It was all heart, life, music when Kenny Chesney joined iconic radio host Howard Stern to discuss his No. 1 New York Times best seller on Stern’s SiriusXM morning show. For two hours, the pair engaged in a far-flung conversation that ranged from inspiration to alienation, unthinkable moments and notions, mutual friends, the creative process – and even Stern’s query about whether the East Tennessee songwriter/superstar would like to be in the Rock & Roll Fame.
With Heart Life Music spending three weeks and counting on both the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best Sellers list and Combined Print and E-Book Nonfiction Best Sellers list, Stern had clearly done his reading. Whether exploring the reality of persuasion class and music business rejection, the skill and practice required to even attempt Doc Watson-style picking, hitting the wall and landing on absolute empty, Stern returned to the themes of resilience and hard work behind making dreams a reality. But he also found the joy in discovering purpose, the feeling of being onstage in front of 60,000 (“It’s like an avalanche,” Chesney explained) and the power of how music makes you feel.
“It was absolutely my most favorite two hours of radio I’ve ever done,” Chesney enthused. “It was so fast and so engaged with what we’d written, it made me rethink in a wonderful way so much of what went into the book. To hear someone love your life and journey like that, it makes you realize how much we all inspire each other – and I can’t think of a better gift after the last month of incredible media, book events and the love I’ve received on social media than spending two hours with Howard Stern talking about music, songs and life.”
With Barnes & Noble naming Heart Life Music to their Best Biographies & Memoirs of 2025 list, Wall Street Journal has called it “an emphatic success,” while Garden & Gun proffered “at the heart, the book is a meditation on the power of music and creativity” and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it “one for the road.” In addition, American Songwriter cited its “sense of immense respect, admiration and awe,” Newsweek declared it “grounded, grateful and faithful, in pursuit of the simple joys in life, living largely by the mantra of his memoir, Heart Life Music” and Salvation South raved, “it comes from the joy of living Kenny Chesney embodies, his bone-deep conviction that it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”
“I’ve always said unthinkable things can happen to pretty normal people if you work hard, make friends, love people and try to find the lessons or the fun in everything,” Chesney says. “With Howard Stern, who is so smart it’s scary, hearing him talk about all of it reminds me how blessed we’ve been – and it brought out things, stories we didn’t get in the book. But it felt good to sing a little ‘One Step Up’ when we talked about Bruce, to just open up like that and play a bit with someone who understands how it feels.”
After a book event this evening at Kaufman Music Center in partnership with the Strand on Manhattan’s Upper West Side (with very limited tickets remaining HERE), Chesney will head to New Jersey to tape a very special episode of “Conversations with Our Curator” at the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music. Initiated by the Center’s post about Heart Life Music’s No. 1 New York Times debut and the presence of Springsteen throughout Chesney’s book, this once in a lifetime conversation seemed inevitable in the rearview, but unthinkable even 10 days ago.
“I love that Bruce is using his archives to create a space to honor American music, open up conversations about how it’s all interconnected,” Chesney says. “When I recorded ‘One Step Up,’ I didn’t think about genre, just heart and how human the experience in the song was. To me, it had a country soul and the heart of a person in conflict over, well, temptation. As it says in the book, when Bruce responded to my version of it, I realized all that passion, all that church revival energy Bruce brings onstage is the same thing as me singing what was a rock song: good music really is all tangled up together, but united by its honesty and willingness to get real.”
Having gone from East Tennessee State to Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles, Key West and Tampa, the recent Country Music Hall of Fame inductee has taken Heart Life Music to the people – and seen lines starting hours before the doors opened to his book events. With the holidays coming on strong, Chesney’s wrapping up his book tour on high note: singing “You & Tequila” solo acoustic on Stern as part of two hours of conversation and exploring the soon-to-open Springsteen Archives in Long Branch, New Jersey for a deep dive into the meaning of what creatives genuinely give to others, as well as offer up of themselves.
About The Authors
One of contemporary American music’s biggest names, Kenny Chesney was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year and was named Billboard’s No.1 Country Artist of the 21st Century. Selling out America’s major stadiums for two decades and playing to over a million fans every summer since 2002, Variety pronounced him “country music’s only true long-term stadium act.” The East Tennessee songwriter/superstar has over 105 Platinum certifications, won the prestigious Entertainer of the Year eight times, as well as holding Billboard’s record for the most Country Airplay No. 1s with 36 chart-topping songs that define coming of age in the flyover in the 21st Century. This year, the game-changing superstar became the first country artist to perform at the groundbreaking Sphere, taking No Shoes Nation into a whole new dimension, creating a space to work hard, play hard, love hard and come together in the spirit of celebrating all the moment offers. Heart Life Music is his first book.
Holly Gleason’s work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, the Library of Congress’ National Registry of Sound Recordings, among other outlets. She was the LA Press Club’s Entertainment Journalist of the Year and the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Association’s Independent Journalist of the Year. A former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame/Case Western Reserve Fellow, she’s the creator of Belmont Book Award-winning Woman Walk The Line, and co-authored Miranda Lambert’s New York Times best-seller Y’All Eat Yet as well as Prine on Prine: Interviews & Encounters.