The High Road

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Since he skyrocketed to stardom with his 2016 debut full-length, Kane Brown’s strength has been his versatility—a vision of mainstream country broad enough to accommodate the sounds of R&B, hip-hop, and pop. But as the 31-year-old singer from Chattanooga, Tennessee, tells Apple Music’s Kelleigh Bannen, his fourth album is the first one where he could really be meticulou. “I got thrown into all thi,” he said. “This album I’m really excited about, because I actually took my time. I actually got to rewrite some lyric. I feel like everything’s placed.” On <i>The High Road</i>, the follow-up to 2022’s <i>Different Man</i>, Brown remains steadfast in his conviction that being a country star does not require a strict adherence to the old notions of genre. “I’m like a burnt CD from ’03 in a Mustang/You never knew what was coming,” he crows on “Fiddle in the Band,” a bluegrass barnstormer that’s as country as it gets for a manifesto about genre defiance. But country’s strict borders have loosened in the nine years since his breakthrough, and these days it’s Brown’s vulnerability that stands out—outlining a laundry list of fears on the arena-ready “I Am,” or documenting the wide-eyed questions he hears as a girl dad on the sweet ballad “Backseat Driver.” .

via Apple Music

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