This October, Kip Moore will return to South Africa to perform at a 22,000-seat cricket stadium and do back-to-back nights at a Cape Town arena. The Georgia heartland rocker is a superstar in the country and has a devout fan base elsewhere in Australia, the U.K., and Europe. He admits to scratching his head about why that level of success continues to elude him in the U.S.
In a new interview on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Moore compares American crowds with those overseas and opens up about the inspiration for his latest album, Reason to Believe.
“The European, U.K. audiences definitely seem to be more lyric-driven, and they sniff out authenticity and what’s inauthentic pretty quick. I’ve seen it,” Moore says, recalling how he’s seen artists who are regarded as stars in the U.S. lose their audiences in real time when they step onstage in Europe. “I have watched popular people in the States, and I’ve seen the crowds hear a couple songs and they’ll file out to the next act.”
But Moore says that the European country crowds don’t judge the act before they’ve heard the music. That’s not always the case in the U.S., according to the “The Darkness” singer.
“There’s certain parts of America that, certain regions, where they already have their mind made up before you roll in. Because they’ve been trained by their brothers and their dads: ‘You’re not supposed to like any of this, it’s from the outside and this and that,’” he says. “You can feel it when you walk out; it’s a thing of they’re already against you. And you can win them. But those European audiences, they’re locked in and they want to like you. They’ll make their mind up… and if they’re in, they are truly in.”
Moore also opens up about the impact that songwriter Brett James had on his career and how he’s soldiering on in his memory following James’s death in a plane crash last year. Moore is set to perform Wednesday in Nashville at CAA’s CMA Fest kickoff party downtown. Watch his full interview below.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by Deputy Editor, Head of Country Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Kings of Leon, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, the Black Crowes, Carly Pearce, Luke Grimes, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Adam Mac, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, Love on the Spectrum‘s Tyler White, Willie Nelson scholar John Spong, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein.
