The country star gives one of his most revealing interviews since releasing the surprise album ‘Mr.
Everyone else had to wait until the award show ended, when the set appeared on iTunes.
Instead, hes letting fans be the mouthpiece of the album.
Credit: John Peets
We think about our main core of fans first, the 39-year-old tells EW.
A major tour in support of the record wont launch until 2017.
Now that the sets second single, Record Year, just earned Church his fifth No.
1 country single, hes giving one of his first interviews since the album dropped.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Record Year just became your fifth No.
1 on the country charts.
Can you take us back to writing the song?
ERIC CHURCH: My co-writer Jeff Hyde had the idea.
I could not believe that the idea had not been written that way.
I was shocked to find out that it hadnt been done.
We sat down and started writing and it just fell out.
[Laughs] Theyre definitely somebody tocheck out.
You seem to buoy between songs that go No.
1 and songs that hover around the back half of the chart when it comes to singles.
Are you just taking turns between appeasing radio andhighlighting favorite deep cutsor is there an alternate guiding force?
I dont make a lot of decisions based on radio.
A great example is Mr. Misunderstood [which peaked at No.
15 on the country airplay charts].
But it was important to me, it was an important statement.
So we went and did it.
Weve done that with a number of songs.
And whats funny is that some of them have been our biggest songs.
Two Pink Lines [off 2006sSinners Like Me] was interesting at radio.
Homeboy is still very important to our career and it was like Top 20.
[Off 2011sChief, the song peaked at No.
So I dont look at it in terms of radio.
Its a personal thing for me.
So Im generally the one you’re free to blame or congratulate.
[Laughs]
A lot of money gets thrown into promoting singles.
Is your label fine letting you have final say?
They know that I know my fans better than they do and they let me make the decisions.
I can drop a couple No.1s in a set, but if I dont play These Boots theyre mad.
Mr. Misunderstoodarrived last November with absolutely no warning.
Why was it done in such secrecy?
I wrote the record in 18-20 days, but I wasnt real sure what I had.
I wanted to do it with just myself and the band.
I wanted to see if we could cut it the way I saw it in my head.
Ten days later the album was done.
It just fell out.
I even knew the sequencing of the damn thing.
For whatever reason, the cosmic portal opened up and there it was.
Youve become a poster boy in Nashville for doing things your own way.
Does that seem fair?
We tried the Nashville game.
[Both offCarolina.]
It was Smoke A Little Smoke, which was my call, when things started changing.
So Ive just learned to trust my gut and trust that its going to be okay.
Its playing the long game, in many ways.
I remember saying to my manager, You know what were going to do?
On the 10-year anniversary, were going to put this out.
We thought that far down the line.
Once you decided to releaseMr.
Misunderstoodas a surprise, you had to purchase a record plant in Germany to pull it off.
How did that scheme develop?
We wanted to give away 80,000 copies away, CD and vinyl.
Vinyl is hard to re-produce, there are only so many plants and we were in the fourth quarter.
[Laughs] Thats why it stayed such a secret.
What was the most rewarding part of this release style?
I think thats so ass backwards.
So we went to the fans first.
Thats the feeling we were trying to simulate.
Well, we just didnt have a tour planned.
So were just playing the long game, this record is going to go seven or eight singes.
So fans shouldnt expect more new music before that trek launches?
And I can tell you, I didnt plan this one.
I wouldnt anticipate anything like this happening again.
