“There is so much more to being alive than partying, tailgates and bonfires,” Chesney tells CountryMusicRocks. Prefacing “American Kids”, Kenny Chesney says all of the right things.

Chesney just took a year or so off to retool and reflect before releasing new music, and now he’s back with a song called “American Kids” written partly by hot commodities Luke Laird and Shane McAnally, mostly known in recent memory for helping Kacey Musgraves with much of her award winning album Same Trailer, Different Park (Incidentally, Musgraves was on tour with Chesney for a while last year). That’s why his new single-the first one in over a year-is filled with such intrigue. So where does Chesney fit in the current scheme? He can still sell out arenas and stadiums, but is he apt to try and run with the young guns of bro-country, does he simply try to hold ground, does he do battle with the current trends, or does he cash in his chips at the end of one hell of a run? Chesney won the coveted CMA Entertainer of the Year prize in four of the five years between between 20, deposing a two year run by Alan Jackson with his first one, and eventually being replaced by Taylor Swift after his last, highlighting just how much Chesney is a bridge between the old and the new. In this whole muddled, unsettled moment we find ourselves amongst in country music, where so called “bro-country” purely dominates, and and older artists are so quickly being left behind, Kenny Chesney inhabits a very interesting space.

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