Kenny Chesney tops the country singles chart

If there’s one thing Kenny Chesney understands, it’s how and where people live. Even when he was digging deeper for his highly anticipated Lucky Old Sun, which will be released October 14, Chesney wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to sing what everybody thinks, but most people wouldn’t dare say: “Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven (They Just Don’t Wanna Go Today).”

And how on the pulse is the man who’s played to in excess of a million fans each of the past 7 summers? Just 6 weeks after add date, “Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven” is at #1 on the Country Singles charts.

“I don’t know anybody who doesn’t wanna go to heaven,” laughs the man who spent 25% of last year at the top of the country charts with “Never Wanted Nothing More,” “Better As A Memory” and the CMA Single and Video of the Year nominee “Don’t Blink” of his latest chart-topper. “But just because you want to go to heaven, it doesn’t mean you’re ready to stop living. Heck, I think it almost makes you wanna live that much more…”

The Calypso-drenched song of Sunday morning sermons and the love of Saturday night, kicks off the follow-up to Chesney’s self-penned platinum-plus Be As You Are: Songs from an Old Blue Chair. But where Chesney characterizes Be As You Are as “more a map to the places I drink beer in the islands,” Lucky Old Sun is “more a picture of who I am right now, and where I’ve been over the last few years.”

Beyond the percolating hit single, there is the Tin Pan Ally classic title track – featuring Willie Nelson, a duet with songwriter Mac McAnally on the tender “Down the Road” and several thoughtful Chesney originals including “Nowhere To Go, Nowhere To Be,” “Boats,” “Way Down Here” and “Spirit of a Storm.”

“I think real life is a lot of things,” says the 4-straight and reigning Academy of Country Music and 3-time and current Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year, who is also this year’s leading CMA Awards nominee with 7 nods. “Yes, you want to have fun… you wanna have a good time with your friends… and forget about your troubles. I think that’s what (“Heaven”) is about.

“But there’s also a time when you have to deal with the storms that are blowing in… No life is completely carefree, and this is an album about that. Both facing the things that are hard, and figuring out how to still have some laughter or happiness in the worst of it. Because in the end, it is up to you.”