''Songs for the Saints'' is the eighteenth studio album by American

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

singer Kenny Chesney. It was released on July 27, 2018 via

Warner Bros. Nashville Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is a ...

and Blue Chair Records. The album's content was inspired by Hurricane Irma.

Content

The album is Chesney's first release for

, to which he signed in early 2018. Chesney produced it with longtime producer

Buddy Cannon Buddy Cannon (born April 20, 1947 Lexington, Tennessee) is an American country music songwriter and record producer. Active since the late 1970s, he is known primarily for his work with Willie Nelson and as Kenny Chesney's record producer, for w ...

. " Get Along" was released on April 6, 2018 as the first single. Chesney co-wrote five of the twelve songs on the album. Ziggy Marley performs duet vocals on "Love for Love City",

Jimmy Buffett James William Buffett (born December 25, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and businessman. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffet ...

appears on a cover of his own "Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season", and

Mindy Smith Melinda Leigh Smith (born June 1, 1972, Long Island, New York) is an American singer-songwriter. Her first record deal came after she sang a cover version of the song "Jolene (song), Jolene" by Dolly Parton. Music career Smith was adopted at bi ...

provides backing vocals on "Better Boat".

Lord Huron Lord Huron is an American indie rock band based in Los Angeles. The band is composed of Mark Barry (drums, percussion), Miguel Briseño (bass, keyboard, theremin), Tom Renaud (guitar) and its founder, Ben Schneider (guitar, lead singer). Followi ...

's "Ends of the Earth" is also covered on the album. According to Chesney, the album was inspired by "the rebuilding process" after Hurricane Irma, which destroyed a house that he owned in

Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands Saint John ( da, Sankt Jan) is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States. Saint John () is the smallest of the thre ...

. Proceeds from the album will be donated to Hurricane Irma disaster relief funds.

Critical reception

Annie Reuter of ''Sounds Like Nashville'' gave the album a positive review, praising the "heartfelt and vivid lyrics" and the "stripped down and introspective" nature of the album. ''

Newsday ''Newsday'' is an American daily newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI", and f ...

'' reviewer Glenn Gamboa rated it 3 out of 4 stars, stating that "Chesney's artistic stretch may not give him his usual collection of chart-toppers...However, ''Songs for the Saints'' is about so much more than that, a way for Chesney to work his way through the aftermath of Hurricane Irma."

Stephen Thomas Erlewine Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance writer, occ ...

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

rated it 4 out of 5, praising the "warm, hazy vibe" and introspective nature, calling it "one of Chesney's best records".

Commercial performance

''Songs for the Saints'' debuted at number two on the US ''Billboard'' 200 with 77,000 album-equivalent units, including 65,000 pure album sales. It is Chesney's 15th consecutive top 10 album in the US. It sold a further 16,300 copies the second week. As of July 2019, the album has sold 153,900 copies in the United States.

Track listing

Personnel

*Sam Bacco -

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

* Eddie Bayers -

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

*Wyatt Beard - background vocals *Mark Beckett - drums, percussion *

- duet vocals on "Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season" *

- background vocals *Melonie Cannon - background vocals *Tony Castle - programming * Kenny Chesney - lead vocals *

Ross Copperman Ross Copperman (born October 1, 1982) is a Grammy-nominated American singer-songwriter and producer with 29 number one radio hits. After his experience as an artist in the UK, Copperman discovered his talent for writing and producing country mus ...

- background vocals * Chad Cromwell - drums *Eric Darken - percussion * Kenny Greenberg -

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...

Robert Greenidge Robert Greenidge (born 28 April 1950 in Success Village, Laventille, Trinidad) is a steelpan player. He is a member of popular music singer Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefer Band and the instrumental group Club Trini. Greenidge has also collaborated ...

- steel drums *David Huff - programming * Ziggy Marley - duet vocals on "Love for Love City" * Mac McAnally -

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

, background vocals *Josh Osborne - background vocals * Danny Rader -

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

, bouzouki, acoustic guitar, electric guitar * Jon Randall - background vocals *

Mickey Raphael Michael Siegfried "Mickey" Raphael (born November 7, 1951) is an American harmonica player, music producer and actor best known for his work with Willie Nelson, with whom he has toured as part of The Family since 1973. He has performed or reco ...

harmonica The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...

*Mike Rojas -

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated s ...

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

*F. Reid Shippen - programming * Jimmie Lee Sloas -

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

- duet vocals on "Better Boat" * Derek Wells - electric guitar * John Willis - 12-string acoustic guitar, acoustic guitar,

gut string guitar The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

References

{{Authority control 2018 albums Kenny Chesney albums Warner Records albums Albums produced by Buddy Cannon