Kenny Chesney's Emotional New Album
Country superstar Kenny Chesney's latest album, "Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates," hit store shelves last week and has already soared to the top of the country charts. He has now sold more than 25 million albums in his career.
This week, his strong sales were overshadowed by the hip-hop feud between rappers Kanye West and 50 Cent, who also released albums on Sept. 11. Chesney sold 387,000 copies in his first week, a figure that would earn him the No. 1 spot almost any other week.
Many of the songs on this album are truly heartfelt. And after a failed marriage to actress Renée Zellweger that ended with an annulment, he hopes to one day settle down and start a family. Chesney said he tries to write songs that will speak to his listeners' emotions.
"When I'm looking to record a record I gotta know that somebody's going to feel something," Chesney, who just finished a concert tour, told The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "You gotta make them remember their first kiss, you gotta make them want something, you gotta make them want to fall in love. If you don't get them excited and you don't move them in some way -- then if I don't think I'm going to do that, then I don't record that song."
Chesney's song "Better As a Memory" is basically a letter he says he has written to at least four girls in his life. The lyrics say: "Built walls too high to climb out, but I'm honest to a fault. It's just who I am. And I'm better as a memory than as your man."Photos: Kenny Chesney
"At the time that I wrote a couple of those letters, I knew I had a lot ahead of me, a lot in front of me that I had to experience. And I knew that I wouldn't be very faithful to them, and to be quite honest," he said. "But the line, 'I'm honest to a fault, it's just who I am.' That was me saying, you know, I'm not ready for this. I'm not -- I'm not -- I know that I -- I've got all this stuff in front of me that I knew I had to do. "
But now he doesn't feel that way and now he says he is ready for a real relationship. His song "You Scare Me Too" is about being frightened by the way he feels about someone. It is about the time he married Zellweger.
"That song is very real though it's about finally meeting somebody that you, the way you feel about them you have no control over and you know your life is going to change and you can't stop it if you had to and that happened to me," Chesney said. "This is about a guy that had somebody make him literally think, and literally know that his life is getting ready to change and there's nothing he can do to stop it."
The album also features a song called "Wife and Kids," which is what Chesney someday hopes to have.
"Everything that I've done in my career, I've sacrificed a lot to do it," he said. "And it's been -- and -- and you asked me if it was worth it. And it has been worth it. But I don't know that it's going to continue to be worth it, just constantly giving this all the time, and giving every bit of energy that you have to one specific thing."
All he needs, Chesney said, is "someone to knock my socks off."
Chesney says for now, he will concentrate on writing songs while he hopes his love life falls into place. It was writing, after all, that got him into the business in the first place.
"My life is about making music. That's where I prefer to keep it I don't want to live in Hollywood," he said. "I don't want that life. I don't want to be known for anything other than being a great songwriter and artist and having a great show."