The Secret to Kane Brown’s Success? ‘I’ve Just Been Following My Gut’
Kane Brown is on a roll these days. The country star-on-the-rise has wrapped up his headlining Live Forever Tour, and he's about to head out on the Ride All Night Tour supporting Jason Aldean. Since the release of his 2018 record Experiment, he's grown his fanbase and kicked his live show up a notch -- and he has a lot to celebrate.
According to Brown, he's gotten to this point thanks to his intuition. Even his co-writers admit it: He knows what he wants.
"For my whole career, I’ve just been following my gut. Whatever happens, happens," Brown told The Boot at the No. 1 party for his single "Lose It." "It happens for a reason."
Brown's current radio single, "Good As You," is sitting in the Top 20 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart as of the week of March 23. Interestingly enough, the love song wasn't the artist's original choice for his next single. It's a bit more romantic than his other material; however, it's still radio-friendly, and taking the risk to swap to it last-minute paid off in the end.
"I wanted a fun song that everybody’s gonna put a smile on their face and they’d be able to drive around to, roll the windows down," Brown explains. “"Good as You," when I hear it, every time, I just smile. It’s just that put-a-smile-on-your-face song. I just thought it was good for radio."
Brown's gotten plenty of confirmation, beyond the song's chart success, that he made the right call, too: " After we changed it, I had so many radio people message or text me," he adds, "and they were like, 'We’re so glad you changed your single. This is a great radio song.'"
That's not the only positive feedback Brown's received lately: His fans have been showing him lots of love, especially on the road. While his days of learning the ropes on tour are in the rearview mirror, they've made him all the more grateful for his new, refreshing change of pace.
"My old album, I played for two years, so this album, I was really working my tail off on. I feel like we wrote it great to what I wanted," Brown says. "That’s all that we play basically in our show now is all the new album. Everybody’s singing the words back."
Brown's spontaneity is perhaps a big key to his success; he's not afraid to switch things up to make them work better. With "Good as You," he applied that principle of adaptability to the song's live performance, and it's only grown in popularity.
"I just wanted to put a lot more energy and bring all those instruments in and make a better live show. So we brought a fiddle in and a banjo and a steel guitar," Brown reflects. ""Good as You," right now, is one of the loudest songs we sing out there. It’s just amazing.
"It’s cool," he adds, "because we made an audible, and it worked."
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