Kenny Chesney debated about creating a vinyl pressing of BORN. Given its length – 15 songs – there was no way it could fit on one disc, and he didn’t want to choose which songs to leave off. He also knows the people who love listening to actual records are a very special breed of music lover, who cherish the old school needle-on-vinyl experience.
“I’m lucky,” says the songwriter/superstar from East Tennessee. “I have fans who still believe in the actual listening experience, starting an album at the beginning and taking the journey the songs are creating. Experiencing and asking ‘how does this music define a moment or a state of life? How does it color or reflect my mind?’
“So much of my own life’s been defined by what I was listening to over the years, and still is. That’s a whole different way of consuming music than just a hit. Knowing that, I decided to go ahead and do vinyl. It’s a limited run, but it’s there for all the people who put on albums and make that kind of listening a destination. For anyone who sinks into the songs, this is for you.”
Having delivered the No. 1 selling album in America in any genre on release – a distinction missed by many in a world where streaming has become the dominant point of consumption – and a Top 5 Country album across all consumption metrics, it speaks to No Shoes Nation’s desire to own Chesney’s complete albums.
BORN, one of Esquire’s Most Anticipated Releases of 2024, inspired deeper consideration. Men’s Journal assessed it “a pretty wide look at what life is made of – tricky stuff in relationships, chasing memories, kicking back, losing friends.” Holler raved, “quintessential Kenny Chesney...a masterpiece,” deeming it “an examination of a life well lived – of the bliss, the heartbreak, the silver linings, the healing... These stirring portrayals of grief and healing add new depth to the live-in-the-moment anthems Kenny has become synonymous with.”
Whether the grab-the-moment rush of “Just To Say We Did,” sweeping drama of “One Lonely Island,” or naughty no-strings rhythms of “Guilty Pleasure,” plus chilled philosophizing of “This Too Shall Pass,” BORN honors No Shoes Nation’s unquenchable desire to live life to its absolute peak. But as reviewers note, Chesney also draws on the contemplative with the philosophical “The Way I Love You Now,” the pensive female freedom of “Top Down” and closing toast to those who’ve passed away “Wherever You Are Tonight,” which esteemed critic and historian Robert K. Oermann called an “anthem that will endure” in Music Row.
“It’s a lot of music, and a lot of life,” Chesney acknowledges. “I realized all that can be taken in in different ways. While we’re only doing a limited pressing, which will be available at select retail stores and through the website, I wanted this music to be in whatever form No Shoes Nation wants to experience it through...”
Fans can pre-order here beginning April 18 at 11 p.m. CT to reserve their copy. With the Sun Goes Down 2024 Tour kicking off this weekend at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium on Saturday April 20, BORN in double-disc vinyl marks a tangible way to take the music home for the summer.
Kenny Chesney's BORN Is Here; 15 Songs, "Sunday TODAY" & A Lotta No Shoes Nation
Four years... songs camps... good friends... crazy great musicians... new collaborators... writing songs to distill life, making music for all the reasons. Kenny Chesney didn’t see it coming, didn’t set out to make an album. Instead, he’s spent the time since the world shut down playing music with friends, scraping bits of life into lyrics and melodies, listening to songs he loved and recording when the moment struck with longtime collaborator Buddy Cannon. After all that, BORN is born.
“I can’t call it a process, because we never set out to make a record, just explore songs and moments for the sake of music,” Chesney offers. “All of sudden, time had passed and somehow we had all these songs that looked like different pieces of who I – and just about everyone in No Shoes Nation, too – am.
“It wasn’t a master plan. There was no theme we’re singing about that holds it together. But if you listen to all 15 songs, you’ll get the high energy fun, chasing adventures, don’t let people get you down piece and you’ll get the more reflective thinking about someone who’s died, the person you know you shouldn’t call emotions that have always been in the music, too.”
Whether the rush of “Just To Say We Did,” the chasing adventure “One More Sunset,” the sweeping drama of “One Lonely Island,” or the naughty no-strings delight of “Guilty Pleasure,” as well as the driving “Long Gone” and chilled philosophizing of “This Too Shall Pass,” BORN offers a bunch of feel good to make a crazy world feel better. On the other end of the spectrum, Chesney gets contemplative with “Come Here, Go Away,” the passage of time healer “The Way I Love You Now,” the pensive female freedom of “Top Down” and the album closing toast to those who’ve passed away “Wherever You Are Tonight.”
“Making music to make music, suddenly there’s room for a few road trip songs like ‘One More Sunset’ or ‘Just To Say We Did,’ songs that sound like me and my buddies growing up,” says the eight-time Entertainer of the Year. “And you don’t worry as much about having a few songs that are more introspective, or looking at the tough spots of letting go like ‘Thinkin’ Bout’ and ‘Come Here, Go Away,’ which everyone’s lived through.
“When you listen to ‘Born,’ there’s a whole lot of truth about living, life, the big questions and what we’re all trying to experience. That banjo out front really throws you into the song, which feels great. I love a lyric that throws out all the options, but it never actually tells you what to do. Here it comes down to one existential truth, no matter who you are or what you’re chasing: ‘one thing’s for certain, we’ve all been living since the day we were born.’”
After all these months, No Shoes Nation can finally unpack all the moods and moments that make BORN Chesney’s most far-reaching album to date. With “Take Her Home” cresting the Top 10, three layers of rehearsals under way for the Sun Goes Down 2024 Tour and Chesney on “Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist” this weekend, the time has arrived for new music to set the tone for another summer of tailgates and stadiums for No Shoes Nation.
Photo Credit: Allister Ann
Kenny Chesney Takes Willie Geist to MetLife Stadium THIS Sunday, 3/24, NBC's "Sunday TODAY"
With three sets of tour prep and rehearsals in full groove, Kenny Chesney took some time out to return to MetLife Stadium, where he’s sold over 400,000 tickets since the stadium opened, for a heart-to-heart conversation with NBC’s Willie Geist. Tracing both his evolution as a stadium-sized pioneer and looking at all the pieces of his musical foundation that led to the vast BORN, the only country artist in Billboard’s Top 10 Touring Acts of the Last 25 Years for the last 15 years took the opportunity to truly consider the road to being a billion-ticket-selling superstar and the songwriting roots that helped him speak to an audience who had long been ignored.
“It’s strange being in a place like MetLife we know so well when it’s cold, dark and raining,” Chesney mused before his interview. “It’s just here, waiting. Knowing all the faces we’ve seen light up, the staff, the memories; it’s a pretty great place to sit down and talk to someone like Willie Geist, who gets the music and recognizes so much of what we do is about building and trying to grow. Nothing exists in a vacuum; not a tour, certainly not an album – and we still make albums – so coming somewhere so special to us was a great place to sit down and look at the journey to No Shoes Nation.”
With “Take Her Home” cresting the Top 10, and the shoot-your-shot gusto of “Just To Say We Did,” the tangled letting go of “Thinkin’ Bout,” the naughty get-out-of-jail invitation of “Guilty Pleasure” or the toast to those who have passed on “Wherever You Are Tonight,” Chesney’s first album in four years is one of his most comprehensive. If not a culmination of a life lived in music, it certainly explores a plethora of styles, realities and Chesney’s unrelenting positivity.
“This close to a tour, I realized: we couldn’t do the traditional record release media stuff most people get to do,” Chesney explained. “So I wanted to do one thing that would really matter and make sense; to talk to someone who wasn’t looking to do lifestyle stuff, but really dig in and consider what this all means. When you do that, Willie Geist is the man to call.”
Beyond their conversation about music, especially BORN, the pair talked about sports, dreams, living a life that matters and how No Shoes Nation is an outgrowth of how Chesney and his people view the world. Philosophical and far-ranging, the extended sit down and conversation in the stands achieves a deeper look at what fires the songwriter/superstar from East Tennessee known for his high-intensity concerts and major tours that have sold over a million tickets every summer since 2002.
As street date approaches, a reminder that anyone who has already purchased tickets to the Sun Goes Down 2024 Tour received an email with a link to purchase the special BORN Tour Edition with three extra live tracks, as will anyone buying tickets going forward. Top tier fan club members may also purchase the Tour Edition to recognize their longstanding love of Chesney’s music.
“Rehearsals are going great,” Chesney says. “I can’t wait to see everybody in Tampa! We’re getting ready, and we’re all in all over town. To get inside BORN, just watch Willie on Sunday.”
“Sunday TODAY” airs at 8 a.m. ET on NBC and 6 a.m. PT in the Los Angeles area. Check your local NBC listings for airtimes in additional markets.
Kenny Chesney and Willie Geist at MetLife Stadium for “Sunday TODAY” (Tune in This Sunday, March 24) | Photo Credit: Daniel Wood for NBC
"Wherever You Are Tonight" is Kenny's 4th + Final Grat Track
Having made the decision BORN, his first new album in over four years, would be a project that would offer a complete sense of who he is and what his music is made of, Kenny Chesney wanted his final grat track to be something that reached beyond the here and now to embrace those people who’ve left us. “Wherever You Are Tonight,” a piano-grounded ballad, is a philosophical consideration of where people go after they pass, but also suggests that while we can’t see them, it doesn’t mean they’ve actually left us.
“The thing about this song that struck me,” Chesney said, “is that idea people we love never truly leave us. We can’t see them, or know where they go after they pass on, but everything we shared remains... who we are because of them, that doesn’t change. But this song suggests that beyond the grief, the pain and the memories, wherever the people we love are, they’re not so far away.
“There’s a line in the lyric: ‘You’re not gone, just out of sight/ You’re here with me, wherever you are tonight...’ And that might be, since we don’t know what happens next. Maybe you can be in two places at once; you can be in heaven and on my right shoulder. Who’s to say? But for all the people who’ve passed on, I love the idea that they’re still here.”
Written by GRAMMY-winner Mike Reid, best known for Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and three-time Songwriter of the Year Gary Burr, both in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, “Wherever You Are Tonight” is a song not of sadness, but also celebration. Mining Chesney’s at times ruminating on life deep dive song sense, the four minute song is delivered as a late night conversation that reflects on the power of life-changing friendships.
After two verses of piano, strings drift in like mist and an electric guitar cuts through. But the star of this heartfelt song is Chesney’s warm, slightly porous tenor; strong enough to shoulder the emotions, but also vulnerable and hopeful enough to hold a space for what requires faith.
As BORN’s May 22 release draws closer, the eight-time Entertainer of the Year and only country artist in Billboard’s Top 10 Touring Artists of the Last 25 Years for the last 15 years wants to provide a complete picture for what No Shoes Nation can expect. Already cited as one of spring’s most anticipated albums in any genre by Esquire and one of Holler’s “Country Albums to Look Forward To,” Nashville Lifestyles offers BORN “continues his reign as master of the bigger picture... themes of gratitude, nostalgia, optimism, and resilience, the album celebrates the wild act of just living.”
“There’s so much on BORN,” Chesney explains. “And I know some people like different pieces of the music for different reason. It was important to me for people to have a sense of everything that’s here, so while five songs early feels like an awful lot, I think it’s a pretty good sense of what these 15 songs taken as a whole represent. I can’t wait for No Shoes Nation to show me what their favorites are.”
With the Sun Goes Down 2024 Tour kicking off at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium on April 20, the BORN tour edition is also available for pre-order through a link provided to ticket buyers and premium fan club members. Containing three live tracks, it adds the pulse of No Shoes Nation to a collection of songs designed to offer a look at shrugging off the things that pull you down and celebrating the euphoria of being in the moment with people you connect with.
Kenny Chesney's Complicated Tangle Grat Teases BORN Pre-Sale
Kenny Chesney has spent the last four years listening, writing and consuming songs from good friends, young writers, Songwriter Hall of Famers and old favorites. Raised on Music Row’s dynamic creative community as a young kid coming out of East Tennessee, the spirit of songs being born has fueled the most iconic rise of a country star in the 21st century – and that hunger for the best of distilling life into lyrics, hooks, bridges and melodies still drives the eight-time Entertainer of the Year.
As his Sun Goes Down 2024 Tour featuring 23 stadium shows with a handful amphitheaters draws closer, the wildly euphoric performer is also on the brink of releasing BORN. Fifteen songs that in many ways survey all the things that have defined the soundtrack of coming of age in the middle of America over the last two decades, the March 22 album surveys the things Chesney’s music embodies. To that end, the songwriter/superstar mines the complicated tangle of knowing it’s time to move on and not being able to quite let go with the introspectively pensive “Thinkin' Bout” for his latest grat track to coincide with BORN pre-orders going live.
“The hardest part of letting go,” says Chesney, “is actually letting go. All that chemistry, all that intimacy, all that doesn’t need to be said is such a big thing... Whatever’s wrong, obviously it’s not gonna change. But it gets late, you get thinking – and next thing you know, you’re tumbling back into something that just can’t be. I love this song, because it gets into that space where you’re thinking about knowing you shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t think about that person, and that’s when maybe the letting go can really start to happen no matter how good it feels or how much you make each other laugh.”
Leaning into the more wistful part of Chesney’s baritone, it’s a lived-in vocal that is equal parts conflicted and seeking. An honest reflection on the “grey area” of letting go of something that once burned so hot, it manifests all the diverging realities at play. For the man who made yearning such a potent emotion with “Anything But Mine,” “On the Coast of Somewhere Beautiful” and “Better As A Memory,” “Thinkin’ Bout” is another entry in Chesney’s songs of broken, but brave hearts.
The man the Wall Street Journal called “The King of the Road” brings the feel good and excitement of his stadium shows to his upcoming album. As he explains, “Those songs say so much about who we are, how we try to live and see the world. If I were going to put three songs that match up with everything that’s going to be on this album, these three tracks would be the ones. The road band was smoking, No Shoes Nation was all in – and those songs say so much.”
As “Take Her Home,” the lead track that celebrates taking a risk and finding your life lands in the Top 20, there’s plenty more good music to come. With “Just To Say We Did” also already available, “Thinkin’ Bout” adds a more dimensional look at the 15-track package that delivers everything No Shoes Nation has come to expect from the only country artist who’s been in Billboard’s Top 10 Touring Acts of the Last 25 Years for the last 15 years.
“I love this song,” offers the superstar who can go as deep into songs as he goes hard onstage. “There’s a space where you know what to do, but you just can’t quite... and you know. To capture that in a song when you can barely explain how it feels in real life? That’s an incredible thing, so for anyone struggling with moving on, ‘Thinkin’ Bout’ is for you.”
Top tier fan club members and anyone who has already purchased tickets to the Sun Goes Down 2024 Tour received an email with a link to purchase the special BORN Tour Edition with three extra live tracks, as will people buying tickets going forward. For everyone else in No Shoes Nation, your pre-order of the straight-up BORN begins now. It’s been four years, but the next chapter of an ongoing conversation about life, love, fun and the lack thereof arrives March 22.
BORN track list was revealed exclusively by Spotify Hot Country HERE earlier today. Spotify’s BORN album countdown page allows fans to pre-save the album, preview the track list, watch exclusive video content and more. Fans who pre-save BORN on the countdown page receive a push notification when the album is released, and Spotify will automatically add BORN to their library on release day.
Kenny Chesney Reveals...
Album Title: BORN
Release Date: March 29
With Fan Response to News of a New Record So Strong
Stadium-Sized Superstar Inspired to Set a Street Date
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – While no one takes their fans more seriously than Kenny Chesney takes No Shoes Nation, the unassuming songwriter/superstar from East Tennessee wasn’t prepared for the response to the news he was finalizing his next project. Having taken his time trying to create a set of songs that distills the essence of who he is, as well as so many of the people who embrace this music, seeing the blogs, social media posts and radio mentions, he figured it was time to get serious.
“You never want to think it’s all about you, or that in this crazy world, it’s all about your music,” cautions the man the Los Angeles Times called “the people’s superstar” about the traps an artist can fall into. “I’m just trying to find songs that continue the story of who we are...how we live, breathe, work, rock, kick back and sometimes get tangled up in feelings that are anything but simple. Then you see people react the way they have to the news, and you go, ‘Well, okay...’
“I’d already decided on the cover because it was something clean and simple and true. It’s the kind of picture that says everything, but leaves plenty of room for everything else. My friend Allister shot it, and it’s just me looking straight into No Shoes Nation. When I saw it, it was really the only choice for this record.”
“As for the title, well, we’re still not quite done deciding what’s going on here, but one thing’s for sure: BORN is absolutely the title track. It’s got a lot of heart, a lot of soul – and it speaks the truth about living, life and what we’re all doing here. Banjo out front, a great big pocket that rocks back and forth, it feels great. But more importantly, it’s a lyric that throws out all the options, never tells you what to do and throws out the one existential truth no matter what you choose: ‘one thing’s for certain, we’ve all been living since the day we were born.’”
With a March 29 street date, BORN offers much of what’s made the 8x Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year the only country artist on Billboard’s Top 10 Touring Acts of the Last 25 Years for the last 15 years. As “Take Her Home,” the lead track, crests the Top 25, there’s plenty more where the song of three moments that define taking a risk and finding a life came from.
“Normally, we wait until it’s all figured out, the T’s are crossed, the I’s are dotted,” Chesney says. “But everything about this record’s been different – from how much time we’ve spent, the different ways we recorded and wrote and found songs – so why not let the fans know as we’re finishing up? We make this music for them, so, here you go. It’s official: BORN, March 29 – and you’ve seen the cover. Now to the final line-up, and maybe getting a couple more out there.”
After his Sun Goes Down 2024 Tour – with 23 stadium plays -- adding an unprecedented third show at Foxborough, Mass.’s Gillette Stadium, Chesney’s gearing up for a year of new music, great shows and big fun across No Shoes Nation, a place where everyone’s a local.
Kenny's "Take Her Home" Vid Evokes Innocence & A Chance
It’s been four years since Kenny Chesney created new music for No Shoes Nation. During that time, he got to reflect on some of the great songs he’s written and been able to record, the kinds of songs that helped make him the artist with the most No. 1’s in Billboard’s Country Airplay category. And when the East Tennessee songwriter/superstar heard “Take Her Home,” he responded because – like Academy of Country Music Single of the Year “The Good Stuff,” “Don’t Blink” or even “There Goes My Life” – it served as a series of snapshots that marked pivotal moments in how love happens.
When it came time for a video for the song currently moving up the chart, the man known for his high energy shows and stadium-sized summers wanted something decidedly different. As he explains of the creative mandate for the video for “Take Her Home,” “Everything about this song is a little movie. Each verse is its own act, and you can see all the details if you’re listening. The deep cut Cheap Trick on a jukebox in a crowded bar... the pink and black suitcases... even the little baby in the last verse. There’s so much detail, people can see it in their heads.
“I wanted to figure a way that mirrors the innocence in this song. I wanted something that wouldn’t take away what someone else was seeing when they saw the video. It seems like the opposite from what you might do, but I think it’ll make sense when people see it.”
Simple and straightforward, the “Take Her Home” video leaves lots of room for people to populate with their own images, their own life’s story even. While Chesney serves as the clip’s narrator, an old school video effect turns the action into a slightly distorted set of vignettes that follow the storyline without overwhelming viewers’ own inner movies.
“Songs like ‘Take Her Home’ deserve to paint pictures for the listeners,” Chesney continues. “When you can see yourself, or your friends, or someone you know in a song, that’s when a song will last long after it’s done playing. To me, this song has that potential for people... and as much as I like making videos, I also know the power of No Shoes Nation’s ability to live in my songs.”
Watch the video for “Take Her Home” below.
Having announced the March 29 release of BORN, his greatly anticipated album, Chesney is moving the creative process forward with purpose. Not only is he delivering the video from “Take Her Home” directly to his fans, he’s finalizing the track listing for his first new music since 2020.
Defining his place in American music by distilling the best part of being young, alive and seeking what the world has to offer, that hunger for music and life as it’s lived continues fueling Chesney’s work. As the chiming acoustically-grounded life-in-three-acts “Take Her Home” continues its rise up the charts, currently #27, it’s hitting a note for listeners who’ve been there.
With his Sun Goes Down 2024 Tour adding an unprecedented third show at Foxborough, Mass.’s Gillette Stadium, Chesney’s ability to make common moments remarkable brings No Shoes Nation together summer after summer. “Take Her Home” is part of that magic.