KANE BROWN
Professionally, the big news for the former ChattanoogaNorth Georgia resident is his first headlining tour, “The Kane Brown: Live Forever Tour,” which kicks off in January.
But November has plenty of pluses as well for the 25-year-old. His sophomore album, “Experiment,” was released Friday. The project includes the Top 5 hit (and latest gold record) “Lose It” and current single, “Weekend.” A film about the making of “Experiment” is available from Apple Music.
In addition to “Lose It’s” gold status, Brown announced last week that two more hits had reached sales milestones: “What Ifs,” his duet with former Lakeview Middle School choir mate Lauren Alaina, is four times platinum, and “Heaven” is three times platinum.
Later this month, he’ll be among the stars performing at the 92nd annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.
October was eventful as well. Brown emerged as
country music’s biggest winner at the American Music Awards, winning trophies for Best Country Album, Top Male Country Artist and Best Country Song for “Heaven.”
In a recent profile, Rolling Stone dubbed Brown “country music’s new outcast king,” a label Brown says he has come to accept. He doesn’t look like most of country music’s youngest stars — he’s biracial with prominent tattoos and an eyebrow piercing. Nor does he sound like anyone else. Rolling Stone writer Joe Levy compares his low register to “a twanged-out Eddie Vedder.”
And Brown took a different route to stardom.
Unlike most country artists, Levy explains, “Brown mastered social media before guitar, shooting country covers on his phone, posting them on Facebook and YouTube and racking up big numbers. Going from socialmedia sensation to majorlabel artist has been commonplace in pop for more than a decade, but skipping Nashville’s boot camp [nights spent at open mics and days spent peddling songs to publishers] got Brown tagged as country’s Justin Bieber.”
But Nashville has had to take notice. Brown is the first artist to top five U.S. country charts simultaneously, putting him in the Guinness World Records book. His self-titled debut, released in December 2016, remains the country’s best-selling new-artist album debut since 2014.
“If you come to my shows, there’s all kinds of different races, all kinds of different people,” he says in Rolling Stone. “Now, I feel accepted. I still feel like an outcast on the inside, but it doesn’t bother me anymore, at all. It kind of feels cool to be the outsider.”
On a personal note, he wed fiancee Katelyn Jae in October. “Shot my whole wedding for a music video,” he tweeted. NashCountryDaily.com reported the couple honeymooned at Dollywood.