Luke Bryan Remembers How He Proved His Dad Wrong With ‘I Don’t Want This Night to End’
Luke Bryan's father has long been one of his son's biggest supporters. For example, after the now-superstar opted to stay close to home following his brother Chris' death, Papa Bryan gave him an ultimatum: Pack up and go to Nashville ... or he'd be fired from the family's peanut business.
In the years since, Bryan has proven that his dad's faith wasn't misplaced. And that time the elder Bryan thought his son had gotten it wrong? Well, the singer proved him wrong.
In an artist Q&A at the 2021 Country Radio Seminar in mid-February, Bryan recalled how his father, Tommy Bryan, was skeptical about his son selecting "I Don't Want This Night to End" as a single in 2011. At the time, Bryan was still a relatively new artist, riding a streak of five consecutive Top 10 singles; he says it was with his previous single, "Country Girl (Shake It for Me)" that he began to feel as though radio programmers were trusting his, his label and his team's judgment on songs.
Bryan had just made "I Don't Want This Night to End" — a future multi-platinum-certified No. 1 hit — a single when his father came to watch him at a show in Louisville, Ky. Tommy was skeptical about the pick, his son remembers, but Bryan and his crew were confident.
"I roll in there and all the Louisville radio guys are there ... [and they told me the crowd was] 26,000 people here about to lose their minds," Bryan remembers. "When I hit the stage, it was crazy energy — crazy energy, and when I kicked into "I Don't Want This Night to End" ... and they lit up, I looked at my dad ...
"We got off the stage," Bryan continues, "and my dad's like, 'Well, son, you picked the right next damn single.'"
Written by Bryan with the Peach Pickers — Rhett Akins, Dallas Davidson and Ben Hayslip -- "I Don't Want This Night to End" began a streak of 18 consecutive No. 1 singles from Bryan. He won a CMT Music Award and a whopping six American Country Awards for the track.
"My dad, he's right some days and I'm wrong some days," Bryan says, "and that's the fun thing."
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