Chris Young Just Did Something Onstage He’s Never Done Before + It Didn’t Go as Planned [Exclusive]

Chris Young is releasing a new song on Friday (April 4), called, "'Till The Last One Dies." He decided to try something with this song release that he has never done in his 20-plus years as a performer.

Young played the song in its entirety — for a live audience — before its release.

The "I'm Coming Over" was a guest on Taste of Country Nights this week, and we asked him if he often plays new songs before they are released, just to test them.

Young laughed and said, "No, no, no."

"Playing those songs with my band, I always wait until after the song is out," he explains. "I want people to hear — the first time that they hear the song — the version that we worked for hours and hours and hours on in the studio."

When he sampled "'Till The Last One Dies" by playing it for a live audience, something didn't go quite as planned.

"It was funny, because I was playing the recording, and I guess my steel player didn't know that, because I had my band go ahead and learn it so when we started playing it live, everyone knows it," he recalls.

Get our free mobile app

"I noticed that I kept looking back at him, while I was playing it for the crowd. He's playing. I can hear him in my in-ear monitors, and I'm just like, 'Maybe he was just practicing? Maybe he's just running through it?'"

"The track's just running, he's not live — and he nailed it, played every note right," he says.

"And then later that night, come to find out, he thought that I was singing. He never looked up, so he was just looking at his steel and just playing, because he thought we were all just playing. I was like, 'No, Terry, but good job, you sounded great.'"