The 2010s File Feature
Get Along
Get Along: Kenny Chesney's Community-Minded Anthem for a Divided Era "Get Along" is a country song recorded by Tennessee-born superstar Kenny Chesney, releas…
01 The Story
Get Along: Kenny Chesney's Community-Minded Anthem for a Divided Era
"Get Along" is a country song recorded by Tennessee-born superstar Kenny Chesney, released on April 6, 2018, through Blue Chair Records in partnership with Warner Nashville. The song arrived at a moment of acute political and social division in the United States and was widely received as a direct response to the national atmosphere of conflict, though Chesney and his collaborators presented it in terms broad enough to apply across political and generational contexts. The song became one of the most commercially successful entries in Chesney's remarkable run of chart dominance spanning more than two decades.
"Get Along" was written by Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne, and Trevor Rosen, a trio of Nashville's most respected and commercially prolific songwriters. McAnally in particular had established himself as one of the most important figures in contemporary Nashville, co-writing major hits for artists including Sam Hunt, Kacey Musgraves, and Kenny Chesney himself. The song was produced by Buddy Cannon, who had been Chesney's primary production partner for years and whose understanding of Chesney's sound was intimate and refined. Cannon's production choices on "Get Along" emphasized clarity and warmth, creating a sonic environment appropriate for the song's communitarian message.
On the Billboard Country Airplay chart, "Get Along" reached number one, giving Chesney yet another chart-topping single to add to a collection that by this point was among the largest in country music history. Chesney had accumulated more than 30 number-one singles on the country charts over the course of his career, placing him in the company of the genre's all-time commercial titans. The success of "Get Along" at radio confirmed that his appeal had not dimmed despite his relatively low commercial profile in the years between studio albums.
The song was included on Chesney's seventeenth studio album Songs for the Saints, released on July 27, 2018, through Blue Chair/Warner Nashville. The album was Chesney's first full studio project since 2016 and served as a creative and personal statement about the recovery of communities affected by the 2017 hurricane season, particularly the devastation wrought on the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Chesney had long maintained a home and to which he had become deeply attached. The album's proceeds supported the Love for Love City fund, which channeled resources to Virgin Islands relief and recovery efforts.
Songs for the Saints debuted at number one on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and performed strongly on the broader Billboard 200, demonstrating the sustained commercial power of Chesney's fanbase and the goodwill generated by the album's philanthropic context. The combination of a genuinely personal artistic statement, a meaningful charitable mission, and the presence of a commercially irresistible single in "Get Along" made the album one of the more culturally significant country releases of 2018.
Chesney's tour schedule in 2018 was characteristically massive, as he had established himself as one of country music's most reliable and lucrative touring acts, regularly selling out NFL stadiums and generating touring revenue that placed him consistently among the top-earning concert performers in any genre. "Get Along" became a highlight of the live set, with its communal message translating particularly well to the large-crowd context of stadium shows, where audiences of tens of thousands found common ground in its simple but powerful central plea.
The cultural moment of the song's release gave it an unusual degree of cross-platform visibility. Mainstream media outlets covered it not only as a country hit but as a cultural artifact, a response to the times from one of country music's most commercially significant voices. The song was discussed in contexts that included politics, social cohesion, and the role of popular music in community building, conversations that extended well beyond the usual coverage of a country radio single. For Chesney, who had built his career on a beach-inflected, escapist aesthetic, the pivot to explicitly civic themes represented a meaningful expansion of his artistic range.
02 Song Meaning
Common Ground and Communal Values: The Message Behind Kenny Chesney's "Get Along"
"Get Along" is a song about the possibility of human connection across difference, a sustained argument in musical form for the value of basic kindness and the willingness to find common ground with people whose lives, beliefs, and experiences differ from one's own. The central plea of the title captures what the song is essentially proposing: that the fundamental requirement of a functioning community is the willingness to coexist with generosity and goodwill, and that this willingness is both possible and necessary even when it is difficult. The song does not pretend that differences are unreal or that conflict is imaginary, but it insists that the human capacity for compassion is larger than those differences if people choose to exercise it.
The lyrical approach is deliberately non-partisan and broad, avoiding the specific political content that would limit the song's appeal or define it as belonging to one side of the national conversation. This universality was a conscious creative choice, and it reflects the songwriting team's deep understanding of what works at country radio and in large-scale live settings. Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne, and Trevor Rosen constructed a lyric that could be embraced by people across the political spectrum because it spoke to values, kindness, tolerance, human connection, that most people endorse in principle even when they struggle to embody them in practice.
The song's relationship to Kenny Chesney's personal experience gives it a grounding that might otherwise be absent from such a broadly conceived appeal to unity. In the context of the 2017 hurricane season and the devastation he had witnessed in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a place he genuinely loved and to which he had devoted significant personal resources, "Get Along" carries the weight of someone who had seen communities come together in crisis and wanted to articulate what that looked like as an aspiration for everyday life. The Songs for the Saints album made this connection explicit, situating the song within a larger project of community support and recovery.
The emotional register of the song is hopeful rather than resigned, optimistic rather than sentimental. It does not suggest that getting along is easy or that the differences between people are trivial, but it insists that the effort is worthwhile and that the human capacity for empathy and generosity is adequate to the challenge if people choose to apply it. This kind of moral hopefulness is a recurring feature of Chesney's best work, which has consistently found ways to acknowledge difficulty and loss while also affirming the consolations available in community, music, nature, and human connection.
For Chesney's fanbase, who had followed him across decades of music that celebrated beach living, outdoor freedom, small-town community, and the uncomplicated pleasures of good company, "Get Along" spoke directly to values they already held and recognized. The song did not ask his audience to change their minds about politics or identity but rather to extend their existing values of neighborliness and mutual support to the broader national community. This was a message that arrived at exactly the right moment, when a substantial portion of the American public was hungry for affirmations of shared humanity across political difference.
In Chesney's catalog, "Get Along" stands as one of the clearest expressions of his civic values and his belief in the fundamental decency of ordinary people. It represents a significant moment in the evolution of his artistic voice, demonstrating that the artist who had built his reputation on escapist beach anthems also had something serious and genuinely felt to say about the nature of community and the responsibilities people bear toward one another. That combination of broad commercial appeal and genuine moral seriousness is rare in popular music, and the song's commercial success suggests that audiences recognized and responded to its authenticity.
→ More from Kenny Chesney
View all Kenny Chesney hits →
→ More from the 2010s File
View all 2010s hits →
Keep digging