page_title: Forever Country
section_title: Music video
hierarchical_section_title: Forever Country / Music video
caption_attribution_description: English: Faith Hill sings during a free concert she performed for people from here and nearby Pope Air Force Base on Feb. 13. The three-time Grammy Award-winning country musician performed a live five-song concert as a tribute to America's armed forces and as part of a live broadcast of ABC's "Good Morning America.
context_page_description: "Forever Country" is a 2016 mashup performed by "Artists of Then, Now & Forever," a one-time gathering of 30 country music artists. The song combines elements of three previous country hits: John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads", Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again", and Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You". The song was recorded to commemorate the Country Music Association Awards reaching its 50th year. Originally, CMA Awards producers had wanted to record a cover of a single song; the idea to instead record a mashup came from Joseph Kahn, who directed the song's music video. The song was recorded in a span of three days in Nashville, Tennessee in June 2016 with Shane McAnally as producer, with the music video produced concurrently.
  "Forever Country" was released on September 16, 2016, and the video premiered four days later on September 20 during Dancing with the Stars. All profits from the sale and streaming of the song go to music education supported by the CMA Foundation.
  The song debuted atop Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, becoming the third song in history to achieve the feat and giving every artist featured on the song a No. 1 hit.
context_section_description: Joseph Kahn directed the song's accompanying music video, which serves as a promotional teaser for the 50th CMA Awards ceremony and features all thirty artists involved performing in front of a green screen on which "graphics of railroad tracks transform into major cities and back again." Filming took place in Nashville, Tennessee for three days in June 2016 during the CMA Music Festival. It marked the fourth time he directed a country music video after Willie Nelson's "Afraid" and “December Day” in 1994 and Faith Hill's "The Way You Love Me" in 2000 and the director's most star-studded video since Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" which featured 15 artists. Houston-raised Kahn grew up listening to country music. McAnally said it was "an act of God" that everyone could make it to the recording and video shoot. The video was promoted as "the biggest video in country music history."
  Kahn said he does not have a predilection for special effects-driven music videos and generally hates green-screen videos. He wanted the video to feel stylized but also organic, like the singers were actually in the places portrayed. It was a challenge due to time constraints. Because the song itself had three different melodies, he came up with the idea of layering the locations, where "you see them constructing and deconstructing and each leading naturally to the next." Kahn had to pre-visualize everything – where everyone was standing, how he was going to light it, how it would blend – and film it with plates. By the time the artists arrived to shoot their parts, everything was already pre-edited. Due to scheduling issues, he had to shoot all the artists separately and stitch them together at the end. Kahn said "the challenge is actually on different levels." He had to get all the artists represented in a very short period of time. He tried to avoid overdoing the visuals so they wouldn't get in the way of the artists; he wanted the artists to be the prime focus and not the visual effects. He said the next sociological and artistic challenge was melding the authenticity of old country with new country, which sounds like Top 40 pop. Both are very different and it was difficult to blend them together in a video and make everything feel contemporary and classic at the same time.
  The video was expensive, like most of Kahn's previous works. When they presented the demo of the song and the budget to the board members, it was only after hearing the song that the members approved financing the project. McAnally admitted that at one point he grew wary and anxious due to the number of celebrities involved and the heft of the pricey budget. George Strait recorded his part and shot the video on the same day, which was the last day of production. He went to the recording studio in the morning, and then drove to the warehouse where some of the other artists were filming their shoots. McAnally recalls, "Literally as he's driving from the studio to the warehouse, we're dropping his voice in and sending a track over for him to (lip-synch) to."
  The video begins with Paisley gazing out a window as he sings the song's opening lyrics and closes with Parton singing in a field with the rest of the artists. In between, many country music stars can be seen singing, walking, and looking out across digitally-imposed landscapes like fields, farms, backroads, railroad tracks, famous locales like Nashville's Lower Broadway and international landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, London and the Mesa Arch. According to CMA senior vice president of marketing and strategic partnerships Damon Whiteside, "the whole concept of the video is really about starting in Nashville and then really taking a tour around the world just to showcase that country music is everywhere; it's global."
  On September 19, 2016, select members of the press, industry, and CMA board members got an exclusive first look at the video at Nashville's Belcourt Theatre. Director Joseph Kahn, producer Shane McAnally, and CMA board member Karen Fairchild (of Little Big Town) were present to share their experiences thro
caption: Faith Hill was the only other artist, besides Willie Nelson, who had previously worked with Kahn when he directed the video clip for her 2000 single, "The Way You Love Me".
exif: {}