Chris Young Artistfacts

June 12, 1985
Chris Young is the The grandson of Richard Yates, who was a performer on the Louisiana Hayride country music show.
When he was teenager, Young appeared in two country stars' music videos, cameoing in Reba McEntire's 'I'll Be' music clip in 2000 and featuring in Buddy Jewell's 2003 "Sweet Southern Comfort" visual. The latter saw a long-haired Young getting amorous with a pretty girl.
When Young was fronting the house band at Cowboy's in Arlington, Texas, a fan kept insisting that the 20-year-old audition for the Nashville Star TV show. Young entered the 2006 series of the singing competition, regularly wearing a cowboy hat during his performances. "I asked if he was sure about the hat," mom Becky Harris recalled to GAC. "And he said, 'I'm tired of fooling with my hair.'"
Young was the 2006 winner of Nashville Star. His victory earned him a contract with RCA Records Nashville and he released his debut single, "Drinkin' Me Lonely" that same year, which peaked at #42 on the country chart.
Young's debut Top 40 country chart hit was "Voices" in 2008. The song was re-released two-and-a-half years later topping the country chart in February 2011. It took 51 weeks in total to ascend to the peak position, the longest climb in the tally's history.
Young shared his song-writing process during a January 6, 2015 performance at the MLB Fan Cave Concert Series: "My writing process is really different depending on what I start with. I'm totally the guy that'll be walking through the airport singing something in my phone 'cause I got an idea, creeping people out like, 'why is this guy talking into his cell phone at the airport?'" he said.

"But I'll sing ideas down," Young continued, "I'll open a notes section and type in a title if I hear somebody say something that I'm like 'oh, that might be a song!' Generally I always kind of start from the basis of I've got a title or I've got a chorus to something when I go in and sit down, whether it's on my own or with another writer."
Baseball was Chris Young's first love when he was young and he hoped he could pursue the sport as a career. The singer told The Boot that when he was given a baseball scholarship at Ole Miss, he "left my guitar at home and just figured, if I'm going to do this, I need to focus on it."

"So I focused on baseball, transferred around a little bit, hurt my elbow my junior year and had surgery," Young continued. "I needed an outlet. I didn't have sports anymore, so I picked up my guitar."
The first time Chris Young heard one of his songs on-air was his debut single, "Drinking Me Lonely," when he was still living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His truck had one of those early displays that scrolled the song title and artist, so Young freaked out, parked, and recorded the screen on an old cell phone with grainy video.

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