The actor and singer/songwriter talks about his debut album
Marking a new pinnacle in a lifetime of creative achievement, multi-talented entertainer Charles Esten will release his highly anticipated independent debut album, Love Ain’t Pretty, on January 26th.
A diverse and richly textured full-length project more than ten years in the making, Love Ain’t Pretty began taking shape when Esten first arrived in Music City to play Deacon Claybourne on ABC/CMT’s Nashville, and now showcases a singer-songwriter with a masterful grasp of the full human condition. Working in tandem with hitmakers like Jon Nite, Eric Paslay, Gary Burr, Leslie Satcher, and more, Esten co-wrote all 14 songs, diving deep into wide-ranging themes of earth-shattering romance, big-picture reflection, and beyond. Vividly detailed and filled with the emotional daring of a celebrated storyteller – both onscreen and onstage – Esten explores life, love, and the passing of time through the lens of a traveled and tested everyman, who has never lost his innate sense of wonder, or his wide-open soul. Meanwhile, he teamed with producer Marshall Altman (Frankie Ballard, Marc Broussard, Matt Nathanson) to sculpt a calm, controlled, and beautifully contoured sound, blending the forward momentum of country rock with rootsy small-town charm, and a warm, soulful vocal.
“[O]ver these years in college, I was singing other people’s songs in their voice. I was doing Buddy Holly and his voice on TV’s Whose Line [Is It Anyway]. As you know, they would go, ‘We want you to sing this song in the style of Neil Diamond or the style of U2.’ So you’re doing other people’s voices for a long time. Part of the journey of any artist is finding out, all right, ‘Who am I then?’ And Nashville is a beautiful place to get to do that because you’re surrounded [by talent],” Esten tells us.
“I had this great producer named Marshall Altman and these incredible players around me who get to follow our lead and make these, bring these songs to life in a way we had imagined, but beyond that because of their great talents. And so, so much of this has been stripping away those impressions and those other folks to find out what it is.
“I want to say, who I am and what I want to say. Now those things have been influenced along the way. There’s so much of this music I would think you would agree that Deacon Claiborne could have sung that one. And in a way he did because I played him. And I was fortunate enough to get to write three songs for Deacon on the show Nashville so that overlap is there. But it’s very strange to have a debut album at this late point in someone’s life. But to me, it’s all for the better. It means I have things I’ve thought about that I want to say, and in a certain way I want to say them, and that all comes together in Love Ain’t Pretty.”
Esten is a global entertainer. Best known for his roles as Ward Cameron on Netflix’s Outer Banks and Deacon Claybourne in ABC/CMT’s Nashville, the artist-songwriter introduces Love Ain’t Pretty. Surpassing 21 million streams to date, Esten is a 2018 Guinness World Records title holder for the “Most consecutive weeks to release an original digital single by a music act” after delivering 54 original songs once a week for 54 straight weeks. He’s made nearly 170 appearances at Nashville’s iconic Grand Ole Opry and performed multiple headline tours in the US, Germany, Amsterdam, and the UK, further embarking on his US and international headlining Love Ain’t Pretty Tour this spring. In addition, Esten serves as the National Honorary Spokesperson for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s annual Light The Night Walk and is a board member and volunteer for Musicians On Call.
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