Kenny Chesney‘s long-awaited BORN album is out. The 15-song record, his first since Here and Now came out in 2020, is an encapsulation of the last four years, and a testament to Chesney’s determination to do everything to the best of his ability, mostly as a thank-you to his fans.
“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 explains. “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,” he insists. “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.”
Chesney was intentional about every song on BORN, which includes his current single, “Take Her Home, plus “Wherever You Are Tonight,” “Guilty Pleasure,” “Just To Say We Did,” “Thinkin’ Bout,” and more.
“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,” Chesney explains. “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.”
It was “Born,” the first song from the project that became the catalyst for the rest of the record.
“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,” Chesney says of the title track. “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.’”
Chesney broke his own mold with BORN, marking the first time throughout his 30-year career that he had more than a dozen songs on one studio album.
“This is the most songs I’ve ever had on a record ever,” Chesney reveals on Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen. “The most I’ve ever had was 12, so we got three more than that. We got 15 songs on this record. But look, it’s always been very important for me to have a cohesive scope. I work really hard at trying to do that, and I think this record does that, and I think it takes people’s brains down a lot of different roads. There are some things they expect. There are some things they don’t expect.”
One song that almost didn’t make it onto BORN is “Wherever You Are Tonight,” a poignant song about grief and loss, written by Mike Reid and Gary Burr.
“It was 50-50 if I was going to put it on the record or not,” Chesney concedes. “Even though I loved it… Sometimes it makes people uncomfortable just to talk about someone passing or what’s out there, their beliefs. Whatever it is, it can be an uncomfortable conversation, but I felt like the beauty of this song, it didn’t dive into what people believed. It just dove into the idea that someone passes, they really don’t die… They linger in us forever and they linger in the lives of the people that love them.”
BORN took Chesney almost three years to make, from when he first started writing and collecting songs, to the final product. It was only after BORN was completed that Chesney realized the tie that connected all of the songs on the project.
“Without even knowing it, there is a thread of breaking out of the mundane existence in our lives,” Chesney says. “All these same neural pathways we travel, whether it’s the same road to work, or it’s the same way we do certain things, that can create this mundane existence. And when I first cut the song ‘Born,’ the title track, I thought about that. There’s a song on the record called ‘Just To Say We Did’ that is truly about just that. It’s more about connection actually, and that’s also a big theme of this record.
“I just felt like those two songs kind of started down that path, and by the time I was done with it, I had four or five songs that felt in that space of human connection, living your life to the fullest and breaking out of your mundane existence.”
Chesney will kick off his Sun Goes Down Tour on April 20 in Tampa, Florida, with Zac Brown Band, Megan Moroney and Uncle Kracker serving as his opening acts. The tour will conclude with three shows at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts on August 23, 24 and 25. Find all of Chesney’s music and tour dates at KennyChesney.com.
