June 10th, 1991.
A special day in country music history…
It was the day Brooks & Dunn released their debut single and the title-track to their first album of the same name, “Brand New Man.” Written by Kix Brooks, Ronnie Dunn and Don Cook, the single peaked at #1 on the Billboard country charts.
Other than Diamond Rio with “Meet in the Middle” four months prior, Brooks & Dunn was only the second country music band in history to have its debut single reach #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.
Of the creation of the iconic song, Kix says:
“Ronnie had brought this idea to the table, I’m a changed man, and I just said ‘God that sounds great, what if it’s brand new man?’ And he goes ‘Well, I like that too.’
And we hacked around on the verses, got em pretty close. Don Cook, our buddy, co-writer, producer when we first got started, threw in that “born to love again” line. And we’re like ‘Oh, okay, that’s good. That’s good, you’re in.’
And, uh actually fooled around and started working on another song. We were workin’ on “My Next Broken Heart”, which were our first two number one records. So that first week was kind of an eye opener. You know, heck, maybe there’s something going on here.”
A little something going on was a major understatement, but it’s still one of my favorite songs to this day. Of course, more importantly, it set them on the path to becoming country music superstars and the song itself is a cornerstone of ’90s country gold.
And, if you remember, the song had new life breathed into it just a couple years ago. For their 2019 Reboot album, which featured twelve duets with other artists, they sang “Brand New Man” with Luke Combs.
The fact that this song is still so relevant just goes to show how incredible they’ve been from a musical standpoint being able to withstand the test of time. It only further cements their legendary career in country music.
And because of that album a couple years ago, they’re also seeing a resurgence within a younger generation of country fans now. Fans who weren’t around to appreciate them in their glory days.
We all miss having this kind of country music on the radio today, but at least we’ll always have these songs.
And who could forget the music video and all it’s epic ’90s production glory:
And, the awesome duet with Luke:
