Country

Russell Dickerson Becomes a ‘Pioneer’ For Embracing Marriage

Russell Dickerson loves being married to his wife, Kailey. The singer-songwriter says it’s his […]

Russell Dickerson loves being married to his wife, Kailey. The singer-songwriter says it’s his pure devotion to his spouse of five years that makes him different than a lot of other country artists.

“I’ve realized that I’m one of the pioneers of artists presenting a positive outlook on marriage,”Dickerson tells Rolling Stone Country. “Some artists try to appear as single as possible, and I feel like I’m the opposite. I’m one of the guys saying, ‘Hey, marriage is amazing. Check out my Instagram. See how great it is to share this life with someone.’ I think that’s a thing that sets me apart.”

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Kailey shot the video for both “Yours” and “Blue Tacoma,” the latter that Dickerson calls their “last hurrah,” thanks to his exploding music career.

“We started out just the two of us, and my manager and agent,” says Dickerson. “But aside from that small team, Kailey did everything visual. She took all the photos and shot the video of my shows. It was just the two of us creating content and the graphics for how to present the music for the world to see. Now there’s so many people on our team. We just kind of have to let go in little ways. We still have creative control, but they’re just running with it.”

“Now that it’s growing out of our control, we wanted to do one more video together,” he adds. “I wanted it to be this very intimate road trip. I wanted it to feel like it was just Kailey and me together in the entire world.”

“Blue Tacoma” has already had more than 54 million streams on Spotify since it was released on streaming outlets in the beginning of 2016. The unparalleled streaming success makes the 31-year-old one of the leading forces in finding other ways to share music with fans, outside of the traditional methods.

“As a new artist in this climate, there’s so many outlets,” Dickerson shares. “If you look at hip-hop, there’s so many big rappers, like Instagram-famous rappers or on Soundcloud โ€” there’s so many outlets to find music now, and it’s blowing up on all these platforms. For me, Spotify was that platform. [Their country programmer] John Marks believed in me. It’s a credit to the reaction of the fans, too. This song stayed on Spotify playlists and kept growing and growing. They were just like, ‘We can’t take it down because it’s working so well.’ That’s why, I think, it’s been such a big explosion in the digital world.”

“Blue Tacoma” is from Dickerson’s Yours album, which is available for streaming on Spotify in its entirety.