Chris Young On the Real Life Friendship Behind His Duet With Kane Brown

Chris Young’s newest single might be a tribute to the home-town buddies who are only famous to him, but he’s got a few contacts in his phone fans would definitely recognize — and one of them is Kane Brown. The singers team up for a duet on Young’s “Famous Friends,” and he opened up about the track for a recent interview.

Speaking with RADIO.COM’s Katie Neal on the Superstar Power Hour, Young described how the country stars came together for his uptempo new single — squeezing the project in between games of Call of Duty: Warzone.

“I was lucky enough to get to know [Kane] even before he had his record deal at SONY, just an incredibly talented dude,” Young said about his actually-famous friend. “We started writing this song and it was like ‘Man, this is one of those things where you could have two guys on a duet and it would actually make sense, and it’s a cool nod. We added in Hamilton county for [Kane] on his chorus, which is where he’s from, but he was the first person I thought of for this. Shot him the song and he was like ‘I love this, let’s do it. Let’s go.'”

Featuring the two hit makers trading lines about the true celebrities of small-town life, the energetic track is full of real-life characters from Young’s early life in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and he cheerfully calls it “sort of a name drop song.” Looking ahead, he says fans can expect to hear more new music as well — and that he knows it’s been almost four years since his last album, Losing Sleep.

“The having more music is not the issue,” he says. “It’s how we’re going to release it, [and] when we’re going to release it. The big first step was getting [‘Famous Friends’] out, and I’ve had people tell me ‘Well you’ve already had ‘Raised On Country’ and ‘Drowning’ out, which have not been on an album. And I’m like ‘I know, trust me I know.’ I’ve got ‘em ready to go, we’ll get there.”

Later, Young stuck around to talk about some fun topics, like what happened after he scored his first Number One with “Gettin’ You Home (The Black Dress Song)” back in 2009. Here’s a hint: it involves Kenny Chesney, and a used washer-and-dryer combo. Chris Young and Kane Brown’s “Famous Friends” is out now.