On Wednesday night, Chris Young‘s set to sing his top-five hit, “Famous Friends,” on the 2021 CMT Music Awards with co-host Kane Brown.
“I’ve been friends with Kane for a while,” Chris explains. “I got a chance to meet him before he even had his record deal through a bunch of mutual friends here in town that were songwriters and started working together, had written a bunch of stuff for him, [and] had guested on one of his projects before.”
Chris says he immediately knew he was onto something with “Famous Friends.”
“When I wrote this song,” he tells ABC Audio, “I was like, ‘Hey, cool, it’s like it could be a duet between two dudes that’s not about going out and just getting hammered,’ which seems to be what most of ’em are — nothing against those.”
“I was just like, ‘This is just different,'” he continues. “And I loved the idea from the minute I wrote this with Corey Crowder and Cary Barlowe.”
Even though Chris namechecks his own “Famous Friends” in the hit duet, that’s not keeping his fans from seeing their own story in the song.
“The only thing in my mind that I was like, ‘I hope it’s not too specific,’ because these are all actual names of people that I grew up with,'” he reveals. “But it’s been so cool to see everybody kind of put themselves into the song and go, ‘Oh, that reminds me my friend so-and-so.'”
“And there’s not another feeling like that,” he adds. “It’s so humbling when people love your music and being able to share that with Kane makes it even better.” (AUDIO IS ABC 1-0N-1)
Kane co-hosts the CMT Music Awards with Kelsea Ballerini starting at 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday, live from Nashville.
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