Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of the 20Q with Eric Church from our February issue of PLAYBOY Magazine. To read the rest, get your copy here.
Q1: Last time Playboy talked to you was 2013, after your third album, Chief, became the biggest country album of the year. How did you handle that sudden success?
Church: I didn’t handle it well. It was an overnight kind of thing. We’d started to have a little success with “Smoke a Little Smoke,” but we were still edgy and on the outside of country music. You go from an
artist that’s always on the outside looking in, not even part of the industry, to all of a sudden being the darlings of the industry and winning awards. It happened so fast. In 12 months, it went from “We’re not going to let him on the show” to “We have to have him in the front row, because he has the most nominations.” I don’t care who you are, that’s weird. Doing our first arena tour, I didn’t know where those people had came from [sic]. I thought they were there for “Springsteen” and for “Drink in My Hand,” our first No. 1 songs. I didn’t enjoy that part. I didn’t even handle the accolades very well.
Q2: It feels like your reaction to the success of Chief was: OK, I’ve got a career, I have a foothold in Nashville, now let’s get weird.
Church: Yeah, that’s what happened with Outsiders. The first song we gave to radio was “Outsiders,” which is six minutes long and kind of prog metal. [Laughs] And they’re like, What? That was fun, but it was just about trying to run away from Chief. You can hear it. Some people love Outsiders, some people hate it, but it’s a moment in time where you can see I was having some struggles with success. “Don’t like me. Try something else.”
Q3: Let’s go back to the start of your ambivalent relationship with mainstream country. In 1992 you were 15 years old and the two biggest country songs of the year were “Achy Breaky Heart” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” Did those turn you off to country?
Church: Country music was really big in the early ’90s with my friends. Some of it turned me off, though. I played sports, I did all those things, but I was a little bit different. I didn’t always go along with what my friends were into. I was a bit of a contrarian. My friends would tell you, they’d bring me their favorite music and I’d be the first to go, “Ehh.” I was a little snobbish. I’m still snobbish. [Laughs] I like odd, weird stuff. I like to discover bands I’ve never heard of on [Steven Van Zandt’s] Little Steven’s Underground Garage show on Sirius.
Q4: In 2001, when you moved to Nashville, what was going on in country music?
Church: When I came to town, it was the soccer mom era: Martina McBride, Sara Evans, Faith Hill, the Dixie Chicks, Terri Clark. Females were really prevalent on the chart. I knew I wasn’t going to fit into that. The first song I ever wrote that was recorded was a Terri Clark single [“The World Needs a Drink”]. I was a songwriter, so it was like, hey, whatever gets on the radio, I’ll write. [Laughs] I was studying the format to figure out what was successful.
Q5: When did you stop trying to fit into mainstream country?
Church: The best stuff I was writing was the opposite of that. The first publishing meeting I had, I played four songs and the guy hated all four. I sang “Two Pink Lines” and he stopped me. “Is that what I think it’s about? Pregnancy?” I said, “Yeah,” and he kinda went, “Holy shit.” So I played him “Pledge Allegiance to
the Hag” next. He stopped me: “You mean pledge allegiance to the flag?” I said, “No—the Hag.” He goes, “You’re singing about Merle Haggard? It’s 2002!” I played him “Sinners Like Me” and he stopped me again. “Is that a waltz?” I nodded. He said, “You played me a pregnancy song, a song about Merle Haggard, and a waltz?” He told me I should go back home to North Carolina. And those songs ended up making the bulk of Sinners Like Me, my first album.
Read the rest in the February issue of PLAYBOY Magazine. Get your copy here.