AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Around the same time as Chesney’s “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems,” he made his own appearance on country radio by guesting on Alan Jackson’s escapist singalong, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” a monster Number One hit that earned Buffett his first CMA Award, for Vocal Event of the Year in 2003. “Tremendous influence on so many of us.” Old Dominion thanked him for “providing countless musicians like us a comfortable, welcoming place to create our own music.” And Sugarland’s Kristian Bush acknowledged Buffett’s overt effect on his boozy new EP of tiki songs, Drink Happy Thoughts.īut Buffett’s sway wasn’t just tangential. Along with tributes from Paul McCartney, James Taylor, and President Biden, there were reams of messages and remembrances from mainstream country artists, all of them bowing to the king Parrothead’s impact.Ĭhesney posted a pre-dawn video of himself singing Buffett’s “A Pirate Looks at Forty” on an island. That a songwriter born on the Gulf Coast in Pascagoula, Mississippi, could have such an impact on landlocked country singers - like Chesney from Tennessee, Keith and Shelton from Oklahoma, Brown and Bryan from Georgia - was apparent in the hours after Buffett died. After first nodding to Buffett a few years earlier in a verse of 1999’s “How Forever Feels,” Chesney buried his feet deep in the sand with the title track of No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems, a 9-to-5 daydream about blowing off work, charting a course for Mexico, and packing “tank tops and flip-flops, if you got ‘em.” (If not? See the song’s title.) While artists like Garth Brooks were mining bits of the tiki-bar sound with songs like “Two Piña Coladas” in the late Nineties, the Buffett big bang in country music can be traced roughly to 2002 with Kenny Chesney’s No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems. Buffett died Friday at 76, leaving an undeniable legacy that is still heard in the songs of country radio and warrants future induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But sonically, they owe their greatest debt to Jimmy Buffett, whose tropical vibes, beachy imagery, and ocean escapism has shaped the last two decades of mainstream country. Today’s country artists love to namecheck icons like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings in their songs and during interviews.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |