Chris Young is rightfully so proud of I Didn’t Come Here To Leave. The 14-track record, his first on Black River Entertainment, is a bit of redemption for Young, who found new creative freedom with the project. Young spent most of his career on RCA Records, a division of Sony Music, where he had been since winning Season 4 of Nashville Star in 2006.
But after the release of Young Love & Saturday Nights in 2024, the Tennessee native found himself ready for a new chapter.
“I titled the album I Didn’t Come Here To Leave because of a lot of reasons,” Young explains on TalksShopLive. “But mainly, I wrote so many songs over the last year of my Sony deal. And for those of you guys that don’t know, when I left Sony, it was because my deal was up. My deal wasn’t cut or anything. It just was over. And I was like, ‘Oh, cool. I get to play free agent. I get to go wherever I want.’ So I had all these meetings set up. I go into my very first meeting. It’s with Black River Entertainment.”
Chris Young Reveals How Black River Entertainment Became His Label Home
Young goes on to explain that he doesn’t engage as much as some artists on social media, because of all of the negative comments, which he tries to stay away from. But when he went in to meet with Black River Entertainment, he was pleasantly surprised by his initial encounter with them.
“I’m in this meeting, and the very first thing they show me is a sheet of all of the nice things that everyone has said about me on the internet,” Young recalls. “And I got really emotional about it. I was like, ‘Wow. This is so backwards from every business meeting I’ve ever been in.’ So I played them a bunch of the songs that I had that were ready for the record, that I had no idea what I was going to do with, because ‘Young Love & Saturday Nights’ had just gone No. 1.
“I didn’t think I was going to be making a new record for a long time, and they were like, ‘We want you to make whatever record you want,'” he adds. “I stood up from that meeting, and I was like, ‘That’s where I want to be.'”
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Why ‘I Didn’t Come Here To Leave’ Is So Special for Chris Young
With almost 20 years in country music, there is still a lot more Young wants to do. Fortunately, with I Didn’t Come Here To Leave, the Grand Ole Opry member is proud of the finished project, and excited about the next chapter of his career.
“This album, specifically, for me I think, is something really and truly special, for a lot of reasons,” Young says on Country Nights Live. “Not just because of the litany of songs that are on there, but because I left going, ‘I don’t feel like this art was abandoned. I feel like it is complete.'”
I Didn’t Come Here To Leave is the title of one of the songs on the record. But it’s also a statement from Young about his future in country music.
“I liked the sentiment of this. Like, ‘Hey, I’ve still got a bunch of stuff that I want to say even after, this is my tenth album,’” Young explains. “So, I like the idea of that. And also, just that it’s something that you’re going to crank and roll your windows down.”