Kane Brown on topping Aussie charts & hanging out with Seaforth

Kane Brown is part of a new generation of American country songwriters.

Arriving on the scene in 2015, he signed to RCA/Sony Nashville a year later and has since released a steady string of country hits, including ‘Used To Love You Sober’, ‘What Ifs’ with Lauren Alaina, ‘Lose It’ and ‘Cool Again’.

He’s won multiple CMT Awards and American Music Awards, and over the past year, Brown has been part of a movement of country artists crossing over onto mainstream radio playlists.

His latest effort ‘Be Like That’ is a collaboration with global hitmakers Swae Lee and Khalid, and the track has already climbed as high as #22 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Brown tells TMN that working with non-country artists was more for the purposes of exploring new things rather than any particular desire to break down barriers.

“I just love music, I’m the type of person that can get in a car with anybody and love anything that they put on the radio. I know that’s how my fans are as well,” he says.

“Country is what I grew up on, and it’ll always be my main focus.

I’ll always have a country single before I have any other single, but it’s fun when you can have two songs charting at the same time. My fans are pretty die-hard so they love anything we do.”

The single comes off the back of Brown’s first #1 single on the TMN Hot 100; ‘One Thing Right’ with Marshmello. The single was popular on both CHR and country radio in Australia, also topping the TMN Country Airplay Chart.

Brown seems chuffed to hear about how much Australian fans like the song, and says he “heard rumours” about how big the single was, but not the hard stats.

“That’s awesome. I wrote it for an album but it didn’t make the cut, and [Marshmello and I] had talked about doing a song together,” he smiles.

“I love that song so I sent him the lyrics and he did his thing on it.

“I just love working with different artists and blending different fanbases to see what they can do, see where they can take a song. In the future, when I retire, I’ll be able to say I worked with all these amazing artists.”

Brown continues to collab regularly, and recently lent his vocals to a stripped-back remix of Sam Fischer’s radio hit ‘This City’.

“I think I first heard that song on TikTok, and I loved it,” he says.

“I started hearing it on Spotify, and then [Sony] came to me about doing a remix and it wasn’t a song that I was having to get familiar with.

“When I got asked it was like ‘yes, I’ll do it’. Sam’s a great guy, an amazing singer, so I was excited to be a part of the project.

Speaking of Aussies, Brown is definitely aware of the rising number of young acts making the jump over to Nashville and impacting the country scene in the States.

It turns out he’s been hanging out with Sydney-hailing duo Seaforth, who only released their debut EP in 2019 but are already making quite the impression.

“We’ve become pretty close friends recently. Before quarantine, we had some festivals with them and some shows, and they came and opened for us,” Brown says.

“I remember when I was driving down the interstate and this car started honking at my truck, I didn’t know what was going on. I got a text later saying ‘hey, it was us!’ 

“We thought it was some weird person honking,” he laughs. “But they’re a great group of guys.”

Great enough that we might see a Kane Brown/Seaforth collab sometime soon?

“We’ll see… they’re on my label…”