A classic.
Today, legendary country duo Brooks & Dunn released their collaborative album Reboot II, which is a continuation of their 2019 Reboot record, which featured artists like Luke Combs, Kacey Musgraves, Cody Johnson and more.
This time around, there’s an entirely new crop of young country stars on the tracklist, including Lainey Wilson, Megan Moroney, Hardy, Riley Green and many more.
But of course, I was probably most excited to hear Morgan Wallen’s rendition of Brooks & Dunn’s 1992 #1 hit “Neon Moon,” which he’s covered before and also played live in the past. The 90’s classic was the third single from Brooks & Dunn’s debut album Brand New Man, and was a solo write by Ronnie Dunn. It eventually became the duo’s third consecutive #1 single on the country charts, their signature song, and all-time great country song.
In a conversation with Kelleigh Bannen on Today’s Country Radio, Kix says this installment of Reboot is different in that they really turned everybody loose. Some of them brought their own bands and producers, and picked whatever studio they wanted to use.
“Ronnie can tell you, it’s just turning everybody loose. Bring your own bands if you want. Bring your own producer if you want whatever studio you want to work in. We got a great producer and a band.
If you don’t want to deal with that, you can use our stuff and we will be there, after that pick a song and do it however you want.”
I think it’s a testament to their legacy and who they are as artists now in the later part of their career, to invite all of these younger artists to put their own spin on such iconic songs.
To put them in a position to do that, and work with them, as I’m sure all of the artists featured on this project were influenced by Brooks & Dunn in some way, is really special.
Obviously, Morgan is a superstar and pretty much no one in the music industry at all is as hot as he is right now (he had the highest-selling country tour of all-time this year with his One Night At A Time World Tour), so I can see this one quickly becoming a fan-favorite from the new collection of songs because of his popularity and talent.
Morgan sounds great on this rendition, and he really didn’t change up the production too much from the original, which I think definitely works here. He has such a strong, twangy voice, similar to Dunn in some ways, so changing it up too much probably would’ve just sounded odd.
If you’re already a fan of Morgan, I’m sure you’ll love this version, and I definitely think it’s one of my early favorites from the album… I mean, “Neon Moon” is one of the greatest country songs of all time, and there’s a reason it has stood the test of time for 32 years now:
For the first Reboot project, Kacey Musgraves reimagined “Neon Moon” and definitely put her own cosmic country spin on it, which was a quick standout and a song I absolutely loved and still go back to often:
“Neon Moon”
