Kid Rock Has "Summer" Hit

Gretchen Wilson and Kid Rock on the Red Carpet on Wednesday, Nov. 7 for "The 41st Annual CMA Awards" in Nashville. Photo courtesy of the CMA.

Sept. 16, 2008 — Kid Rock made a major splash with his current single, "All Summer Long," by hitting the Top 10 in the Mediabase country chart and its Top 40 chart, both of which appear in USA Today.

Co-written with Uncle Kracker, "Summer" samples two classic-rock staples — Lynyrd Skynyrd’s "Sweet Home Alabama" and Warren Zevon’s "Werewolves Of London" — and Kid says he’s not surprised that country fans took to it immediately.

"[You] start with a song like ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ you’re not gonna lose," he told the national radio show GAC Nights: Live From Nashville. "You know what I mean? Borrowing from that says I’m gonna win. I’m playing, and I’m gonna win. And it invokes a nostalgia in people, and everyone can really relate to it no matter what background or where they grew up. It’s one of those perfect songs that’s really brought everything I do and kind of put it together in one song, you know, whether it’s the beats of hip hop and the sounds of country music and the underlying tones of rock and roll and the melodies, and it kind of ties it all together. I think it just says more than just being that song — for a lot of people it’s a lot more than that."

With summer racing to a close, Kid Rock is spending the week in the West. He plays Tuesday in Bakersfield; Wednesday in Pala, Calif.; Friday in Indio; and Saturday in Las Vegas.