Funny thing: Country singer Chris Young got his latest single, I’m Comin’ Over, because he and another songwriter couldn’t make time to write.
Young says he and Josh Hoge talked and talked about writing together but never did until Hoge suggested Young sit in on a writing session with another writer, Corey Crowder.
“We enjoyed it so much we were like, let’s book three or four more of these,” says Young, 30. That trio became the creative nucleus of Young’s forthcoming album, I’m Comin’ Over, due Nov. 13, writing half its songs together. Young and Corey produced the album together, the first time in his nine-year recording career Young has produced himself.
The native of Mufreesboro, Tenn., first came to country music’s attention in 2006 by winning USA Network’s Nashville Star talent competition. A subsequent deal with RCA Records yielded a steady string of hits, including The Man I Want to Be, Tomorrow and Aw Naw.
Released in May, single I’m Comin’ Over is No. 26 on USA TODAY‘s Country airplay chart. It has sold 308,000 downloads, according to Nielsen Music.
The new album will contain a duet with The Voice winner Cassadee Pope called Think of You. Young says when he first started looking for a duet partner to sing the song with him, nearly every female singer in the format had either just recorded a duet with someone else or was working on her own record. Then he played a show near Miami with Pope on the bill.
“She started singing, and I just like turned left and went, ‘Oh, I’m totally asking her to do this,'” he says.
On a track called Sober Saturday Night, Young got one of his childhood heroes, Vince Gill, to sing harmonies and play the guitar solo. Gill invited Young to his house to record his parts, then told Young he could feel free to replace the solo if it turned out to be something other than what he wanted.
“I looked to my right, and there’s a wall full of Grammys,” Young says. “I went, ‘Nope, you can go ahead and play it.”
A little more than three weeks before his album’s release, Young will launch the most ambitious tour of his career, playing a series of mid-size arenas and amphitheaters starting Oct. 22 in Savannah, Ga.
“For sheer capacity of headlining shows, it’s the biggest stuff that I’ve done,” he says. “It definitely is time to put up or shut up. So far, so good.”
(Article by Brian Mansfield of USA Today)
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