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Lee Brice on His 57-Week Chart Climb

"Love Like Crazy" Proved His Patience

Lee Brice says that while he loved his 2010 hit like crazy, it wasn't easy getting it to the top of the charts. He made the admission Tuesday (Feb. 9) during an industry panel at Country Radio Seminar in Nashville,

In fact, it took Brice’s "Love Like Crazy" 57 weeks to get there.

"That was a career song for me. And I've been lucky enough to have a couple of those," he said. "When you are invested in a song, there may be a time where you think that song could be special. But there are songs that if they weren't on the charts for a certain amount of time, they might not have ever been a hit. You can't go spin a record and burn your market out. It's got to be a process."

So you have to be patient, he said, and accept criticism when it comes along.

"We usually take songs out on a radio tour and play four or five for a country station's program director. Most say, 'We love those,'" Brice said. "But one radio guy on my first radio tour, we'd said how much we love this song, and he said, 'I just don't hear it.'

"To this day, I appreciate the fact that he didn't say he didn't like it, or that the song sucked, but he was just saying, 'I don't hear it as a hit.’”

As a singer, songwriter and producer Brice said he tries to predict the chart potential of his singles.

"And that's a decision you make,” he said. “Am I gonna put out something that I know will be a big hit, but it's not necessarily a song that will last a lifetime? No."

Ultimately, Brice knows that it's his job to work to get a song on the radio and played and played and played. But he also knows that for his fans, the numbers don't always mean much.

"It doesn't matter to a listener whether it's No. 1 or No. 5,” he said. “They love what they love.”

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