At a concert shortly after touring resumed following the pandemic, Walker Hayes made what seemed like an outlandish prediction about the song “Fancy Like.”
“I made a joke on stage one night just because I loved it so much; I said, ‘This song is going to go quadruple platinum.’ And I just smiled. I was laughing,” Hayes said in a phone interview.
He had good reason to be facetious with that prognostication. At the time, when “Fancy Like” was being readied for a June 2021 release as a single, Hayes had notched just one Top 10 country single — “You Broke Up with Me” in 2017. Four singles had come and gone since with minimal impact.
Now, three years later, Hayes continues to laugh in wonder after seeing “Fancy Like” certified as a mind-boggling five-times-platinum hit and watching his shows move from clubs to outdoor amphitheaters.
His next weekend amphitheater stop comes Saturday in Colorado Springs as he brings his Same Drunk Tour to the new Ford Amphitheater. Kylie Morgan and Tenille Arts will open.
“It’s kind of hilarious,” Hayes said. “My team and my family, we laugh every time we hear it in a Walmart or a restaurant. You know, it makes us laugh pretty hard.”
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“Fancy Like” was one of six songs on the 2021 EP “Country Stuff,” and after the single took off, Hayes and his label, Monument Records, added seven songs (including the chunky ballad “AA,” which relates to Hayes getting sober in 2016 and staying clean ever since) to create “Country Stuff: the Album,” which was released in January 2022.
“AA” is now getting a bit of a second life on the thematically linked new EP, “Sober Thoughts.” Two of the EP’s five songs — the single “Same Drunk” and “Beat The Bottle” — are new tunes, and Hayes has named his current outing the Same Drunk Tour to tie in with the EP.
“Honestly, I mean, if I write five songs in a week, at least one of them is pretty intensely about addiction or recovery, or at least there’s a verse that hints at the fact that I’m in recovery and will always be in something like that,” Hayes said.
Some of the songs from “Sober Thoughts” will find their way into Hayes’ set lists this summer. He said his show will have a few more ballads to add some flow, after earlier tours had been pretty much high-octane affairs from start to finish.
“We have a lot of magnificent lighting, so I think that will maybe help us transition this year from intimacy and then to the more, just wild stuff,” Hayes said. “It’ll probably be more of a dynamic mood.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-16 04:16:00
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