Luke Bryan and Billboard are taking a walk down memory lane, as part of the Billboard Chart History series. Since the start of his career, Bryan has had 26 songs scale the pinnacle of Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. In his video with Billboard, Bryan discusses many of his biggest country chart hits, starting with his first Country Airplay No. 1, 2010’s “Rain Is a Good Thing.”
Bryan recalls how the music video conveyed where the Georgia native was in his career at that moment.
“I was right outside of my college town — I think it was our first Farm Tour show ever,” Bryan reflects. “The beauty of that video, is just really, really me in a nutshell. We didn’t have a super big video budget, we knew we had a great little show to video … it brings back, really, a special time in my career where I’m praying every day that I can build my career, and the best way to build your career is to have your first No. 1 song on Billboard, and obviously ‘Rain Is a Good Thing’ was that. I wrote it with one of my best friends in the world, [songwriter] Dallas Davidson. We were still relatively young writers, and we took a phrase [“Rain makes corn, corn makes whiskey”] we grew up hearing in South Georgia … the fact that we were able to take something we heard as young men, and go on to become my first Billboard No. 1, was really incredible.”
While the lighthearted “Rain Is a Good Thing” brought an initial career milestone, Bryan also talks about how the emotional 2014 hit “Drink a Beer” helped give his career new dimension.
“I think at the time I was known as the uptempo, really energetic, high-energy party guy, and so when I put ‘Drink a Beer’ out, it just really showed another depth of my artistry. I could have a very impactful song, with a deep subject matter, and the coolest aspect about it is Jim Beavers and Chris Stapleton wrote it, and at the time, the Nashville songwriting community, we were praying that the world would learn about Chris Stapleton the artist, not just the songwriter. And so, when I had the opportunity to perform ‘Drink a Beer’ at the CMAs [in 2013], I called Chris. That was like, maybe the year or so before [Chris] and Justin Timberlake had their [CMA Awards] moment [in 2015]. The bottom line was I was just really happy to share that moment with Chris. The lyrics of that song, the emotion of that song, spoke to a country audience as good as you could speak.”
Throughout the video, Bryan looks back on more hits, including “Play It Again,” “Country Girl (Shake It For Me),” “Waves,” “I See You,” and “Most People Are Good.”
Watch Bryan’s Billboard Chart History episode above.