Chris Young making hits after a rocky start

Chris Young’s country music career didn’t exactly get off to a flying start. Even though he got national exposure as the winner of the first season of “Nashville Star,” a since-canceled show that was country music’s version of “American Idol,” the two singles from his 2006 self-titled debut didn’t exactly light up the country charts.

“Oh, you don’t have to be nice,” Young responded with a hearty laugh when his rather inauspicious start was phrased in polite terms. “My first album tanked.”

Young can laugh off the failure of his debut album now because it didn’t spell the end of his record deal or career.

“I’m still really proud of that first record, but I think my career overall is more interesting because, you know, most people, if you have a couple of singles and a failed first record, the record company is just like ‘well all right, good to see you,’ ” the affable singer said in an early September phone interview. “Yeah, I was really lucky that I ended up on a label like RCA that really believed in what I was doing and wanted to keep me around.”

In fact, RCA continued to stand by Young after “Voices,” a single released in advance of his 2009 second album, “The Man I Want to Be,” also didn’t exactly light up – OK, it tanked, peaking at 37 on the “Billboard” country singles chart.

Instead of pulling the plug on Young’s contract, RCA went ahead with the release of “The Man I Want to Be,” and the next single, “Getting You Home (The Black Dress Song),” took off and didn’t stop climbing until it reached No. 1.

After that, Young, 29, extended his string of No.1 singles to five with “The Man I Want to Be,” a re-release of “Voices,” “Tomorrow” and “You,” from his third album, “Neon.”

Now Young is in the middle of his touring cycle behind his fourth album, “A.M.,” which was released in September 2013. He arrives in Hutchinson for a show at the Kansas State Fair on Friday riding the momentum created by two singles from “A.M.” – “Aw Naw” (which went top five) and “Who I Am With You” (which became Young’s sixth No. 1 country hit) – and feeling good about his future.

“We had a top five and a gold single with ‘Aw Naw,’ and ‘Who I Am With You’ is a gold single and went No. 1,” Young said. “Any day in my book, that’s a good start.”

The “A.M.” album finds Young pushing his sound in a bit more of an uptempo direction – a notable shift for someone who had been known primarily as a traditional country-rooted balladeer.

“Even though I had stuff that was really uptempo on (the earlier) records, a lot of the stuff that had been hits for me and had been played on the radio were predominantly ballads and midtempo songs,” he said. “So it was fun for me to kind of stretch out and go ‘well, we’re going to put out (the uptempo “Aw Naw”) as the first thing off of this record and see what happens.’ And to have the success with it, to have radio to embrace it and fans embrace it, it’s important. And it also gives you a little more free reign maybe on the next record to fool around a little more with production and stuff like that.”

Young isn’t thinking much about a fifth album yet. In fact, he has just released a third single from “A.M.,” the heartfelt midtempo tune “Lonely Eyes.” The song occupies something of a middle ground between the full-bodied balladry of tunes like “Who I Am With You” and “Goodbye” and the album’s rocking material (such as the chunky “Aw Naw” and the especially hard-hitting “We’re Gonna Find It Tonight”).

The success of “A.M.” has enabled Young to take a step up with his touring. After doing mainly support slots on tours by a variety of top-tier acts, he’s now doing a healthy number of headlining dates (including his Kansas State Fair show).

Headlining has enabled Young to add some visual bells and whistles to his show and play a long enough set to mix hits, new material and a few choice selections from his back catalog into this show.

“It really is a balancing act,” Young said of his song set. “I don’t want to skip anything. We’re not leaving any No. 1’s out of the show or anything. But it’s fun. I’ve had six No. 1’s, and I’ve had a couple of top fives on top of that. When you can start with a base of ‘hey, here are eight songs that I know just about everybody is going to know all of the words to these’ and then really start mixing it in, it gets fun.”

This story was originally published September 12, 2014 at 6:49 AM with the headline "Chris Young making hits after a rocky start."