Billy Currington photo by Kate Powers, courtesy of UMG Nashville.
"Let Me Down Easy" is soulful and sexy, while "All Day Long" is "happy and kind of sexy," according to Billy. "Nothing too serious."
"Perfect Day," written by Dale Dodson, Dean Dillon and Scotty Emerick, taps into Billy’s beach leanings. "It’s about getting on your sail boat and taking off at sunrise and ending at sunset and starting over the next day doing the same thing," explains Billy. "It’s about waiting on the light of another perfect day."
If you’re noticing a trend here, you’re right—there’s not a sad song on the set. Even "Love Done Gone," a Louisiana-infused tune complete with trumpets and trombones, puts a positive spin on a break-up.
"It’s a good vibe album," Billy explains. "I hope it’s one of those albums that someone can put in when they’re hanging out in their camp spot or they’re grilling out by their pool and just feel good through the whole thing."
"I know people like sad songs, but they like happy songs more," Billy believes. "It took me awhile to figure that out. Growing up I was a fan of all of Merle Haggard’s sad stuff and George Strait’s sad stuff—anybody that was singing sad songs. I thought that’s what I wanted to do."
Turns out, it wasn’t. After feeling the air sucked out of the room when he played heartbreak songs in his otherwise positive live shows, Billy decided he’d leave the sad songs to someone else. "I don’t want to feel that way or make anyone else feel that way when they’re listening to my music. I want people to walk away feeling happy."
"I can’t say I won’t ever record a sad song again, but you’ll mostly hear happy stuff from me from here on," Billy notes with conviction.
Enjoy Yourself features Nashville’s top songwriters, including Troy Jones, Shawn Camp and Mark Nesler.
"This record was about recording songwriters’ songs," says Billy. "I could have gone back and recorded a bunch of mine that I’ve written, but there were a lot of writers I wanted to record, like Shawn and Troy. I had to put their songs on this album."
"I always go back to those same writers," he adds. "They tend to keep writing the good ones."
The album consists of what Billy has learned so far. "As an artist, I’ve gotten so much better all the way around. In the studio, live, playing the guitar and I’ve strengthened my voice. If you name anything I do musically, it’s gotten better with practice. I still have a lot to learn but I feel that like anything in life, you get better the more you do it."
If Billy is this good now, who knows where the future will take him. He still has room to grow, he believes. "I definitely want to take these next couple of years and tour with the biggest acts that I can. I want to learn even more.
