The Best of Backstage Country’s Co-Hosts: Luke Bryan
On Backstage Country, Elaina Smith is joined by none other than country music superstar Luke Bryan, a five-time ACM Award winner, four-time CMA winner, and five-time Entertainer of the Year, with an incredible…
On Backstage Country, Elaina Smith is joined by none other than country music superstar Luke Bryan, a five-time ACM Award winner, four-time CMA winner, and five-time Entertainer of the Year, with an incredible 30 No. 1 hits to his name. Bryan takes over the mic, giving fans an inside look at his life while playing some of the best country music tracks.
Luke Bryan on Working with Others
Bryan shared with Smith how, at the beginning of his career, he was grateful for the people he worked with. “I was really good at letting people in my peripheral, and my record label people helped me steer what they thought was going to work the best. And this song [Rain Is a Good Thing] was a song that the president of my record label at the time, Mike Dungan, just loved, and he loved it from day one. We went with it, and we look back now, we're like, ‘Wow, this is just really, really cool that we were able to get this song rocking and get the kind of vibe of who I was gonna be as an artist going.’” He chuckled, “We still get to play it every night and watch people get frisky.”
On Winning Awards
Smith admitted that she feels salty that Bryan’s track “Most People are Good” did not get the recognition it deserves. The singer-songwriter said that what really matters to him is being able to hear a song, which allows him to recognize what he needs to say to the fans. He explained, “When I heard the song and when I heard [the line] ‘Most mamas oughta qualify for sainthood,’ in all of the lines in that song, the first thing I thought was, ‘Wow, people need to hear this.’ This is really gonna speak to a lot of people. And I honestly thought it was song of the year type, nominated material.”
He continued, “For whatever reason, you can't live your life wanting all your songs to be up for ‘Song of the Year,’ but I thought it was that caliber of a song. Even to this day, when I perform it and watch the crowd, you can feel the love in the song, and it's up there with ‘Drink a Beer.’ When I do ‘Drink a Beer,’ I can feel the energy of the crowd immersed in the emotion of that. And I can feel it with ‘Most People Are Good’ with every line that I sing. So as long as I can go be kind of party crazy, have fun, not take myself too seriously, if I can be that artist, and then I can be the artist that wants to do ‘Most People are Good,’ I'm just glad my fans appreciate me going there and doing that.”
