‘Born’ by Kenny Chesney - Lyrics & Meaning

On January 17, 2024, Kenny Chesney gave his No Shoes Nation fanbase the news they'd been patiently waiting for - on March 22, he'd be releasing his first album in four years, BORN.

With any record, the title-track is inevitably given additional importance, with Kenny singling out ‘Born’ as the keystone of the project. It undoubtedly serves its purpose, capturing the joi de vivre and lust-for-life that ripples through this body of work.

Co-written by Heather Morgan and Greylan James - the latter of whom helped pen ‘Happy Does’ from Kenny Chesney's previous album, Here and Now - ‘Born’ is an energising sneak peak into the optimistic, gratitude-laced way Kenny approaches life.

Opening with the playful, tantalising strum of a banjo, Kenny Chesney delivers the first verse acoustically, which makes the transition into the raucous, electric guitar-fuelled hook all the more galvanising. The listener is sent hurtling from this drawn-in introduction into the raucous, caffeinated instrumental that closes out ‘Born’.

Kenny's signature baritone is layered across the chorus, giving the track the feel of a bar-room sing-a-long, with the toe-tapping drum beat keeping the momentum high throughout.

“Small town, big town

All got a hometown

Two lane, six lane

All got a memory lane

New friends, old friends

Couple or a bunch of them

Beer can, Jack man

Love gettin’ drunk with them

Got some angels, got our demons

Got some don’t got a reasons”

In the opening verse, Kenny Chesney showcases the relatable, everyman sensibility he always infuses into his music. He rattles through a variety of characters, from the beer-lovers to the whiskey-drinkers, from the six-lane-traffic city-livers to the backroad-driving country folk. Kenny outlines how, despite the apparent disparities between each group, we have more in common than we think.

“We all wanna know what we’re made for

Is this right road, is that the right door

Who we’re meant to be or meant to be more

Are we the sun or are we the storm

For every unknown, one thing’s for sure

We’ve all been livin’ since the day we were born

Born, born”

As he does so powerfully on older tracks such as ‘Trip Around The Sun’ and ’American Kids’, Kenny probs the larger-than-life existential questions, before deciding to embrace the unknown and celebrate the fact that we even got here in the first place.

He highlights how we all share the desire to know our purpose and the meaning of life, conveying this question of our identity through the evocative juxtaposition between the sun and the storm, each of which represents a path we could go down. Kenny concludes by reiterating that we all have more similarities than we assume - because, after all, “We've all been livin’ since the day we were born”.

“I wanna be myself, wanna be anybody else

No ring, no strings

Then I want the whole thing

Heart bent, heart broke

Been a little bit of both

Keepin’ it simple ain’t simple, hell no”

Kenny Chesney touches on the internal contradictions we tussle with in the second verse, segueing from the self-confidence of wanting to be exactly who we are, to the self-doubt that causes us to seek an escape from our lives and “be anybody else”.

He portrays a similar contrast between someone relishing the single life, before it suddenly dawns on them that they “want the whole thing” and yearn for a committed relationship.

“For the spotlight, born for the neon

Red dirt, white sand, born to put our feet on

Born to be wild, to smile, to dance

Born to die tryin’ to leave a good stamp down here

Down here”

The beauty of having ‘Born’ as an album opener is that it provides a whistle-stop tour through the various personas, situations and moods the listener is about to experience over the course of the project. As Kenny outlines in this verse through another clever piece of juxtaposition between the lyrics ‘born’ and ‘die’, underneath all the joy and heartbreak is the quest to “leave a good stamp down here”.

“What does life and love and truth all mean

Are we makin’ it harder than it has to be

Am I makin’ it harder than it has to be”

Kenny ends ‘Born’ on a note of introspection, as he wonders whether he's been overthinking life and making it more complicated than he needs to. It's a message that radiates throughout other stand-outs from the album, such as ‘Few Good Stories’ and ‘One More Sunset’, which champion the approach of staying in the moment and accepting the niggling anxieties and fears that the adventure of life brings.

In his Holler interview, Kenny Chesney described ‘Born’ and ‘Wherever You Are Tonight’ act as the perfect album bookends, “‘Born’ really sets up everything, doesn't it? All the questions we ask ourselves. All the basic things that we should pay attention to. All the truths we can't outrun. When I heard it, I knew it had to open the record...and I think I've made a habit of closing my albums with something a little more philosophical, or even sad. What better way, though, to end an album called BORN than with a song about loving and toasting someone who's died, but feels like they're still right there? Because I think if you live your life right, people won't think of you as gone to the next realm, just gone for the moment”.

He went on to emphasise, “Between those two realities, there was a lot of life, truth and fun we could put together. In some ways, this album doesn't have an obvious storyline. But I think, as I've said in some other places, this album represents every piece of me, my heart and my soul, as well as my music. It's all here, every kind of thing I do”.

“Small town, big town

All got a hometown

Two lane, six lane

All got a memory lane

New friends, old friends

Couple or a bunch of them

Beer can, Jack man

Love gettin’ drunk with them

Got some angels, got our demons

Got some don’t got a reasons

We all wanna know what we’re made for

Is this right road, is that the right door

Who we’re meant to be or meant to be more

Are we the sun or are we the storm

For every unknown, one thing’s for sure

We’ve all been livin’ since the day we were born

Born, born

I wanna be myself, wanna be anybody else

No ring, no strings

Then I want the whole thing

Heart bent, heart broke

Been a little bit of both

Keepin’ it simple ain’t simple, hell no

We all wanna know what we’re made for

Is this right road, is that the right door

Who we’re meant to be or meant to be more

Are we the sun or are we the storm

For every unknown, one thing’s for sure

We’ve all been livin’ since the day we were born

For the spotlight, born for the neon

Red dirt, white sand, born to put our feet on

Born to be wild, to smile, to dance

Born to die tryin’ to leave a good stamp down here

Down here

What does life and love and truth all mean

Are we makin’ it harder than it has to be

Am I makin’ it harder than it has to be

We all wanna know what we’re made for

Is this right road, is that the right door

Who we’re meant to be or meant to be more

Are we the sun or are we the storm

For every unknown, one thing’s for sure

We’ve all been livin’ since the day we were born

All been livin’ since the day we were born

For the spotlight, born for the neon

Red dirt, white sand, born to put our feet on

Born to be wild, to smile, to dance

Born to die tryin’ to leave a good stamp down here

Down here, down here”

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