Kane Brown Opens Up About Feeling Like An Outsider In Country Music: ‘I Feel Alone In The Music World’

From an outside perspective, it would be easy to assume that Kane Brown has become one of the most connected names in country music with the success he’s achieved. However, he’s setting the record straight, admitting there’s one part of the country music experience he feels he’s missing: a close-knit group of friends within the genre.

While country music is often described as a family where most of the artists on the scene support one another both publicly and privately, Brown admitted that he doesn’t necessarily feel as included as fans might think. He recently appeared on an episode of The Pivot, where he opened up to the show’s hosts Ryan, Channing and Fred about his personal experience with feeling like he doesn’t have anyone to relate to within country music.

Brown has developed a lot of different relationships within the entertainment space as his career has grown, but he reveals some of his closest friends are athletes like Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, rather than fellow musicians.  

“A lot of people have egos. I shut down around that because I’m not trying to say who’s got the bigger…you know what I’m saying? So for me, Pat just makes it normal to hang out,” Brown admits. “I think I relate more to athletes because I wanted to be an athlete and I like the competitive aspect of that, like going to golf with Pat. I feel like I have more athlete friends than I do musician friends. I feel alone in the music world.”

He also noted that if there is a big country music group chat, he wasn’t invited to join.

The “Miles On It” singer goes on to say that feeling like an outsider is nothing new for him, explaining that he has always considered himself “a loner.” However, he shared that a few fellow artists, including Morgan Wallen, Shaboozey, Chris Young and Jason Aldean, regularly make an effort to check in and stay connected. Still, Brown noted that there is a difference between the kind of relationship where messages are exchanged every so often and having a genuine friendship outside of the music.

“The difference with what I’m trying to say is with texting somebody and being boys with somebody, because they’re the only people that I can really relate to. You know what I’m saying? And so when you don’t have somebody that you can talk to about that and have a brothership over it, I don’t know if I could really say we’re friends,” he said honestly.

Brown made it clear that he’s hoping to build more genuine bonds within the industry, and even extended an open invitation to anyone who might be watching the podcast who is looking for the same kind of connection to reach out to him.

“For me, I just want a friend in the industry that we just chill, come over, hit the golf sim, have a few beers, talk it up.”

Something else that the father of three admits he’s been struggling with lately within country music is wanting to stand out and share the kind of music that takes fans back to the kind of old school storytelling of Alan Jackson and Randy Travis. However, he explains that these types of songs are often overlooked, and instead, it’s the mainstream music that gets all the attention and traction. In lieu of this challenge he is making an effort to create music that is “different” for his next album.

“I feel like a lot of people work with the same people and then a lot of the songs use the same words. I try not to use those words, which makes stuff a little hard. And then I try to do different sounds as well, which sometimes it works. Like my song ‘Woman’ right now that’s on the radio doesn’t sound like anything else that’s on the radio. And so that’s why I try to stand out from that,” Brown shared. “But then also it could hurt me because that’s not what they’re used to listening to. So I think that’s what makes it hard for me is just trying to be different.”

He continued, “For this next album, it’s been my hardest album I’ve been writing because I’m trying to do a theme. I’m trying to make everything throwback. I’m trying to make it a hard song to write. Not even hard, but just not the same stuff that we keep hearing like ‘Chevy’ and ‘Truck,’ which I never said I’d have a truck song by the way. Then I wrote that damn song and it blew up… That’s just what this world relates to.”

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Brown has a great love for 90s country music and he hopes that the genre will be able to get back to that era of songwriting soon.

“I have songs like that, but they don’t work. At least for me, they don’t do nothing. So I have a song called ‘Losing Hand’ right now. It’s like everything’s stacked against me. It’s just basically my life. And it says, ‘who says you can’t win on a losing hand?’ And I’m hoping that that does something for me, but I guarantee you that song gets overlooked. And so I don’t know, I think that’s the hardest part.”

While Kane Brown has officially confirmed that a new album is in the works, he has yet to reveal when we will get to hear the new music.