CMAFriday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET, we’ll finally get to hear the much-anticipated premiere of “Forever Country.” Commissioned by the Country Music Association to mark a half-century of the CMA Awards, the new recording by 30 CMA winners is a mashup of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” and John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
Tim McGraw has no doubt as to why super-producer Shane McAnally settled on these three classics.
“All three of those songs were just huge records across the board,” Tim says. “I think those records resounded outside of the country music world… and all those artists…had a bigger impact…than just in country music…John Denver, who was an incredible artist who had huge success through the ’70s. And then Dolly Parton, who’s just the queen of what we do. I mean, she’s the gold standard of a country singer/songwriter. And then you got Willie Nelson, who is an icon…you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody on this planet that wouldn’t know who Willie Nelson was!”
Tim’s wife, Faith Hill, confesses she was moved to tears the first time she heard the finished “Forever Country” collaboration.
“I mean, every singer that I grew up listening to,” she laughs. “Alabama and Reba and George [Strait]…The first time we heard the record of the song…it made me cry. I honestly cried, just to hear all those voices together.”
The full list of artists who participated in the epic project will be revealed Friday morning on ABC’s Good Morning America, just as the single is played on radio for the first time. The music video that accompanies “Forever Country” is on the way Tuesday.
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