NOW STREAMING: 52: This Year
CELEBRATE THE ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF 52: ATL x BNA
Kristian Bush just released the fourth and final installment of his four-album year-long project titled 52, a musical exploration and celebration, in honor of his 52nd birthday. 52: This Year, the conclusion of the project, was just released on March 10, 2023, just in time to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the album that launched the project, 52: ATL x BNA. Kristian explains the inspiration behind that first album, and what his vision was for the project.
Kristian Bush – explains ATL x BNA 1:31
“The first volume of 52 is titled ATL X BNA, and those are the two tags that are always on my bags because I’m flying between BNA, which is the airport for Nashville, and ATL, which is the airport tag for Atlanta. And I was curious on this entire set of recordings, what might happen if I tried to squish together these two towns that I love so much. Because I still live in Atlanta, though I work in Nashville. And the musicians in both places have these unique skills that the others – it’s not that they don’t have, they just don’t develop them in the same way. So, for instance, Nashville has this incredible songwriting, sort of depth and skill, and polish on how to make a two or three minute direct country song. And Atlanta has this ability to put players in a room from sort of the R&B, legitimate players. So, all the horn arrangements on this album are one of two or three different horn sections, either Aretha Franklin‘s horn section, or Jill Scott’s horn section. And it’s just amazing to me to run this experiment. Even if you imagine you’ve got one line, and on one side of the line there’s Atlanta, and that would be all of the R&B instruments played by those people. And on the other side of the line is Nashville, and you have none of those players playing on that song. And I wanted to see what would happen if you squished ‘em together. And so each of these songs lives somewhere on that continuum.”
All four albums of Kristian’s 52 project – ATL x BNA, In the Key of Summer, New Blue, and This Year – are all available now wherever you stream or download music.