Quick Spin: Kenny Chesneys Welcome to the Fishbowl

Having sold more than 27 million records, Kenny Chesney is one of country music’s inarguably minted commodities. But from a traditional perspective, he is something of an oddity. With his good-timey sound and signature image of cutoff shorts, cowboy hat and Corona Light, he represents a peculiar strain of modern country whose main progenitor seems neither Bob Wills nor Merle Haggard, but rather Jimmy Buffett. Sometimes it seems strange to refer to Chesney’s music as “country” at all. Take, for example, his new album’s first single. It’s a noxious duet with Tim McGraw, “Feel Like a Rock Star,” which shoehorns in every conceivable cliche regarding rock-and-roll excess into a tune more befitting late period Van Halen than the Louvin Brothers.

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