There are just some albums that’re time machines straight back to the good ol’ days.
You know, the simpler times when you’d meet up with your buddies at the gas station back in high school during the summertime, and figure out what kinda trouble you were gonna get into that night, and try to creep back into your parents house at 4 AM without them waking up.
Even though we grow older and life moves on, spinning these albums will take you straight back to the days when you were 16 for just a brief moment, as you go through song after song.
For me, it was always Eric Church’s third studio album Chief, which dropped on this date back in 2011.
This is one of those “man I feel old” moments, considering it still feels like the album dropped only a couple years back.
There’s not a single song from the record that you don’t want to go back and revisit (unless your ex broke your heart around the time this album dropped or something).
From “Springsteen,” to “Creepin’,” “Drink in My Hand,” “Homeboy,” “Like Jesus Does,” “Jack Daniels,” and hell, the whole track list is nothing but 12 songs of bangers.
It’s pretty mindboggling that the album produced only two number one hits with “Drink in My Hand” and “Springsteen,” as there are so many songs on the project that could make a case for the “Top 10 Songs of the 2010s.”
“Creepin'” and “Like Jesus Does” were both Top 10s, with “Homeboy” cracking the Top 20.
The album itself also peaked at number one on the US Billboard Top Country Albums chart, and also the US Billboard 200.
But more than that, it’s the album that catapulted Eric Church’s career into the next stratosphere. Chief was the turning point… Eric went from this edgy, do it my own way, rising country singer, to a full blown country superstar. Whether radio wanted to play his singles or not…
Needless to say, Chief was a bright light during a time where country music radio was getting acclimated to pop and bro-country and has stood the test of time thus far, and it’ll forever be a top three album to me.
Just take a trip down memory lane real quick:
