set the clock by ensuring he was country music’s most entertaining artist of the year.

To date, he remains one of the genre’s most visible television stars in the 1920s, whether on stage as a judge on “American Idol” or as co-host of the Country Music Association Awards.

However, he is an award-winning superstar singer-songwriter and television personality whose era of success coincides with an era in which, once every six weeks on the country radio or Billboard sales charts, a song celebrating alcohol or trucks has reached chart status.

Also note that the release of Bryan’s album “Crash My Party” produced a quadruple platinum seller eleven years ago, and remains the most lucrative release of his career. This was followed by a quartet of “Spring Break” mixtapes that sold a million copies and the birth of his annual Crash My Playa Mexican resort festival.

In total, the era saw six consecutive number 1 hits and the equivalent of nearly 25 million singles sold.

“Being still that ‘Spring Break guy’ at age 35 (unnaturally) kept me youthful and fun for longer than I expected,” says Bryan.

“I still love being able to make and perform that music. But I can also make mature music with a different subject, that comes from a place that touches my soul. I can be that guy who plays ‘One Margarita’ or sings ‘That’s My’. Kind of like a night at the live shows, but I also feel comfortable hunting deer with my sons or sitting on the porch with my wife.”

Bryan doubles down on his familiar farm-raised roots

At his current clip, Bryan is unlikely to release another album until he celebrates his 20th anniversary in the country’s mainstream industry. In this way, “Mind of a Country Boy” functions as an artist returning to his roots while maturing other elements of his work.

In short, this means that he has returned to the farm more than ever.

The last two times The Tennessean spoke with Bryan, he performed at a private album release show on a 350-acre agricultural farm west of Nashville and then, 10 days later, prepared for a Farm Tour date at a similar venue . large beef and cattle ranch near Hershey, Pennsylvania.

He is also the son of a South Georgia peanut farmer and mill owner who also owns 300 corn-producing acres in Williamson County.

Sitting at a piano during his 48-show residency in Las Vegas in 2022 and 2023 at The Theater at Resorts World, Bryan rekindled his farm boy roots by challenging himself to learn to play and sing songs from artists like Alabama, Ronnie Milsap and George Strait .

“Still trying to hit those notes felt like pulling out a few aces and it made me feel like I still had room to grow as an artist,” Bryan says.

Maintaining his artistic ‘hunger’

“Staying next to Luke Combs, Jelly Roll and Morgan Wallen on the streaming playlists for teens and twenty-somethings also makes me (artistically) hungry,” Bryan continues. “It feels like there is an unlimited supply of new artists who are now competing to capture the attention of the country fanbase with those of us who are already established. It’s hard to keep my music relevant while also maintaining fan interest in what I do to hold on in this climate.”

To achieve the standards he set for himself on his last album, it took Bryan four years to put together evergreen, timeless, unpretentious, and largely country-leaning material – that is also universally recognizable.

The visibility of Bryan’s life and career has led songwriters to delve deeper into combining concepts familiar with the genre and his experiences, yielding songs like “Pair of Boots.”

When the song talks about how a young man grows into a pair of boots and then shakes those boots off on his wedding day, Bryan, who is a father of teenage boys himself, says he “knows authentically that the song is a perfect, universal song” he created with proudly added to the album.

Songwriters such as Wallen’s ‘Last Night’ co-writer John Byron (‘Closing Time In California’), Thomas Rhett’s ‘Twisters’ soundtrack standout ‘Feelin’ Country’ co-writer Chase McGill (‘Southern and Slow’), multiple song from the year winners the Peach Pickers (Rhett Akins, Dallas Davidson and Ben Hayslip) and Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush” co-writer Hillary Lindsey (“Kansas”) all contribute to “Mind of a Country Boy.”

So it’s remarkable that Bryan continues to demonstrate his ability to meet the highest modern standards on ‘For the Kids’.

The song features his work alongside successful co-writers Justin Ebach and Brad Tursi of Old Dominion.

“I had to write a song about how parents put their energy into their children while risking staying married only for them, even through the challenges, ebbs and flows of hard times,” says Bryan, referencing songs like Tim McGraw’s 2001 ballad “Angry All the Time” and his own 2009 single “Do I” as inspiration.

“I wrote it for the parents who need a wake-up call to go on vacation, leaving the kids with the in-laws and getting back to what got them married in the first place. The beauty of country music is that the genre and culture allows songs to enter people’s lives and help them through ups and downs.”

Legendary influences determine Bryan’s future

Sit down with Bryan and ask him about the types of artists who are now influencing his career as a country icon and mainstream media personality. He mentions two legends whose success spans five decades and a world of influence: Country Music Hall of Famer Alan Jackson and his current “American Idol” co-judge (alongside Carrie Underwood), Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Lionel Richie.

“Alan Jackson had ‘Chattahoochee’ and ‘Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),’” says Bryan. “To be a country superstar you have to have every type of song. I want people to look back on my career and like Alan Jackson I want to say that I was both the master of ceremonies when it came to partying and would also (more well-founded) material.”

About Richie, Bryan says he hopes that in 25 years he will continue to love celebrities, entertainment and lighting up the room as much as the iconic pop and soul artist does today. “God put him on this earth to be that guy.”

As for his progression to the heights of Richie, Bryan says he’s currently in a place where he loves both the business of his industry and “connecting with people and hearing their stories about how (my) songs helped them inspire.”

“Taking the happiness and inspiration I give and receive as a sacred gift is important to my life and career,” he says.

Bryan was more “emotionally” invested in “great songs” than ever

Bryan cites the importance of a five-year learning curve, between 2009 and 2014, that allowed him to grow from a songwriter who sings to a recording artist, learning how to connect with material not written by himself.

By allowing the songs to resonate within his belief system and arrive at their best personal meaning, the artist benefits most from “Mind of a Country Boy.”

More than any other conversation about the art of styling his voice, his desire to embody and sell a text is profound.

From getting country girls to ‘shake it’, sit mournfully on the edge of a pier and ‘have a beer’, he has already learned this art. Ten years later, however, Bryan focuses on being “emotionally invested in perfecting the way legendary songwriters can be embodied by capturing (creative) templates.”

“I never want to ruin a great song (by cutting it). Instead, I want to improve it and make the songwriters proud of my work.”

VaselineSeptember 30, 2024

0 7 minutes read

Country superstar and media personality Luke Bryan discusses what motivated his work on his new album ‘Mind of a Country Boy’.

‘An artist with substance’

Luke Bryan, in context

Bryan doubles down on his familiar farm-raised roots

Maintaining his artistic ‘hunger’

Legendary influences determine Bryan’s future

Bryan was more “emotionally” invested in “great songs” than ever

Vaseline

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