Kenny Chesney Gets 19th No. 1 Single

Written by SLN Staff Writer June 17, 2009

Kenny Chesney hits the top of the country singles chart this week with his 19th No. 1 hit, “Out Last Night.” The song, penned by Chesney along with Brett James, was born one morning after waking up from a wild night out. Having that real-life truth to it, Kenny says, is key when it comes to his songwriting. “I’ve been really lucky,” Chesney says. “I came to town, fell in with the Acuff Rose people – and got a real baptism in what a great song is, what it needs to be and the way to let it breathe. You come up with folks like Whitey Shaffer, and Dean Dillon, Bill Anderson, those guys… and you take the songs pretty serious. Just like I take the fans so serious… the songs are what I bring them, and I want them to be able to live in them, too.”

Perhaps not the most emotionally deep song that he’s ever recorded, Chesney explains why the song is so important. “Growing up, going out was everything to us,” Chesney says. “And as I’ve gotten older, not much has changed. When I’ve got friends down in the islands with us… we’re heading out, seeing what kind of people we can meet, fun we can have, jokes we can tell… some things never change… And, as a music fan, it’s like that, too… We’re all talking about what shows we wanna go see… where we wanna go see’em, what they might play. I think when people forget about that stuff in their lives, they start dying. They just do… and that’s one thing I’m not only not gonna do, I’m not gonna let the people who love this music do it, either. So if I’m gonna have a song on the radio right now, I can’t think of a better one for it to be.”

You can catch Kenny as he’ll continue touring the U.S. and Canada this summer on his “Sun City Carnival Tour” through mid-September.