Kenny Chesney is rocketing up the charts with his new single, “I’m Alive,” and while the single may be moving fast, the song found its inspiration in someone who wasn’t moving too fast: Kenny’s boat captain. Turns out that a songwriting session on the water became a late-night, wee-hours excursion around the island where they were relaxing, and a morning-after comment from his slightly-the-worse-for-wear captain set the song in motion with the idea of not looking back or too far ahead, but living in the moment, and knowing “it was okay just to be breathin’ in and out and be alive.” (AUDIO INFO BELOW)

• Featuring Dave Matthews, “I’m Alive” is on Kenny’s second Greatest Hits disc, available now!
• Be sure to catch Kenny this Friday morning, August 14th, when he performs on ABC’s Good Morning America!

  Kenny Chesney talks about how he came to write his current hit, “I’m Alive.” (:47)
“‘I’m Alive’ is a song that I wrote a couple of years ago. We were just hangin’ out on the boat tryin’ to write a song, tryin’ to see, you know, what would come up…you know, if we could be creative at all. And we went out one night. We were up ’til probably, I don’t know, three or four in the mornin’. We were ragin’ around the island, and we didn’t wake up ’til about noon. My boat captain, he looked pretty rough that mornin’, and I asked him, I said, ‘How you doin’?’ And he looked at me, and he goes, ‘I’m alive.’ And I took that and thought about that for a minute and what that statement means. And, you know, not necessarily looking forward to a year from now or a month from now, and definitely not lookin’ back. But it was just right there in that moment, and it was okay just to be breathin’ in and out and be alive.”