Chris Young Puts Personal Spin on Traditional Country With ‘Neon’

“[It feels] really, really good,” Chris tells CountryMusicIsLove. “It has been a long stretch, and I can’t really be mad about it because we’ve had 3 No. 1’s in that stretch, so it’s been a good reason for the wait but I’m ready to have some new music out there. I’m so excited for the people to hear it and actually hear what we’ve done in the studio.”

The album’s title comes from the song “Neon,” one that Chris describes as “really special” and “insanely country.”

“You know, I think it was a lot of the illusions to stuff,” Chris explains. “The imagery is just so good in this. The fact that there is a lot of things that catch you by surprise. I mean, they manage to rhyme ‘neon’ with ‘having a little Johnny Lee on’ and it’s so cool how the writers got around this song and made it really, really special. And it’s just insanely country and I dig it.”

One other song on the new album that Chris is particularly fond of is “Old Love Feels New,” a song which he co-wrote. Although the message is common, Chris says that he and his co-writers have put a new spin on a classic theme with this song.

“To me, this is just a classic way to do the ‘I love you song,'” he says. “Someone told me a long time ago, and it’s totally true, if you can find an original way to say ‘I love you’ without saying ‘I love you,’ you can probably write a song about it. This one, I think, came out really, really well. I really, really love what we came up with and think it’s a really cool song that people are going to dig.”

No matter what style of country you prefer, chances are that you’ll be able to find it on Neon. Not only does Chris stick to his traditional roots, he mixes up the album with different sounds, even going as far as including an R&B-feeling song.

“I grew up listening to Keith Whitley and Randy Travis. Those are the kind of people that I really enjoy listening to so there is always going to be stuff like that on my record,” Chris says. “I mean, to me, ‘Neon’ could have been cut by George Strait. I really don’t think that’s far removed from anything that anybody that is very, very country does. And then we also did stuff like on ‘She’s Got This Thing About Her,’ it’s just keys and 11 piece string section. On the song ‘You’ it’s almost like an R&B feel with country instruments. So we did a lot of stuff. I branched out more than just instrumentation on this record.”

Young is referring to his songwriting. He had a hand in co-writing seven of the album’s ten tracks.

“I’ve had three years to write songs, so I think there is a lot of stuff there that maybe wasn’t there before, a lot of new stuff that I’ve tried in song writing and on top of that there’s also a lot of stuff where I pushed my voice farther than I’ve ever pushed it before. It’s definitely the hardest album I’ve made to sing so far.”