Recently, Kenny Chesney called in to “The Bobby Bones Show” to talk about his career. During the course of the interview, Kenny and Bobby talked about Chesney’s song selection, his live shows, and if he considers himself a true 90s country artist.
After discussing Kenny Chesney’s island life and his string of number-one hits, Bobby Bones directed the conversation to the nineties. Bones tells Chesney that he thinks of him as a very modern and contemporary artist. At the same time, his first album dropped in 1994. This led to the question, “Do you consider yourself, as contemporary as you are, a 90s country artist?”
This question seemed to catch Kenny Chesney off guard. However, he started by talking about how he listens to his older music. “I do love that music. It’s hard for me to listen to the music I made then because everything has changed so much. I don’t listen to it as a fan, I listen to it as somebody that created it. And I listen to it and go, ‘Oh I would have done this different.’ Or, I’ll hear something on the radio from that era and go, ‘Why didn’t we mix it this way or why didn’t we do this.’ So, I don’t really listen to it that way.”
At the same time, Kenny Chesney said that he is grateful to have such a long and successful career. In fact, he says that he feels very fortunate to “still have a fire burning,” in his career and that he continues to get hit songs.
Bringing things back around to the original question, Kenny Chesney answered honestly, “I mean, yes, a big part of my life was in the 90s but it has also been since then. I feel like my audience has grown and grown since then also.”
Kenny Chesney’s Audience Has Changed
While a large part of his career was in the 90s, Kenny Chesney says that his earlier stuff doesn’t get as big of a response as his more recent songs. About this, he said, “It’s funny that you say that, though, because now I’ll do these songs that everybody knows now and I’ll do go back and do a song from the 90s and they’ll start checking their phones.”
This makes sense. Kenny Chesney is best known for his island life image. The first of those albums, “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems,” dropped in 2002. His die-hard fans, the No-Shoes Nation, are more familiar with his later work.
On the other hand, he dropped some really great music in the mid-to-late-nineties. He had his first three number-one hits at the end of the decade with “She’s Got It All,” “How Forever Feels,” and “You Had Me from Hello.”
We’ll leave whether or not Kenny Chesney is a true 90s country artist up to him. However, you can’t deny that his music was huge in the latter portion of the decade. Country radio at the turn of the century wouldn’t have been the same without him.
