Gabi and Scotty McCreery.Photo: Courtesy Gabi McCreery
Who can blame him? She’s due to give birth to their first child, a boy, in just a few weeks.
Scotty McCreery.Jeff Ray
Indeed, the three-week No. 1 song — his fifth chart-topper in a row — has been McCreery’s biggest hit to date, and the singer-songwriter has been feeling its momentum begin to shift his career into a higher gear.
“The crowds are bigger, they’re more energetic,” he says. “This has probably been the best summer we’ve had as far as headlining shows. As soon as we tease ‘Damn Strait’ with the music, everybody’s up. Their phones are going up. They’re smiling. They’re elbowing their neighbors. It’s been pretty cool.”
On Nov. 18, he’ll take a victory lap with a deluxe edition ofhis latest album,Same Truck,which will feature six new songs, including his latest song release, “Nothin' Right.”
It’s an uptempo laid-back jam that reflects McCreery’s always-on-the-sunny side: “Got nothin' to do / Got nothin' but time / If we’re gonna do nothin' / Then we’re gonna do nothin' right.” But those lyrics, which he co-wrote, also seem at odds with his relentless drive.
Says McCreery: “I mean, it’s easy to sit back, and you want to celebrate success — and it’s been fun with ‘Damn Strait’ — but now, it’s like, what’s next? You know, let’s keep the train rolling. How can we keep it going and try to come back bigger and better?”
He’s been on that train since winningAmerican Idol,at age 17, in 2011, but it’s only been in recent years that he feels he’s hit his stride as an entertainer and songwriter.
Now he has more than enough radio hits and fan favorites to pack into his concerts. “Before,” he says, “it was like, what covers can we do to fill in this whole thing for an hour and a half?”
He also is enjoying a growing confidence as an artist. “There was a time back in 2014-2015 when I was maybe trying to figure out what’s hot at radio and how I could get in there,” he recalls. “And now it’s like I’m just gonna do what I love and hopefully people love it, too. And luckily, it’s been connecting.”
Over the past few years, McCreery has increasingly put his own experiences into his songs, and he’s finding out, of course, that the more he lives, the more he has to write about.
“I remember when I first started, people would be like, ‘What’s he gonna write about? He’s so young,'” McCreery recalls. “That used to really get under my skin. But now I look back and I’m like, what was I gonna write about? Now I’ve lived a lot of life. I’ve been doing this for over a decade. I was single when I started, dated for a while, been engaged, been married, and now I’m having my first kid.”
That latest life stage is McCreery’s overwhelming preoccupation at the moment. “It’s constantly on my mind,” he says. “I’m so excited. I’m so nervous. I’m so everything. Every feeling that’s out there, that’s what I’m feeling right now.”
Scotty and Gabi McCreery.Sidney Ashton Photography
McCreery says his wife broke the news of her pregnancy to him a day later than she’d intended. Her plan was to tell him when he returned to their Raleigh, North Carolina, home from an out-of-town concert, but his flight was delayed several hours, and they had to rush off to a hockey game. Later that evening, he spirited her off to surprise his palChris Lane, who was in town for a show.
“Funny enough, that night Chris told me, ‘Don’t tell anybody but Lauren’s pregnant again — we just found out yesterday,'” McCreery recalls. “I was like, ‘Congrats, man,’ and little did I know, my wife was standing right next to us, thinking, ‘Oh, so are we.'” (Chris andLauren Bushnell Lane’ssecond child,another son, is due a week before the McCreerys’.)
The next morning Gabi finally revealed the positive pregnancy test to her husband while he was still in bed. “And I was like, uh … are you serious?” he says. “I mean, it’s something we were wanting. It wasn’t a surprise. But the rest of the day, my jaw was just on the floor. I was like, oh my word.”
Moose, Gabi and Scotty McCreery.Sidney Ashton Photography
McCreery also reveals he and his wife have settled on first and middle names, but they’re waiting for the birth to announce them. He does hint a family name could be in the mix. He also shares what the name won’t be.
“I did have an offer fromDarius [Rucker],” he reveals. “He said if we name him ‘Darius,’ he’ll pay for college. I mean, I was kind of tempted, but I don’t think that name won out!”
“I feel like I want to get in there [the delivery room] and just be like, ‘surprise me,'” he says. “If she wants to do classes, then that would maybe help us get prepared, but I don’t know. I feel like it should be like an ‘oh my God’ kind of moment.”
McCreery is already imagining his new role, he says, and he intends to be “a fun dad.”
“I want to strike that balance of he’s my best friend, but I’m also his father,” he says. “I’m there to help him, try to raise him to be a strong, respectful man.”
Gabi Dugal McCreery/Instagram
In between concert dates, McCreery also will be working on his next album, which he expects to release sometime next year. These days he has no shortage of song ideas; his marriage, of course, continues to be a constant source of inspiration.
source: people.com
