Nothing like early 2000s Kenny.
It’s kinda crazy when you think about just how long Kenny Chesney has managed to say at the top of the game. He dropped his first single in 1993 and had his first #1 hit in 1997. And nearly 30 years later he’s still releasing hit songs, headlining stadiums, and selling out residencies at the Las Vegas Sphere.
For me, Kenny was undeniably the soundtrack of my high school years in the early 2000s. Songs like “Summertime,” “I Go Back,” “Young,” “Don’t Happen Twice,” and many others were summer staples, while ballads like “The Good Stuff” and “There Goes My Life” showed off a different side of his music that highlighted the incredible songwriting in country music at the time.
It was that songwriting, in fact, that made a young aspiring artist named Taylor Swift fall in love with country music.
Swift was recently named one of the 30 greatest living American songwriters by the New York Times, and in an interview she spoke about her love for songwriting, the process behind writing songs, and much more.
Of course Taylor got her start in country music, when she dropped her self-titled debut album in 2006 after singing with Big Machine Records the year before. And according to Taylor, it was the lyricism in songs from artists like Kenny Chesney that drew her to songwriting:
“I think the first songs that I fell in love with was the type of songwriting that I think folk and country is really known for. It’s like that storytime structure. Songs like “Harper Valley PTA” or “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks or any amazing Kenny Chesney song.”
Taylor went on to explain that it was the storytelling songs that really drew her in to country music:
“A hypothetical structure would be, first verse, little girl learns a lesson that in the chorus her mom teaches her about. Then the little girl grows up, and now she’s a teenager, and she realizes, ‘Oh, my God, my mom was right about this.’ Now the second time you hear the hook, that same hook means something a little bit different because she’s grown up in her life. Then the bridge, maybe she goes on in her life, she has a little girl, she imparts that wisdom onto her. And if you really want to get me to cry, bring back that same first line of the song and end the song with it.”
The structure Taylor is describing can be easily found in Kenny Chesney songs like “There Goes My Life,” “That’s Why I’m Here,” or “I Lost It,” songs that pack a full storyline (and often a full lifetime) into 4 minutes of lyrics. You also hear it in country classics like “Don’t Take the Girl” by Tim McGraw or “Whiskey Lullaby” by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss.
And according to Taylor, when she first fell in love with those songs, she though country music was where she needed to be:
“That was the first thing that made me think, ‘It’s gotta be country music.’ That was the first type that I really fell in love with.”
Of course it wasn’t just country music that influenced her songwriting: Taylor admits that emo music appealed to her because of the impact of their lyrics, citing bands like Dashboard Confessional and Fall Out Boy for their ability to “take a common phrase and then they’d just twist the knife of it.”
I think anybody who grew up in the early 2000s probably listened to “Sugar We’re Going Down” or “Vindicated” while going through the typical teenage angst: I can tell you both of those songs were on my burnt CDs right alongside Kenny Chesney, so it’s no surprise that Taylor was influenced by their songwriting too.
There’s no doubt that Kenny Chesney has inspired quite a few artists by now, given how long and successful his career has been. He’s had Megan Moroney out on tour with him and has taken her under his wing, and even back in the late 2000s/early 2010s he was at the forefront of “beachy” country, which then took off with artists like Zac Brown Band, Dierks Bentley and Jake Owen.
Of course it’s also not a stretch to draw a line between that era of country music and the “bro country” era that followed, which moved from tequila on the beach to Fireball around a bonfire. But it just goes to show what an impact Kenny Chesney has had during his career, and why it was no surprise when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame last year.
When the biggest artist in the world is citing you as an inspiration, you’ve clearly made quite the impact.
