Kenny Chesney

Kenneth Arnold Chesney (born March 26, 1968) is an American country singer.

He has recorded more than 20 albums that include more than 40 Top 10 singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts, 32 of which have reached number one.

Many of these also have charted within the Top 40 of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, making him one of the most successful crossover country artists.

He has sold over 30 million albums worldwide.

Chesney was born on March 26, 1968, in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, at St. Mary's Medical Center and was raised in Luttrell.

He is of English and Irish descent.

He is the son of David Chesney, a former elementary school teacher, and Karen Chandler, a hair stylist in the Knoxville area.

Chesney has one sibling, a younger sister named Jennifer Chandler.

In 1986, Chesney graduated from Gibbs High School, where he played baseball and football.

He received his first guitar for Christmas and began teaching himself how to play it.

In 1989, he recorded a self-released demo album, Good Old Boy At Heart at the Classic Recording Studio in Bristol, Virginia.

He sold 1,000 copies while performing at the local clubs in Johnson City and used the money from album sales to help himself buy a new guitar.

Chesney studied advertising at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, where he was a member of the ETSU Bluegrass Program and the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and graduated in 1990.

After graduation from East Tennessee State in 1990, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he performed at several local clubs.

A cover of Mac McAnally's 1990 single "Back Where I Come From" was also included on this album.

Even though Chesney's version was never released as a single, it has been regularly performed during his concerts.

In March 1991, he passed an audition to sing at The Bluebird Cafe.

He became the resident performer at The Turf, a honky tonk bar in the city's historic district.

Its first single, "Back In My Arms Again", peaked just outside the Top 40 on the country charts, while both the title track (which Chesney had recorded on his previous album) and "When I Close My Eyes" (previously recorded by Keith Palmer on his 1991 debut album and then by Larry Stewart on his 1993 debut album Down the Road) peaked at number 2.

Me and You was Chesney's first album to be certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

In 1992, the head of writer relations at BMI, Clay Bradley, recommended Chesney to his friend, Troy Tomlinson, at Opryland Music Group.

Chesney performed five songs during his audition for Tomlinson.

Chesney left the audition with a songwriter's contract.

A year later, an appearance at a songwriter's showcase led to a contract with Capricorn Records, which had recently started a country division.

Chesney's debut album, In My Wildest Dreams, was released on the independent Capricorn Records label in April 1994.

The album's first two singles, "Whatever It Takes" and "The Tin Man", both reached the lower regions of the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.

The album sold approximately 10,000 copies before Capricorn Records closed its country music division in Nashville later that year and moved to Atlanta.

In June 1995, Chesney signed with BNA Records, and released his second studio album All I Need to Know.

The album produced three singles.

"Fall in Love" and the title track both reached the Top 10, while "Grandpa Told Me So" peaked at number 23.

That same year, Chesney co-wrote Confederate Railroad's single "When He Was My Age" from their album When and Where.

Chesney utilized musicians playing the fiddle and pedal steel guitar throughout this album, as he felt this would highlight the open-country, "down-home" feelings in his music; fiddle and pedal steel further helped to compliment his eastern-Tennessean accent and "twang" heard in his singing and inflections.

One of the intentions behind the record was to capture the "traditional" spirit that had made early country music so popular.

Chesney's third studio album and his second major-label one, titled Me and You, was released in June 1996.

Chesney was honored with the 1997 Academy of Country Music's New Male Vocalist of the Year award.

I Will Stand, Chesney's fourth album and his third from BNA Records, followed in July 1997.

The album's first single, "She's Got It All", became Chesney's first number one hit on the Billboard country charts and spent three weeks at that position.

The album's second single, "A Chance", peaked just shy of the Top 10.

Chesney has received twelve Country Music Association Awards, including the Country Music Association Award for Entertainer of the Year honor four times, and eleven Academy of Country Music Awards, including four consecutive Academy of Country Music Award for Entertainer of the Year from 2005 to 2008, as well as six Grammy Award nominations.

He is one of the most popular touring acts in country music, regularly selling out the venues in which he performs.