Chris Young got to celebrate his first No. 1 hit in a most unexpected, one-of-a-kind way — courtesy of none other than Kenny Chesney.
What Was Chris Young’s First No. 1 Hit?
“My very first No. 1 was ‘Getting You Home.’ I was flying from Idaho, or somewhere Midwest, and I was flying back home that night,” Young recalled in an interview with Taste of Country Nights in 2025.
Young co-wrote “Gettin’ You Home (The Black Dress Song)” with Cory Batten and Kent Blazy, and it reached No. 1 on Oct. 24, 2009.
“It was a Sunday, I knew that we would know that night at midnight if we got the No. 1,” he related.
“I landed and my VP immediately calls me, I’m walking through the airport to baggage claim, and he goes, ‘Hey, somebody wants to talk to you.'”
Young said the next voice that came on the phone sounded kind of familiar, but he wasn’t quite sure.
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“He hands the phone over and it’s this guy, and he goes, ‘Yeah, man, this is Kenny. I just wanna say congrats on your first No. 1. I remember mine like it’s yesterday, that’s a big deal!'”
Young admitted that he thought for sure this was one of his friends pranking him.
“I was like, ‘Okay, okay.’ The caveat is, the guy that had handed the phone off was my VP of promotion at the time, but I knew that he would pull pranks.”
Young said that when Chesney handed the phone back to his VP, he then asked him, “Who was that, and did we really get the No. 1?”
His VP of promotion responded, “‘That’s actually Kenny Chesney. I’m in his plane right now. He wants to buy you a beer.”
Young later met Chesney at a small Nashville saloon called Red Door, where Chesney bought him his first beer after his first No. 1 song.
Young has gone on to become one of the most reliable hitmakers in country music.
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Gallery Credit: Lorie Liebig
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