After more than two decades in the music business, Zac Brown has picked up a thing or two. With the Georgia native at the helm, the Zac Brown Band has sent 13 singles to No. 1 and picked up three Grammy Awards. Currently, Brown, 47, is gearing up for an eight-night residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas. But the “Chicken Fried” crooner took some time off to chat with comedian Bert Kreischer on his show Bertcast. During that conversation, he shared a colorful method for reaching the top spot on country radio.
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Zac Brown Doesn’t Want to Be a Celebrity
“Every few years, you have to redefine what success looks like to you,” Zac Brown said. “Before it was like, okay, I want to figure out how to have number one songs on the radio. I want to figure out how to do this. You know, hire a big radio team, hire seven executives, have them working on our radio full-time, have them make it where they massage everything.”
After 13 No. 1 hits, Brown says, he knows better now. “You don’t get a number one song by having a good song,” the CMA Award-winning artist said. “You get a number one song by sucking every d— in f—ing radio land. And the team digs them all up and helped me suck up 200 in a day. Let’s just get it all over with. I put my Carmex on and I go to f—ing sucking.”
Well… all right.
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Success Looks Different Now
Zac Brown’s updated definition of success is simple: “playing shows and being with my kids and writing music,” he told Kreischer.
The “Toes” singer is also reportedly shelling out millions from his own pocket to bring the band’s Love & Fear residency to fruition at the iconic Vegas venue.
“This is the most ambitious thing that we’ve ever done,” Brown told Pollstar. “It is a mountain to get to execute, but we’re getting really close to doing. And I’m excited to get to that first night and the release of the full album and the birth of the show and we have a lot to prove.”
As he told Kreischer, “it’s like at some point, you wake up and you’re just like, ‘I don’t want to suck d— anymore. And so you take a break from sucking d— for, like, four or five years and you see what you can can gain.”
Featured image by MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty Images
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