Although the news was buried beneath everyone's obsession with Chris Stapleton and Justin Timberlake's performance, Eric Church surprise released his fifth album, Mr. Misunderstood, at the CMAs this week and has now followed that up with the debut of the title track's inspiring music video.
He performed the song at Wednesday's (Nov. 4) CMA ceremony and released the music video the following day.
The video opens with the country singer playing solo with his guitar to an awkward kid at the back of a dusty classroom, telling him about his experiences as an awkward teenager and how he came into his own through music. About one minute into the song, the whole band kicks in and turns the soft tune into a traveling jam like something out of The Band's catalog. The song slows down and speeds up again, clearly projecting Church's own experiences growing up onto this cool, brace-faced kid, who winds up performing with the band front and center.
Church name drops a few people in the song including Ray Wylie Hubbard, Elvis Costello and Jeff Tweedy, which seems like a real head nod to the fact that the beginning of "Mr. Misunderstood" sounds an awful lot like Wilco's "Misunderstood." Watch the music video below.
The surprise release wasn't just an unexpected gift to fans. Billboard reports that many retailers had no idea physical albums were shipping and music-streaming services were largely kept in the dark. Aside from Walmart, Target and iTunes, the album was kept under wraps to smaller retailers who were told they were ordering Church's new Christmas album. Had they known, retailers said they would have ordered 2 to 8 times more copies.
Beyoncé made the surprise album release a popular tool, but she didn't have physical distribution behind it from day one. This appears to be the first attempt to do just that, so it makes sense there would be some technical issues.
