Kenny Chesney
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
Unfortunately for Chesney, Capricorn wasnt much of a country label; not only was the album underpromoted, but the labels country division shut down completely not long after its release. Still, it sold 100,000 copies and caught the attention of several big-time major labels. Chesney ended up signing with RCA subsidiary BNA, which released All I Need to Know in 1995. The album gave him his first two Top Ten hits in the title track and Fall in Love. His follow-up, 1996s Me and You, became his first album to go gold, thanks to two number two singles in the title track and When I Close My Eyes. 1997s I Will Stand was another gold-selling effort that gave Chesney his first-ever number one hit in Shes Got It All, plus another number two with Thats Why Im Here. His big-time breakthrough, however, came with 1999s Everywhere We Go, which sold over two million copies and spawned two number one hits with You Had Me from Hello and How Forever Feels; it also featured another Top Ten single in What I Need to Do, and another, She Thinks My Tractors Sexy, that just missed. In 2000, Chesney issued his first Greatest Hits compilation, and two newly recorded songs -- I Lost It and Dont Happen Twice -- went to number three and number one, respectively.
Greatest Hits became Chesneys second straight double-platinum release and topped the country LP charts. He followed it with the all-new No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem in early 2002, which gave him his strongest commercial performance yet. It, too, hit number one on the country album charts and spun off four Top Ten singles in Young, the number one The Good Stuff, the Bill Anderson co-write A Lot of Things Different, and Big Star. A Christmas album plugged the gap for 2003, and he returned strongly with 2004s When the Sun Goes Down, which won in the Album of the Year category at the Country Music Awards. He repeated the win, this time as Entertainer of the Year, with Be as You Are (Songs from an Old Blue Chair). Chesney found himself the subject of much tabloid fodder in 2005 with his surprise marriage to actress Renée Zellweger (he had composed 1999s You Had Me from Hello after watching Zellweger in the 1996 film #Jerry Maguire). The pair split that same year, citing irreconcilable differences, and Chesney released the chart-topping The Road and the Radio in November. Live: Live Those Songs Again followed in 2006.
