KENNY CHESNEY’S HEART LIFE MUSIC Connects with MAJOR Media
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Having spent over a year working on HEART LIFE MUSIC, Kenny Chesney celebrates its release by visiting with two separate “TODAY” hosts; Craig Melvin and Jenna Bush Hager. With the media starting to weigh in – Publisher’s Weekly called it “one for the road” and Travel + Leisure declared it “a genuine meditation on connection and purpose” – the East Tennessee songwriter/superstar finds himself on the cover of Newsweek.
With a headline that reads “Keeping It Real: Kenny Chesney Stays True To His Roots,” the 2025 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee sat for an extended interview with editor-in-chief Jennifer H. Cunningham that also provided source material for a cover profile. Considering the values he was raised with, his journey and the way he blazed a trail as an artist, his multi-media “Newsmakers” series appearance arrives as the crowning print story of his book launch.
“Me? On the cover of Newsweek magazine?” Chesney says. “When you’re thinking about things that might happen when you grow up, that’s absolutely not one of them. Newsweek covers diplomats, business leaders, scientists and doctors, people who save lives. I live to make people happy, to create space with my songs for people to see their own lives; it’s not quite the same.”
There are plenty of people who might not view Chesney’s impact so humbly. Profiled in The Wall Street Journal’s “My Monday Morning” series, they wrote, “His transformation—which he revisits in his new book, ‘Heart Life Music’ —was an emphatic success.” That ability to thread hard work, joy and bringing people together has been a throughline of street day for HEART LIFE MUSIC. Whether a playlist that traces his career and his influences for Billboard, a deeply personal conversation with Anderson Cooper or sitting down with the panels on “CBS Morning” and “The View,” this was the man the Los Angeles Times called “the People’s Superstar” at his most open and in the moment.
“It’s weird,” he explains, “moving forward the way I have for so many years, I haven’t thought about a lot of these things, definitely not in the way they come together in the book. So, talking to these really great journalists, like Anderson or Gayle King or the people at Newsweek, it really shifts how I see my life and my journey. All these little moments that were wonderful, they all added up to something really incredible in how I got here.”
As Chesney’s book tour hit Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, news arrived that HEART LIFE MUSIC had been named to Barnes & Noble’s Best Memoir/Biography List for 2025. It joins books by Kamala Harris, Ozzy Osbourne, Malala Yousafzai, Matthew McConnaughey, Paul McCartney, Margaret Atwood, Cameron Crowe, Michelle Obama, Anthony Bourdain and more.
“The journey around the journey has been pretty great, too,” Chesney confesses. “With the audiobook taking so long to record, because I wanted to get it right – and I didn’t want someone else to tell my story – you get lost in the idea that someone else is going to actually hear it.
“Going out for these book talks, it’s nothing like I imagined: people are so alive and interested. It’s not just the story; it’s living the story with people that makes it fun. So much so, we’re actually creating a virtual event out of our Los Angeles book talk, so people who aren’t in the markets we’re coming to can be part of this experience.”
Tickets to that event, scheduled for this Friday, Nov. 7, are available HERE.
With more media to come, HEART LIFE MUSIC has finally arrived. Set for a pair of book talks at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville on Thursday, Nov. 6 with very few tickets remaining, the Saban Theater in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 7, two sold out events in Key West and Tampa on Nov. 10 and 11 and closing the first weekend of the legendary Miami Book Fair on Sunday, Nov. 16, the high impact performer who returns to Sphere in Las Vegas in June has also been taking his fans into a whole new dimension of coming together.
About The Authors
One of contemporary American music’s biggest names, Kenny Chesney was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year and was named Billboard’s No.1 Country Artist of the 21st Century. Selling out America’s major stadiums for two decades and playing to over a million fans every summer since 2002, Variety pronounced him “country music’s only true long-term stadium act.” The East Tennessee songwriter/superstar has over 105 Platinum certifications, won the prestigious Entertainer of the Year eight times, as well as holding Billboard’s record for the most Country Airplay No. 1s with 36 chart-topping songs that define coming of age in the flyover in the 21st Century. This year, the game-changing superstar became the first country artist to perform at the groundbreaking Sphere, taking No Shoes Nation into a whole new dimension, creating a space to work hard, play hard, love hard and come together in the spirit of celebrating all the moment offers. HEART LIFE MUSIC is his first book.
Holly Gleason’s work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, the Library of Congress’ National Registry of Sound Recordings, among other outlets. She was the LA Press Club’s Entertainment Journalist of the Year and the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Association’s Independent Journalist of the Year. A former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame/Case Western Reserve Fellow, she’s the creator of Belmont Book Award-winning Woman Walk The Line, and co-authored Miranda Lambert’s New York Times best-seller Y’All Eat Yet as well as Prine on Prine: Interviews & Encounters.
With a headline that reads “Keeping It Real: Kenny Chesney Stays True To His Roots,” the 2025 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee sat for an extended interview with editor-in-chief Jennifer H. Cunningham that also provided source material for a cover profile. Considering the values he was raised with, his journey and the way he blazed a trail as an artist, his multi-media “Newsmakers” series appearance arrives as the crowning print story of his book launch.
“Me? On the cover of Newsweek magazine?” Chesney says. “When you’re thinking about things that might happen when you grow up, that’s absolutely not one of them. Newsweek covers diplomats, business leaders, scientists and doctors, people who save lives. I live to make people happy, to create space with my songs for people to see their own lives; it’s not quite the same.”
There are plenty of people who might not view Chesney’s impact so humbly. Profiled in The Wall Street Journal’s “My Monday Morning” series, they wrote, “His transformation—which he revisits in his new book, ‘Heart Life Music’ —was an emphatic success.” That ability to thread hard work, joy and bringing people together has been a throughline of street day for HEART LIFE MUSIC. Whether a playlist that traces his career and his influences for Billboard, a deeply personal conversation with Anderson Cooper or sitting down with the panels on “CBS Morning” and “The View,” this was the man the Los Angeles Times called “the People’s Superstar” at his most open and in the moment.
“It’s weird,” he explains, “moving forward the way I have for so many years, I haven’t thought about a lot of these things, definitely not in the way they come together in the book. So, talking to these really great journalists, like Anderson or Gayle King or the people at Newsweek, it really shifts how I see my life and my journey. All these little moments that were wonderful, they all added up to something really incredible in how I got here.”
As Chesney’s book tour hit Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, news arrived that HEART LIFE MUSIC had been named to Barnes & Noble’s Best Memoir/Biography List for 2025. It joins books by Kamala Harris, Ozzy Osbourne, Malala Yousafzai, Matthew McConnaughey, Paul McCartney, Margaret Atwood, Cameron Crowe, Michelle Obama, Anthony Bourdain and more.
“The journey around the journey has been pretty great, too,” Chesney confesses. “With the audiobook taking so long to record, because I wanted to get it right – and I didn’t want someone else to tell my story – you get lost in the idea that someone else is going to actually hear it.
“Going out for these book talks, it’s nothing like I imagined: people are so alive and interested. It’s not just the story; it’s living the story with people that makes it fun. So much so, we’re actually creating a virtual event out of our Los Angeles book talk, so people who aren’t in the markets we’re coming to can be part of this experience.”
Tickets to that event, scheduled for this Friday, Nov. 7, are available HERE.
With more media to come, HEART LIFE MUSIC has finally arrived. Set for a pair of book talks at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville on Thursday, Nov. 6 with very few tickets remaining, the Saban Theater in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 7, two sold out events in Key West and Tampa on Nov. 10 and 11 and closing the first weekend of the legendary Miami Book Fair on Sunday, Nov. 16, the high impact performer who returns to Sphere in Las Vegas in June has also been taking his fans into a whole new dimension of coming together.
About The Authors
One of contemporary American music’s biggest names, Kenny Chesney was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year and was named Billboard’s No.1 Country Artist of the 21st Century. Selling out America’s major stadiums for two decades and playing to over a million fans every summer since 2002, Variety pronounced him “country music’s only true long-term stadium act.” The East Tennessee songwriter/superstar has over 105 Platinum certifications, won the prestigious Entertainer of the Year eight times, as well as holding Billboard’s record for the most Country Airplay No. 1s with 36 chart-topping songs that define coming of age in the flyover in the 21st Century. This year, the game-changing superstar became the first country artist to perform at the groundbreaking Sphere, taking No Shoes Nation into a whole new dimension, creating a space to work hard, play hard, love hard and come together in the spirit of celebrating all the moment offers. HEART LIFE MUSIC is his first book.
Holly Gleason’s work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, the Library of Congress’ National Registry of Sound Recordings, among other outlets. She was the LA Press Club’s Entertainment Journalist of the Year and the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Association’s Independent Journalist of the Year. A former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame/Case Western Reserve Fellow, she’s the creator of Belmont Book Award-winning Woman Walk The Line, and co-authored Miranda Lambert’s New York Times best-seller Y’All Eat Yet as well as Prine on Prine: Interviews & Encounters.