On This Day in 2014, Brad Paisley Went Rogue With This No. 1 Album and Took Control

When Brad Paisley released his 10th studio album Moonshine in the Trunk in 2014, he had one goal—to leave no room for interpretation.

“With this record, it’s like, ‘No, I’m going to tell you what I mean,’” he told The Tennessean. “It’s the kind of painting you don’t have to have an art degree to love. You can walk in and go, ‘It’s Rockwell, it’s not Picasso.’ You’re like, ‘Oh, that’s neat. It’s the little boy pulling the little girl in the wagon.’ Or, in this case, the little girl pulling the little boy in the wagon, actually.”

Paisley released Moonshine in the Trunk 11 years ago today, August 25. The collection arrived on the heels of his Wheelhouse, a highly artistic project that was painfully misunderstood. This time, he left nothing—not even the marketing—to chance.

Home to songs including “Perfect Storm,” “American Flag on the Moon,” “Country Nation,” “Crushin’ It,” and “River Bank,” Moonshine in the Trunk entered at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart, selling about 53,000 copies in its first week.

While Paisley was signed to Arista Nashville at the time and label head Gary Overton maintained that they had a bulletproof marketing plan, the West Virginia singer took matters into his own hands. He leaked the entire album on Twitter through chosen outlets—none of which were his label—in the days and weeks leading up to its release.

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Brad Paisley Started a “Twitter Attack” Says Label

“Brad, out of the blue, started the Twitter attack,” Overton said at the time. “We didn’t know it was going to happen. We’ve been in reaction mode for weeks now. He doesn’t tell us ahead of time. We’re watching Twitter like everyone else.”

Ellen DeGeneres even got in on the fun, leaking Paisley’s favorite song from the album, “Shattered Glass.” He wrote the song, which encourages women to shatter the glass ceiling, for his wife, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, and the daughter they never had.

“I love that @BradPaisley chose me to premiere his incredible new song,” DeGeneres said on Twitter when she tweeted the link to the lyric video. “Almost as much as I love this song.”

“That’s not a song you can hear and go, ‘I hate that,’” Paisley said. “To me, it still chokes me up. It is hard to get through it because you start to picture the little girl growing up who needs encouragement and has a future in front of her. That is exactly what the song is talking about, that it’s going to be difficult sometimes beyond reason. But it should be inspiring.”

Paisley’s label representatives were frustrated with his rogue release plan. Still, he was thrilled. In the wake of his Wheelhouse disaster, he took control to communicate and present the album exactly as he intended.

“No matter what happens from here on out, no one gets to present this to the world for the first time but me,” he told The Tennessean. “The last time, that didn’t happen. The last time, we had a nightmare.”

Brad Paisley: “We Had a Nightmare”

It worked even better than he planned. Having a greater presence on social media across many accounts and platforms exposed more of his personality to new fans and additional outlets.

Paisley’s friend and frequent co-writer, Kelley Lovelace, said that they wrote together at all hours of the day and night. The singer had one rule for this album: The songs had to be easy to like. By default, that made the music more commercial.

“Commercial isn’t a dirty word to me,” he said. “Anything that’s easy to love is (commercial). I’ve got a dog that’s easy to love, too. I wouldn’t trade him for anything.”

Currently, Paisley is working on what he calls “this big Easter-egg-filled project.” He released the album’s first song, “Truck Still Works,” last year.

“What’s so fun about this as the first release is it teases what we’re working on, which is the idea that it’s also a metaphor,” he told American Songwriter. “All of those lines that we were really subtle about making sure that there’s the little references — the sunset is about 9 type thing. The idea of “Let’s see if they pave that old dirt road that used to run out.”

Easter Egg Hunting

Paisley joked the subsequent singles might be called “Lice” instead of “Ticks” or “Offline” instead of “Online.” But he wouldn’t say for sure what fans could expect. He will admit he’s having fun dreaming it up.

“For an artist with a double-digit number of albums recorded over the years, it gets harder to say, ‘Here’s my new album,’” Paisley said. “In my case, what’s really fun is the thought of what we’re doing now from an artistic standpoint. It not only creates excitement for me of something new, but it scratches the itch for that fan who wants to hear their favorite songs. We’ve really thought this out as far as what would be a blast for anybody who’s a fan of stuff I used to do or doesn’t even know it, or what works both ways.”

(Photo by Catherine Powell/FilmMagic)