Quotes from Chris Young

I don't think breakups are ever easy for anybody. If they are, they aren't much of a breakup.

I'm a sucker for a sad song.

When I was making my second record, I was in studio, and I was like, 'No more ballads! Absolutely not!' And somebody walked in with 'The Man I Wanna Be' and I heard it and was like, 'Ah, crap!'

Your family are people you lean on and learn from. When I told my family I wanted to do music, they were really supportive.

For awhile there, I kind of hit the plateau. Anytime you do that as an artist, one of two things can happen... you're either going to start to fall back off, or you're gonna start to rise.

I love playing music. There's no way I could do anything else.

The only thing I want to be known as is a country singer. I want people to hear it and go, 'That's country!'

Everybody's like, 'You're tall. You didn't play basketball?' They asked me when I was a freshman in high school, and basketball practice was the same time a lot of stuff happened with choir. And I picked choir, which, normally, people would scratch their heads at, but it worked out okay.

Any time I'm trying to find that groove on a big tempo song, I go back and listen to some Aerosmith records. 'Love in an Elevator,' 'Rag Doll,' all that stuff was really great music. It's something that I still dig and go back and listen to.

I'm a huge fantasy football fan.

My favorite part is, once a song is out there to the public, having someone come up and tell their own story about why one of your songs resonated with them. It's an incredible feeling.

I write a lot of my music, but not all of it. I have always subscribed to the 'best song wins' theory when making an album.

I played a funeral convention once. York Casket Company pays well, in case anyone's wondering!

I don't want to be the person who has the gigantic headlines: 'Look Who So-and-So Is Dating Now.' That, to me, isn't really who I am.

My standing gig in college was playing the El Chico patio on Murfreesboro Road. I got $100, tips, and free quesadillas.

I think the biggest way of connecting with people is through your music and kind of saying what you want to say as an artist. And hopefully, you're making something that someone's going to be like, 'This is my favorite song.' That's always your goal, I think, anybody in any genre.

One of the first records I bought for myself was a Keith Whitley record. I still love the 'L.A. to Miami' album. There were so many things on there - 'Miami, My Amy,' 'Ten Feet Away,' 'Nobody in His Right Mind Would've Left Her.' I can put that album on repeat and listen.

For every single show you do, make sure you go out and literally try to beat what you did the day before. It's something that you can incorporate into everything you do. If you're constantly trying to beat your best, over time it will help you grow.

I'm a big fan of breakfast food. Literally, the simplest thing in the world - if you can scramble eggs without burning them, I'll eat them. It doesn't matter what time of the day it is.

The only piece of advice I've ever given anybody is learn to write songs and write as many songs as you can. Because it's never gonna hurt, and when you run into that problem of, 'God, I don't know what I want to say,' or the opposite problem of, 'I know exactly what I want to say, but no one has written it,' then you can just go write it yourself.

We didn't have a whole lot of cash growing up. My mom was a single parent for a while before my stepdad came into the picture.

Some of my favorite records growing up were Christmas albums. The ones I liked best were the albums that you could listen to from start to finish. You could put them on while you're decorating the tree or driving around looking at Christmas lights.

Everybody influences everybody else, in my opinion. There are different trends in music all the time. No matter who starts them, if it's a true trend in the music, it ends up influencing other people as well.

I'm really loud. I can't sing softly.