“I’ve Always Been Creatively Restless” – Eric Church On Why He Doesn’t Want To Make An Album Like ‘Chief’ Again

Gotta push the creative envelope.

It’s safe to say that Eric Church‘s latest album, Evangeline vs. The Machine, is unlike any other album he’s ever made. The 8-track project features a full orchestra and a choir, with the songs flowing into each other to form one cohesive work of art.

It’s also safe to say that it was probably Church’s most controversial album. The reviews on the new record were decidedly mixed, with some fans praising the creative risk while others felt like Church was doing too much and needed to take it back to albums like Chief.

And it’s easy to see why it would be tempting for Church to just make another album like Chief. His 2011 album, the third of his career after Sinners Like Me and Carolina, was easily the biggest album of his career. It was his first record to hit #1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 album chart, and it won the CMA Award for Album of the Year in 2012 while also being nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Country Album and the ACM Award for Album of the Year. It also spawned his biggest hit to date, “Springsteen,” and as of November 2024 has been certified 4x Platinum by the RIAA for selling over 4 million units.

Church clearly found the winning formula with Chief. And as we’ve seen with a lot of artists, once you’ve hit on something that works, it’s easy to keep going back to that well and making records that largely sound the same.

In fact, it seems like every time Church releases an album we hear the same comments from some of his fans: “I wish he would go back to his old sound and make another album like Chief.”

But it sounds like Church has no interest in replicating that album, even if it was his most successful to date.

During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last night, Church talked about his new album and the creative process that led to something so different from his prior albums:

“I think artistically I’ve always been a guy that, creativity’s been my compass in my career. I think that with every album we’ve done – we had our most success with an album called Chief. It was a big album.

And everybody after Chief said, ‘Well why don’t you just make Chief again?’ But once you’ve made that, you’ve done it. You’ve been there. And it’s always chasing the next thing.

I’ve always been creatively restless, and with this album it’s the first time we’ve brought in strings and horns and choir.”

Of course it’s kind of a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” thing in the music business: If you make another album that sounds exactly like the last one, people complain that all your music is the same. If you take a risk creatively and make something different, people complain that they want the old sound back.

The best thing an artist can do is to make the music that they want to make, and let the fans come along on the journey. And with Church, you never know where that journey’s going to take you next. I’m just happy to be along for the ride.

The post “I’ve Always Been Creatively Restless” – Eric Church On Why He Doesn’t Want To Make An Album Like ‘Chief’ Again first appeared on Whiskey Riff.