Dustin Lynch capped 2021 with country radio success, as his duet with MacKenzie Porter, “Thinking ‘Bout You,” spent two weeks at the top of the charts.
But back before the song was a hit single, Dustin was on the hunt for the perfect duet partner to record it with, and he chose MacKenzie — a Canadian up-and-comer with three back-to-back chart-toppers on Canadian country radio — through a kind of unconventional process.
“Myself and my team had an idea of, like, ‘What if we just submit to the universe and the country music community — ‘Hey, if you want to be a part of this song, submit an audition,'” Dustin remembers. “But I didn’t want to be persuaded based on the name or the camp they were a part of. So I literally just had a folder full of numbers coming to my inbox.”
Dustin and his team each chose their favorite auditions, and the result was clear. “It all pointed to MacKenzie,” he notes.
“So it was literally a blind audition,” Dustin explains, adding that he and MacKenzie didn’t even know each other at the time. “We had never met. And the first time we met was actually to go into the studio and get [her] part down.”
“Thinking ‘Bout You” originally appeared on Dustin’s fourth studio album, Tullahoma. Recently, he’s continued to find success with country collaborations: He duetted with Riley Green on “Huntin’ Land,” and joined forces with Chris Lane for the summer anthem “Tequila on a Boat.”
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