Songoftheday 9/7/21 -Big orange ball sinkin' in the water toes in the sand couldn't get much hotter, little umbrella shaped margaritas coconut oil tannin' senioritas...

 

 

"How Forever Feels" - Kenny Chesney

from the album Everywhere We Go (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #27 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song comes from Kenny Chesney, who grew up in eastern Tennessee before moving to Nashville to start a country music career. At first signed to Capricorn Records, which had been a home for southern rock bands in the 1970s and then revived in the 90's at first for alternative rock then branching out into country music. Kenny's debut album, In My Wildest Dreams, was released in the spring of 1994, preceded by the lead single "Whatever It Takes", which was a minor country radio hit at #59.  The album didn't sell, and Capricorn shut down its country venture. But as luck would have it, Chesney moved over to BNA Records, which was much more experienced in the genre. His first single with the label, "Fall In Love", climbed all the way to #6 in 1995. The corresponding album, All I Need To Know, popped on to Billboard magazine's Country Albums chart at #39, going on to sell a half million copies.

With that momentum, Chesney returned in 1996 with this third effort, Me and You. The first single from the set, the uptempo "Back In My Arms Again", stiffed right under the country radio top-40 at #41, but he rebounded nicely with the next two singles, the love ballads "Me And You", and "When I Close My Eyes", both reaching the runner-up #2 spot, with the former "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #112. Me and You made the Country Albums top ten at #9, and was his first to place on the Billboard 200 all-genre sales tally at #78, going on to sell over a million copies.

 

When Kenny came back the following year with his I Will Stand record, his status as an A-lister was cemented with the lead single "She's Got It All", which topped the Country Singles chart for three weeks. Also from the album, third single "That's Why I'm Here" spent a week at #2 at Country Singles, and with it Chesney finally made his debut on the Hot 100 at #79. 

At the close of 1998, Chesney previewed his upcoming fifth set Everywhere We Go with the single "How Forever Feels". An uptempo song written by Wendell Lee Mobley and Tony Mullins, and produced by Buddy Cannon and Norro Wilson, it was Kenny's first single release that would venture into the area that would come to be his wheelhouse: "beach country". Like a lighter version of Jimmy Buffett (even naming the singer), the song used the checklist of things from the many vacationlands like Myrtle Beach, Galveston, and Florida into a lead-up to Kenny asking a girl for her hand (ironic, considering Chesney's marital history). It was fun, it was frivolous, and it carved a niche that Nashville fans wanted, and the music video truly showed his personality to great effect, and a mainstream star was born...

"How Forever Feels" became Kenny's first top-40 hit on the pop Hot 100 chart in Billboard in March of 1999. The song was massive at country radio, spending six weeks at #1 on the Country Singles list. Internationally, the single also topped the Canadian Country chart. The Everywhere We Go album, released as the song was peaking in March, rose to #5 on Billboard's Country Albums chart, and #51 on the Billboard 200, going on to move over two million units. Kenny, and the album, will return to the series...

(7/10)

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Here's Kenny on his Tennesse Homecoming concert in 2003...

Up tomorrow: Southern trio possess in the past tense.