Chris Young sees the light with 'A.M.'

Show Caption

Chris Young's just glad he's around when A.M. sees the light of day.

The country singer's fourth album is out today. But just a few weeks ago, Young was in intensive care in a Denver hospital, suffering from a life-threatening bacterial infection in his leg.

A few days before he fell ill, Young talked with Paste BN about his new album, which includes his current single Aw Naw.

"In a lot of ways, Aw Naw is really different from what people expect from me," says the 28-year-old singer, who has topped the country charts with ballads and love songs like Gettin' You Home (The Black Dress Song), The Man I Want to Be and Tomorrow. "It's not different if you went and saw my live show, because I'll do covers that sound like that. I'll go try to find a more rocked-up song every now and then to play.

"One of the things that sets this album apart is that we've done so much tempo on this record and led with a song like that that is so different, that has the double guitars. It's definitely a way I've tried to stretch my record to match what I've been doing live on the road." Young's touring as support for Brad Paisley through November.

Two years ago, Young purchased a guitar that once belonged to one of his country-music heroes, the late Keith Whitley. "It was Keith's, like, bus guitar," says Young, who bought the Sigma by Martin SE-36 at auction. "It was one of his acoustics that he played every now and then. There are a couple of videos online of him playing it."

Young doesn't take the guitar on the road with him, but he did write some of A.M.'s songs, including the title track and Goodbye, which he wrote on the same day.

Though those songs came from Whitley's guitar, he says Whitley, who died of alcohol poisoning in 1989, influenced him more as a vocalist. "The tracks, my songwriting, I don't know if people are going to go, 'Yep, Keith Whitley; I hear it,' " Young says. "But when I open my mouth, I'm a country singer. There's not anything else I would want to do or that is as natural as this, and I think there is that influence there, just from growing up, trying to sing Keith Whitley songs."

One answer from the interview is different for Young since his hospital stay: Young's best scar is now the coin-sized spot on his upper thigh. Before that one, though, it was the one from a gash in the back of his head that he got during a car wreck.

"I was in my first car, and a guy hit me from behind doing about 60," he says. "I went up into the ceiling, because I was actually bent over, looking at my radio. It split my head wide open. All I had was a concussion and a bunch of stitches — could have been a lot worse."