INTERVIEW: Dustin Lynch on ‘Blue In The Sky’

We had indicators really early on that it was going to be a faster-rising single than [normal], just because of how it was being consumed online. What was fun about this whole process was MacKenzie has never had a single on the charts in the States, so she’s texting me like, “Hey, my team is telling me this is kind of cool and this is a good sign.” I’m like, “MacKenzie, this is not normal. This is about to be mega.” So we got to see the signs early on and then just enjoy the ride.

As the song started climbing, we were able to go out and play some shows, both [MacKenzie Porter] and I, and get to feel the familiarity come across the crowd each night and enjoy that. But you can’t plan six weeks at number one. You can’t plan a song to have success like that. It set a record for my career. It set a record for my record label [Broken Bow Records], which is a feat that I can’t even believe. Jason Aldean is my label-mate, so it’s kind of nice to have one on the old man now… We’re really good buds, and we’re fans of each other. I just like that now I’ve got, finally, I’ve got one on him that he gets to try to beat.

I’ve got my eyes and ears on some new artists that maybe are already in Nashville that haven’t really got started yet, or haven’t even moved to Nashville. In years past, I just love… I love being somebody that a young artist or writer can lean on just for advice. I wish I would’ve leaned in a little bit more early on in my career, but things started to change. Keith Urban is the first artist that believed in me and asked me to come tour with him, and since then, we’ve had a bunch of artists take us on tour. I’ve learned so much from them, so I hope to get to a point in my career where I can provide a platform like that, at that level, too.

It was the phase I was in whenever the song came to me. I’d just gone through a breakup. You have that heart-wrench inside, and it’s like you can’t sleep for weeks on end. You’re looking like hell. And me and my buddies decided, “Let’s go into downtown Nashville and jump around in some honky-tonks,” and we were in the Uber headed downtown. I just remember this sense of this weight coming off of me, and this new theme of going, “Let’s embrace the unknown. That’s the past, and we’ve got the whole rest of life in front of us.” That excites me.

This album is fun. That’s why I named it ‘Blue In The Sky.’ It’s optimistic. I learned so much about myself the past two years, not being able to tour, my girlfriend moving in with me. Did not expect that to be coming. What a wonderful journey that was. I learned just so much about what I want out of life and who I am, and who I want to be a part of my life. I’m in a very, I think, good spot, positive spot on a personal level and, right now, professionally with where music is, and all these crazy things happening to our career. I’m just a happy guy, and ‘Blue In The Sky’ really puts the bow on top of all that.

We ended this album with “Not Every Cowboy” because I’ve been looking for… I’ve been looking, how do we circle back to where this started? It just felt like, with the 10-year anniversary with “Cowboys And Angels” coming up, I kind of wanted to tip my hat to it. “Not Every Cowboy” is that song, why we ended the album with that song. It’s a classic American love story that the world… I’ve realized the world is obsessed with the cowboy culture in America. I’ve gotten to travel to a lot of cool places, and everybody is obsessed with the Westerns, for whatever reason. They have Western dress-up night in Japan, for God’s sake. I think it’ll never go out of style.