Eric Church Scores 10th Number One with ‘Hell of a View’
Congratulations, Eric Church!
Nearly 10 years after earning his first Number One at country radio, Eric Church is back in the peak position with his tenth chart-topper, “Hell of a View.” The track was co-written by Church alongside Casey Beathard and Monty Criswell.
“We had a pretty good weather day and Casey Beatherd, one of the writers on the song, had been with Monty Criswell earlier. They had kind of worked on some of the song and hadn’t played it for me yet,” recalls Eric in a quote to his record label. “I went out to jog and I came back in, and Casey was kind of standing up looking out the window and I can tell he’s playing. And when I opened the door, he looked up at me and he said, ‘Don’t say anything. You’ve got to hear this. This is really good.’
“He immediately started playing the first part of the song. [One] verse or so, I was hooked,” continues the North Carolina native. “I was in. I loved the way he had the line, ‘caught your wings on fire/when I smoked my Bronco tires out of town,’ and I just thought that was such a great line, and I was smitten with it at that point of time. So, we finished it that night, later that day/night and then recorded it, and it came out great. I knew it was pretty special when it went down. It was always a song that I knew was a big hit, but at the same time it has that timeless quality to it and it’s gonna be one of our biggest ones.”
Like “Hell of a View,” several of the songs featured on Church’s three-album release, Heart & Soul, featured Beathard as a fellow songwriter. The two have worked together for years, although the famed songwriter almost didn’t attend the writer’s retreat for this album following a tragic loss in his family. But despite of everything, Beathard attended and churned out some of his best work yet.
“Casey was, of all the writers, he was the most integral in this whole process. Everybody did great, but he was the one to me that got the heartbeat of it, the soul of it,” shares Church. “And he was coming off of, for people who didn’t know, his son was killed right before we went. And when I mean right before, I mean within a month. So, I wasn’t sure if Casey was going to be in a position to go and do it. Just the strength and faith, he was very inspiring to me. And I had lost my brother not long before, about a year or so before that, so we were talking about that a lot. It just created the most unique situation I’ve ever seen. And with the musicians and writers too, they felt they were a part of something; they weren’t just hired, they weren’t just paid to do it. They wanted it.”
Church will soon be able to celebrate his Number One hit and latest album when he embarks on his 2021 Gather Again Tour this fall. The singer will play “in the round” to allow as many fans as possible to fill the arenas. Tickets for the 55-city trek are available now.
