Interview by Holly Gleason

Kane Brown may well be the new face of country music. Raised poor by a single mother, he understands hardscrabble reality, and he writes with surprising candor about what life at the margins feels like. Like Merle Haggard before him, he also finds ways to connect through the heart. Also like Haggard, Brown has managed to embrace something classic in the genre while at the same time creating an idiom that is distinctly contemporary. The planets have aligned for the 23-year-old newly minted star, with a #1 radio hit in “What Ifs” featuring former classmate Lauren Alaina, as well as the just-released Kane Brown Deluxe Edition (RCA Nashville/Zone 4), a gazillion streams and a life the former Target/Lowe’s employee never thought possible.

Tell me about Kane country.
Well, I know how I grew up. It was family, very respectful, very well-mannered. You open a door for a female. That’s the definition of a Southern gentlemen. My mom raised me and my little brother, and she struggled some, but she made us dinner every night. We all ate around the table, like a family—and no elbows on the table. Some people think country is whiskey, trucks, dirt, mud. But you look at me and you don’t see that.

Musically, are you country?
In today’s country, yes. If you put me with...

...Read More