kane brown Words by TAYLOR DOUGHERTY Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
Social media has been such a defining factor and game changer for so many artists this decade. Where it took some years to build large followings can now take only a matter of days – hours even. Kane Brown is a perfect example of just how much the internet can influence a budding career and in turn change your life, practically overnight. The 22-year-old singer/songwriter and Georgia native is one of country music’s newest voices, and had a loyal and devoted following of millions before he was even signed. “I grew up listening to Shania Twain, Sugarland, George Strait,” Kane said about why he chose to go into country music. “That was my passion because that was all I knew. I just felt like this was my path.” During his junior and wenior years of high school Kane’s goal was to audition for The 50
Voice, hoping to be on Blake Shelton’s team, but never made it. He also auditioned for The X Factor and American Idol following the success of friend Lauren Alaina, who he went to school with. He secured a place on The X Factor but decided to not continue with the show when they wanted to put him in a boy band – so he took matters into his own hands. “I started posting covers to Facebook and it took a couple years, but eventually a breakthrough happened overnight. I got a huge following. A month later it happened again where I broke even bigger and that’s where I got my first million followers… I was posting covers every day. Sometimes I’d post two or three a day,” he says. These covers included songs by the likes of Alan Jackson and Brantley Gilbert, with his cover of George Strait’s “Check
Yes or No” amassing over 7 million views. In 2014, with the help of a Kickstarter campaign Kane recorded his first EP, a six-track set entitled Closer, and self released it on June 2, 2015. The EP reached #7 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums and #40 on the Billboard 200. That’s when the labels began to take notice. But when they came forward looking to sign him he honestly thought it was a joke, especially seeing as how labels before had denied him. “At first I thought it was fake, that I was getting ‘Punk’d’ or something,” he laughs. But he soon found that these offers were indeed legitimate and it only fueled him further. “After that I was just anxious to get signed,” he said. “I’m a very impatient person. I was just trying to make it come faster.” Kane signed with Sony Music
