It’s been another great year in country music…and as we get ready for 2010, we’re looking back at some of the highlights of 2009.
IN OCTOBER…
• Montgomery Gentry made the papers in 2009. The duo found themselves immortalized in the classic comic strip Nancy, in a cartoon that celebrated the duo’s induction earlier this year into the Grand Ole Opry.
• Chris Young hit number-one, for the very first time, with “Gettin’ You Home,” from his The Man I Want to Be CD. (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
• Brad Paisley announced that he’ll be involved in a new television series next season on the CW Network. Brad has partnered with actor Zach Quinto, along with producers Mark Schwann and Corey Moosa and writers Neal Dodson and Matt Bomer to create and co-produce a drama series, tentatively titled Nashville. The show is set to focus on a stardom-bound young female singer, as well as a male songwriter whose career success seems less certain. Brad says he’ll occasionally appear as himself in the show and be involved in the music, too, including some of his own hits as well as those from other artists.
• Kellie Pickler is voted Country’s Most Beautiful Woman for the second year by the readers of Country Weekly!
009 HIGHLIGHTS: October" width="16" height="14" /> Chris Young says that when he called his record label’s head of promotion to ask whether “Gettin’ You Home” would go to number-one, he found himself being congratulated by Kenny Chesney. (:43)
“As soon as I landed, I’m down there in baggage claim, and I call him, and I can hear him talkin’ — he was somewhere where several other people were at, and was in the process of tellin’ me congrats on it, he goes, ‘Hang on! Somebody wants to talk to you.’ Hands the phone to someone, and proceeds to start talkin’ about when he got his first number-one. He was like, ‘Man, I remember, I was in Puerto Rico, and no one knew what I was doin’ there, nobody knew my song…this one guy recognized it, startin’ freakin’ out about it,’ and he said, ‘I just wanted to tell you congrats on your first number-one,’ and it was Kenny Chesney. (laughs) So, that was pretty cool. And then within 36 hours, you know, here I am in the building, today, Brad Paisley walks by and tells me congrats on the number-one. So, just how I found out and the people that I’ve seen since then has been really, really cool.”
009 HIGHLIGHTS: October" width="16" height="14" /> Earning his first number-one record made for a busy cell-phone day for Chris Young. (:32)
“Oh, you know I called Mom and Dad. I called my sister, I called my grandparents…you know, and then what’s funny is as soon as it started leaking out and everybody started hearin’ about it through, you know, radio stations sayin’ stuff and, you know, it bein’ on the Internet, everybody started calling me. (laughs) So, I’ve got people that I haven’t talked to literally in years. People I went to college with that have called me and said, ‘Hey! Congrats on the number-one!’ So, I’ve spent all day lookin’ at my…I’ve destroyed my phone battery like twice tryin’ to respond to people.” (laughs)