Scotty McCreery is opening up about his forthcoming new album, Seasons Change: Platinum Edition. The vinyl record will include all of the songs on his 2018 Seasons Change project, along with four new bonus tracks.
The project comes a year after the Grand Ole Opry member’s Rise & Fall project was released.
“I think it was somebody on my team who said, ‘Hey, Seasons Change is coming up on being platinum,'” McCreery recalls on Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen, sharing the inspiration behind the record. “It just kind of went from there. I made this record at a time when I had no clue if my songs were ever going to be on the radio, or being streamed again, if anybody would care. I didn’t have a label deal when I was writing a lot of these songs.
“So it was a big deal for me to get this out there for people to relate to these songs,” he continues. “To take them into their lives, and use ‘Five More Minutes‘ as they’re moving on from high school or college, or losing a loved one, or ‘This Is It’ as they’re walking down the aisle. So for me, it changed my life. And to know that it touched people, and they felt it too, it’s something that we just wanted to give them back to, and say thank you to them.”
Included on Seasons Change is McCreery’s first No. 1 single, with “Five More Minutes.” It was also his first release as an independent artist, since his former record label dropped him when his former single, “Southern Belle,” didn’t do well at radio.
“I think just seeing an organic reaction to ‘Five More Minutes’ when we didn’t have the power of Nashville behind us,” McCreery says. “It was just the song that got things going. It was people feeling the heart of that song, and what it meant to me to write it, and what it meant to me to sing it. So, that was a moment when I was like … I’ve always thought country music was about the song. Real people telling real stories that we all can relate to. To see that happen without the machine behind it was like, ‘Man. This is why I love music in the first place. This is why I want to do this the rest of my life.'”
McCreery ultimately signed with his current record label, Triple Tigers, where he celebrated six No. 1 singles, including “Cab In A Solo” from Rise & Fall. It’s a lot of success for an artist who at one time thought his career might be over, after he was dropped by his record label.
“Just the never give up attitude,” McCreery says of the secret to his success, which he hopes to pass on to his son, Avery. “Being resilient in the face of tough times. There was a moment there when I could have said, ‘All right, it didn’t work out. I gave it my best shot.’ Or pick yourself up by the bootstraps and put one foot in front of the other, and keep going forward, even when you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m proud that we chose that direction. It wasn’t just me. I had people behind me cheering me on and helping me, giving me wisdom as I was having to make those decisions. But that’s the lasting feeling that I get from that time that I hope to pass on to Avery.”
MCCreery currently has a Top 30 hit with “Bottle Rockets,” a collaboration with Hootie & the Blowfish. McCreery will head out on the road later this year on the co-headlining Two For The Road Tour with Dustin Lynch. Find all of McCreery’s music and upcoming shows at ScottyMcCreery.com.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of NBC