Kenny Chesney’s Influence On Walker Hayes
All signs point to stardom for newcomer Walker Hayes, the biggest of which might be the success of his debut single “You Broke Up With Me.” It’s Kenny Chesney that deserves some of the credit, though, even if indirectly.
Kenny’s music, it turns out, has been central to Walker’s evolution as an artist. So much so, that Walker wrote a song about it. “One night Laney and I were in a fight, we were past the point of talking,” Walker explained recently in a radio interview, according to CMT. “We were actually being dead silent and I flippantly just turn on the radio and [Kenny’s] ‘Anything But Mine’ came on. And that song makes me happy, but I wanted to stay pissed in that moment. So I thought ‘Shut up, Kenny!’ and I changed the station, and the same song was on another station. So I took that idea a couple of days later, and me and some buddies (AJ Babcock and Pete Good) wrote it.”
“Shut Up Kenny”
Kenny was there the good times, too, of course. “[For] so many happy memories: us in a U-Haul, us moving into our first little apartment, all great stuff,” Walker says.
Interestingly, Kenny and Walker are on the same record label today. And he personally gave Walker the green light to include “Shut Up Kenny” on Boom. Kenny has since added it to the playlist for his SiriusXM station No Shoes Radio. “That was a great moment for me,” Walker admits. Read more from CMT here.
Stay up to date on Walker’s touring schedule here.
Teddy McDonald is a fun-lovin’ country music fan man living in Nashville, Tennessee.
