Kenny Chesney: 'I want new album to offer hurricane survivors hope'

[dar0ck]

Country superstar Kenny Chesney poured his emotions about the devastation of Hurricane Irma on his adopted Virgin Islands home into his new album.

The singer was left heartbroken last year (17) when the storm ripped through the Caribbean, leaving the Virgin Islands, where he has a home, completely destroyed.

Kenny dealt with the drama by pouring his heart out into new material for his latest album, Songs for the Saints, and tried to use the lyrics to inspire hope among those affected by the disaster.

"It was such a stressful time for a lot of people, and those islands have meant a lot to me as an adult, they've fed my creativity in ways that nothing else has...," Kenny told breakfast show Good Morning America.

"It would have been really easy to make a record about the destruction and the devastation of it all (the hurricane), but... we all know what happened, (and) what I felt was more important was that we find a thread of hope and find a way to move forward, maybe with some strength that maybe we didn't even know we had, and I think there's a thread of all of that (in the tunes).

"If there's one thing that I'm proud of of all this music (sic), is that it has the thread of hope, and the thread of love, and moving forward, and there's a big sense of community with that, and it's unlike any other record I ever made... 'cause usually when you make a record, you make it about past experiences. I made this whole record while everything was happening, almost a year ago now."

However, the tracks left him feeling emotionally raw.

"It felt different writing this record," he explained. "I wrote five of the 11 songs on it, but I wrote them in such an anxiety fit that there was no hiding my emotions...

"I've always felt like that music was the biggest healer that we have... and I think that hopefully, when people listen to this music, they get as much healing out of it, any way that they need it... as much healing out of it as I did making it."

Chesney has been continuing to help with the U.S. and British Virgin Islands' rebuilding effort, and is donating proceeds from his album to the Love for Love City Fund he set up to provide relief to those most in need.