Audacy's Katie Neal welcomed singer Brett Young to our airwaves as this week’s co-host for the Superstar Power Hour on Audacy Country stations nationwide. The Country star wrapped up his week with an extensive conversation including being a new dad, the creative ways fans have used “Lady” in their lives, what to expect on his new album, and so much more.
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Their conversation began where a lot of conversations begin these days, what’s he been up to during quarantine?
“I was kind of golfing before the pandemic, but now I’m obsessed with golf. My wife’s probably loving that!” Young exclaimed.
Young and his wife Taylor Mills Young, were able to take advantage of their time together to enjoy a major moment in their lives. Spending time with their first child. “It was good timing, with at the time a new, new baby, and now a little toddler,” Young says. “It’s been great to be able to help, but also to just be around for all the significant firsts in her life.”
“I’m grateful for it,” he adds of the opportunity to be home with his wife and daughter. “I would love to have been working this last year, but the things I got to experience that I would have absolutely missed are priceless. It’s been an interesting year, but it’s been a good year.”
Young and his wife are also expecting their second child this summer, something he’s simultaneously prepared and totally unprepared for.
“We’re totally excited, we’re totally ready, and we’re probably not ready at all at the same time,” he said.
On the music side, Young has enjoyed a number one single as “Lady” has topped the US Country Airplay chart. An extremely emotional and personal song, Young says “it was way more emotional writing it than recording it.”
“During the writing it was really emotional. I think a big part of that was because of the twist that we put on it where it brings Taylor in. It seems like a song about my daughter, but it’s really not. It’s a song about my wife that I’ve written to my daughter.”
“To have them be collectively the central focus of the song, it’s been emotional ever since we wrote it,” he adds. “I got in the studio and felt like ‘what’s wrong? What’s wrong with me? Why is it so easy to record this vocal?’”
He continues, “it just turns out that was work mode cause the first time I had gone out on stage to sing it in front of people, I could almost not get the words out. It keeps coming back up and getting me, but I don’t know that it’s possible me to ever write a more personal song than this one.”
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Young was two weeks into his tour, which was the first time he was playing “Lady” in front of an audience, when everything got shut down. “We got to play it five times in two week and that’s been it.”
“Luckily because of the nature of this song, there’s been a lot of other ways to see it connect with people.” Young listed events such as weddings and births as places where “Lady” has been played.
“One of the coolest things not being able to tour ‘Lady’ was how many videos we got to see of couples in the delivery room that were playing ‘Lady’ in the background when they had their first child or just had a child.”
Young also dove in, as much as he could, into what we can expect from his new album. While there’s no official release date yet, Young was happy to share his experience making the record.
“I think that we did a perfect job of stretching me as far as we could stretch me without making it not sound like a Brett Young record,” he says. “That was a challenge, but it feels really gratifying to listen to the project as a whole.”
“There are enough songs that are so down the middle for me, that are some of my favorite songs that I’ve ever wrote, that make it so perfect as a project, but still allow me to step outside my comfort zone a little bit and give a little bit more swagger and tempo to this record than I’ve had in the past.”
Watch the full interview with Brett and Katie above, and tune in to the Superstar Power Hour with Katie & Company on your favorite Audacy Country stations every weekday. Plus be sure to get your votes in for the Audacy Country Top 20 right now!
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