Kenny Chesney goes ‘ Cosmic’
New album finds the poetry amid the commonplace
Something is missing from Kenny Chesney’s new album, Cosmic Hallelujah, out Friday. Come to think of it, the same thing was absent from The Big Revival, his previous and 10th consecutive Billboard country chart- topping album.
“There’s not one mention of a truck on either one,” the superstar says with a playful grin. “Look, I’m not knocking anybody. But I can’t necessarily sing things that people are singing today because, honestly, I said it before them and I don’t want to repeat them or myself.”
Chesney, 48, chuckles softly. “The truth is that I just thought on this album it was more important to sing about something deeper than that.”
That’s not to say he avoids familiar motifs. Far from it, in fact — but in the songs he writes as well as those he records by other writers, he typically focuses beyond the immediate and finds poetry beneath the prosaic surface.
Plenty of country songs celebrate football, for example. But it was Chesney who cut The Boys Of Fall, which focused on those who play the sport — their friendship, brotherhood, honor. When he wrote When I See This Bar with Keith Gattis, he saw stories of love, success and failure in a saloon where others see only booze and neon lights.
Cosmic Hallelujah draws from that same perceptivity. “Being at this spot in my life does open me up creatively to a lot of wonderful things,” Chesney says. “You hope that as a human being, the more you do something the better you get at it. But the
more life you live, the more ups and downs you deal with on a day- to- day basis. Like everyone else, I internalize that. And now I’m at a spot where all that stuff I took in can come out on a record.”
So each track on Cosmic Hallelujah dovetails with Chesney’s thoughts and feelings. Take the first single, Setting the
World on Fire, written by Ross Copperman, Matt Jenkins and Josh Osborne. With guest vocalist P! nk, Chesney dives into its whirl of dizzy romance. “My favorite line is ‘ Do you think we’ll live forever? Let’s have another beer,’ ” he reflects. “I know they’re talking about beers and all this ‘ young love’ stuff, but it’s really about wanting to live with that feeling as long as you possibly can because if you live long enough, you learn that moment is very rare.”
This year, the industry recognizes Chesney’s talents with the BMI President’s Award, to be presented Tuesday, and the CMA Pinnacle Award, lauding his contributions to country music, which he’ll receive the next night during the CMA Awards.
While grateful, Chesney harbors greater appreciation for those he credits for all he’s been able to do. “The industry wouldn’t be giving me these awards if it wasn’t for people out there who really care about the music,” he says. “The ones with music as the thread of their lives? Those are the ones I’ll be talking to when I say my thanks.”