One country star set a Guinness World Record completely by accident – but he admitted the process of getting there was “gruelling”.
Nashville star Charles Esten was awarded the world record in 2018 for ‘most consecutive weeks to release an original digital single by a music act’, when he released 54 singles in 54 weeks in 2016. It was all part of his #EverySingleFriday project, which launched on July 15th 2016 and ended on July 21st 2017.
He said at the time: “On 1 July 2016, I posted a video where I promised to put out a brand-new original single every single Friday for as long as it made sense. At that time, I had no idea how it would go, or how long I could do it.”
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In an exclusive chat with Daily Star, Charles opened up on just what it took to be presented with that award on The Today Show, confessing: “It was not my intention to go for a world record – which is ironic because as a kid I walked around with that big paperback Guinness Book of World Records! I didn’t have a phone to scroll on, so I was just seeing how many pieces of gum I had to fit into my mouth, how many times I had to hop on a pogo stick to get a world record. In the end it just happened.”
(Image: Getty Images)
The star, who played Deacon Claybourne on hit series Nashville, added: “This is the recurring theme – I find I can do the hardest things if they are powered by love. Love of the game, love of playing a role, love of the guitar, love of making music.
“I was this guy who didn’t get to go to Nashville, my dream place, until I was in my 40s. By the time I was there I was a kid in a candy store getting to make music with these great songwriters, great musicians and producers. In 2016 I’d been there a few years and only put out two, maybe three singles.
(Image: Getty Images)
“I was getting the feeling… ‘Chip, what happens if [Nashville] ends tomorrow, if it gets cancelled or you leave, and all you ever did was make two songs? You’re gonna be so disappointed.’ There’s a line in the [Nashville] song A Life That’s Good that says ‘I wanna look back and say I did all that I could’ and that line powers me.”
But getting there, and releasing 54 singles in just as many weeks, wasn’t an easy process. Charles added that the country songs didn’t perform as well as they might have done otherwise because there simply wasn’t enough time to “show them some love”.
He said: “The pure joy of making those songs… don’t get me wrong, it was incredibly difficult, there was a whole lot of work involved. I had to write them, record them, they had to get mastered, my wife had to do all the paperwork to get them uploaded, and we had to do all the artwork. Every single has its own artwork – we made about 85% of them, but I designed every one of them.
(Image: Netflix/Everett/REX/Shutterstock)
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“It was a lot of work, it was gruelling, I can’t see ever doing it again, but I couldn’t be more proud and it was such a good time. A year after we’d finished I was on the Today Show in New York and the good people from the Guinness Book showed up and said ‘That’s a world record’.
“One of the reasons [it’s never been broken] is it’s such an insanely foolish thing to do – everyone knows you put out a single and you give it some love, you let it grow, you work it. None of these singles had much of a chance at all, because here comes the next one!”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
