Chris Young is so excited about his next musical chapter. The Tennessee native signed with a new record label, Black River Entertainment, and released his first single, “‘Til the Last One Dies,” a song that became the most-added at radio the week it was released. For Young, who spent his entire career until now on RCA Nashville, he is excited about being able to make a record his way, on his terms.

“I think this is really just about having a whole lot of freedom,” Young tells Audacy. “The ability to, if I wanna do a song where I’ve just got steel guitar all over it, that’s totally fine. If I want to do something where I’m standing in the studio with two of my good friends, stomping with a mic set up next to our feet to get part of a track that we want like a stomp clap thing, and all of us just like laughing, telling jokes and goofing off, that’s totally okay.”

“You get to just make art,” he adds. “It’s never perfect. It’s always abandoned, but you work as hard on it as you possibly can.”

“‘Til the Last One Dies” is also a bit of new territory for Young, who has released very few true love songs throughout his career. The song is what Young, notoriously quiet about his romantic relationships, calls a “snapshot” of his life, from his forthcoming new record.

 

 

“I think something that another artist told me one time, I think is very encapsulating of every single album that you will ever make,” says the singer. “If you make one, if you get to make one hundred, it’s a snapshot of where you are in time as an artist. What you feel, what resonates with you, what you’ve written, what you find.”

Young adds that “‘Til the Last One Dies” would be a perfect song for almost any wedding, a suggestion he makes for couples ready to say “I do.”

“Personally, I don’t want to be reaching,” the 39-year-old says, “I don’t want to be over ambitious, but like 99 percent of the people that are getting married this year should use it as their first dance song at their wedding. I don’t want to say 100 percent, because you don’t want to be greedy, but I, I just love this love song.”

“Til the Last One Dies” was written by Ben Hayslip, Seth Mosley, and Jordan Walker. Young is a talented songwriter, but he doesn’t feel the need to write all of the songs on his records.

“It’s not the only one that’s going to be on the project that I wasn’t a writer on,” Young tells Country 102.5. “I’ve had songs before that have been singles that I wasn’t a writer on. I obviously sang and produced this one. But I found it. Someone played it for me right after these guys wrote it, and I was just like, ‘Oh God. That’s really, really good. I gotta cut that.”

Find “‘Til the Last One Dies” and all of Young’s music and upcoming shows at ChrisYoungCountry.com.

Photo Credit: Jeff Johnson