Songoftheday 5/12/23 - Lookin' back now well it makes me laugh, we were growin' our hair we were cuttin' class...

 

 

"Young" - Kenny Chesney

from the album No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #35 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song comes from country singer Kenny Chesney, whose first Greatest Hits album in 2000 with "I Lost It" and "Don't Happen Twice".  At the close of 2001, Kenny released the first single from his sixth studio album (and fifth on BNA Records), No Shirt No Shoes No Problem. "Young", written by Steven McEwan, Naoise Sheridan, and Craig Wiseman, was basically an uptempo nostaglia piece where the lyrics have Kenny reflect upon his youthful indiscretions, and uses the tropes you'd expect in a country song about it. It didn't hurt that the intro copied John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" so much I expected a lawsuit. Add some woo-hoos straight out of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil" and the retro air is complete, and radio and fans got on board, sending Kenny into new heights...

"Young" became Chesney's fifth single to cross over into Billboard magazine's Hot 100 top-40 in April of 2002, while spending two weeks at #2 on the Country Songs chart. The No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems album, released in April as the song was peaking on the charts, paid off in dividends, not only giving Kenny has first top ten placing on the Billboard 200 sales tally, but taking a week at #1 there, while also spending eleven weeks atop the Country Albums list, going on to sell over four million copies. 

Both Kenny and the album will be back to the series.

(5/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Chesney performing the song on his Tennessee Homecoming live special...

and lastly, on the televised Soundstage performance...

Song of the day will be back Monday with a centrist pop punk band.