CMACMA Fest is all about the fans, and for Cole Swindell, one of the highlights of the week was his fan club party.
“You know, it’s always one of my favorite times,” he told ABC Radio backstage at Nissan Stadium over the weekend. “Because you get to meet new fans you haven’t met. But then there’s also those familiar faces that you see. You know where they’re from, but they still make [it to] shows all over the country.”
“You know, this is what they look forward to all year,” Cole said of CMA Fest, “and they’ve got a lot of favorite artists, and they get to see all of ’em.”
Cole’s latest hit, “Break Up in the End,” just broke into the top 25, and he told ABC Radio, “It is a breakup song, but it’s a love story, I think. Any kind of love that you would go back and do all over again, no matter how it ends, is pretty powerful.”
For the Georgia native, one of the best parts of meeting his fans is finding out how songs like “Break Up in the End” affects them.
“To hear the fan’s stories, that’s the beauty of getting to release songs,” he says. “In your meet-and-greets, the more the song moves [up the chart], you start hearing more and more stories about how people relate to it.”
It’s a phenomenon Cole first experienced as a fan himself.
“I’ve always been a country music fan, and that’s the reason I fell in love with it, is because I could relate to it, and it helped me through times,” he reveals. “And now, being on the other side of that, getting to record songs, write songs, whatever it may be, that relate to other people, help them…that’s why I moved to Nashville.”
You can watch for Cole’s performance of “Break Up in the End” on Wednesday, August 8, as this year’s CMA Fest special premieres at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
Copyright © 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
