CNN's Anderson Cooper reports for 60 Minutes (click to watch the web video of the interview), last year alone Chesney made $76 million on tour. While some know of him from the tabloid coverage of his brief marriage to actress Renee Zellweger, his small town roots and hybrid sound of country, rock and island music have earned him a reputation as America’s Hillbilly rock star. "
"Maybe I should have come out and said no, I'm not (gay), but I didn't want to draw any more attention to it … I didn't have to prove to anybody that I wasn't (gay) … I didn't feel like I really did."
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The most poignant moment of the interview came when Cooper asked Kenny if he regretted his marriage to Renee?
"Not at all. Not one bit," he told Cooper. "Even though I'd sit here and say I wish we'd gotten divorced instead of all that annulment stuff and saved me
a lot of public humiliation Š
I still don't have any regrets. I loved her, you know? And it was real."
Chesney was told that the producers of 60 minutes were most interested in the angle that Kenny was appearing for bigger crowds than anybody on tour these days. After hanging out with Kenny at his huge Detroit show, Cooper
came to the proper conclusion regarding Kenny's massive mass appeal:
"The appeal is he's just this regular guy," says the journalist. "He grew up in a small town -- and sings songs that aren't
traditional country fare that a lot of people think of as whiskey-soaked heartache. These are songs about growing up in middle America, going on your first date, going to the prom, losing friends... things that people really relate to. You see it at the concerts... they dress like him; they want to be like him. It's an aspiration thing in many ways. They want this island lifestyle that he loves, this sense of having a good time, having fun -- and they embrace it."
ONE OTHER NOTE: Check out the annual swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, which just arrived on newsstands. The magazine(featuring Beyonce on the cover) pairs various musicmakers with bikini-clad supermodelsŠand Kenny is
one of the lucky guys. You can also view the photos of Kenny and Marisa Miller at www.si.com.
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