When you’re busy moving forward, it’s easy to forget keeping score. Kenny Chesney, the Country Music Hall of Fame electee who just wrapped a full-immersion residency at Vegas’ Sphere, built a career on the quality of the songs and how they resonate with No Shoes Nation as he continually sought to find songs that were better than what he’d already done.
As Billboard’s No. 1 Country Artist of the 21st Century and the artist with the most No. 1 Country Airplay singles, Chesney’s songs and albums have been the soundtrack for coming of age across the nation. In the pre-streaming era, when a Platinum-certification meant a million copies sold and people making the decision to put their down their money, he had several multi-Platinum projects – and he could feel the passion when fans sang “Get Along,” “American Kids” or “Young” at shows for the last many summers.
Nothing, though, could have prepared the songwriter/superstar from East Tennessee for the award from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) marking over 105 million units certified in the U.S. alone. He said, “These kinds of numbers almost don’t exist. Who counts that high? But seeing all the discs and the size of the plaque, it hits you how big this really is.
“What I know is what I hear when the band and I are on stage. You can tell when you hear people cheering and singing these songs with every bit of joy they’ve got, this isn’t just a song they like, these songs are something that hits them in the heart. To me, even more than Platinum or Gold, it’s the sound of those voices that tells me how much this music means.”
With No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems; When The Sun Goes Down and Greatest Hits all certified 5x Platinum, The Road and The Radio achieving 4x Platinum status and Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates, Hemingway’s Whiskey and Everywhere We Go all 2x Platinum, there are also nine additional Platinum and six Gold albums in Chesney’s catalogue.
With today’s update, “American Kids” and “You and Tequila” featuring Grace Potter earn 5x and 4x Platinum status respectively. Five songs – “Summertime,” “When The Sun Goes Down” featuring Uncle Kracker, “Come Over,” “Don’t Blink,” “Get Along” – receive 3x Platinum certification, joining previous 3x Platinum “Somewhere With You.” “I Go Back,” “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems,” “All The Pretty Girls,” “The Good Stuff” and “The Boys of Fall” join previous 2x Platinums “There Goes My Life,” “Setting The World on Fire” featuring P!nk and “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy,” not to mention five new Platinum certifications and three new Gold certifications contributing to his overall total of 51 RIAA-certified singles.
“I know what music meant to me, the way a song can change your moment, give you clarity or just make you feel seen,” says the man who’s in the midst of final edits on Heart Life Music, the story of his journey as a creative soul seeking kindred spirits. “Because some of these songs are fun, that doesn’t mean it can’t matter or doesn’t say something people connect with. And with ballads, I’ve tried to make them speak to a moment that’s so real you can see it.
“Buddy (Cannon) and I have really tried to push what we were doing in terms of the songs and how we recorded them; I wanted to say the stuff people never said for kids like me – and find the sweet spot where melody and lyric reflect each other in a way that made each song even more than any one moment. I wanted songs that I hoped would always be true.”
Tapping moments and emotions at their most potent, Chesney fashioned a series of albums that went through the phases of life without ever relinquishing those moments of being young many people carry throughout their lives. Those songs fuel legendary two-hour performances that deliver an antidote to the animosity of the world, create a nation without polarization and space to come together for the love of what being alive can mean. More than 105 million in certifications can’t be wrong.