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On This Day In 2015, Eric Church Surprised Fans – And Upset His Label – By Mailing Out A Brand New, Unannounced Album, “Mr. Misunderstood”
Probably something his label would want to know about.
On this day in 2015, Eric Church fans were shocked back in 2015 when a surprise album, Mr. Misunderstood, showed up in their mailbox. Not only were they surprised to receive a physical CD of the new album, but Eric hadn’t mentioned anything about it – so nobody had any idea that it was in the works, much less coming to them in the mail.
The album was officially announced the next day, after Church performed the title track at the 2015 CMA Awards and then held a press conference to release the album to the world.
But as it turns out, it wasn’t just fans who were shocked by the new record: His label had no idea it was coming either.
During a conversation with Jelly Roll earlier this year at CRS, the annual Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, the “Beautifully Broken” singer expressed his amazement at Eric having the balls to drop a surprise album with no promotion and while keeping his label in the dark:
“Out of nowhere, as you said at the time being the outlier, feeling like the outsider, doubles down on the most outlaw s–t ever and does a surprise release that you send physical CDs of to your core fans? That’s crazy, dawg.”
Jelly Roll can’t help but laugh about the power move from Church – but apparently his label and then-CEO of Universal Music Group Mike Dungan didn’t find it as amusing at the time.
As Church explains, he went to great lengths to keep the album a secret not only from the public but from his record label:
“We kept this top secret. We went so far as to, we bought a record plant in Germany to make our vinyl records and CDs, so that the US, the normal distribution didn’t know.”
Just an insanely ballsy move.
Church had come up with his own plan, debuting the title song on the CMA Awards and shipping the album to stores in boxes labeled “Christmas album” to be released as soon as his performance ended. But a couple of days before the awards show, Dungan found out about the album and had some questions for Church:
“Finally Mike Dungan gets word that this is going on… About two days before the CMAs I get a call from Mike. And I didn’t take the call.
It comes in and goes to voicemail…and he goes, ‘It’s Dungan. Call me. Now.’
So I waited a couple hours, and I called him, and he goes, ‘Can we talk about something?’ And I said, ‘Yeah Mike, what’s up?’ He goes, ‘Do you have a record?’
I said, ‘Why do you ask?’ He goes, ‘Because I’m hearing from some people in retail…that you have product in stores.’ And he goes, ‘I have not heard of this record.’
And I said, ‘Yeah…yes, we do.’ And he goes, ‘Do you think it would be important to tell your record label about that?’
I said, ‘Yes. But we didn’t.'”
Church then proceeds to fill Dungan in on the plan for his album:
“I said, ‘Mike, we got this record, it’s called Mr. Misunderstood, and it’s the s–t.’ And I said, ‘We’ve been working on it and the reason you’re hearing about it is we mailed a copy to our fans.'”
Now, I’m sure the label wasn’t thrilled to hear that Church had mailed a FREE copy to every member of his fan club – the people who are most likely to go out and spend money on buying a physical copy of the album anyway. But Church explained his reasoning for wanting the fans to hear it first:
“What always happens…is the record goes…we always give the record to radio, you give it to media, and then that opinion of that, and then it goes to the fans. And I always thought that was backwards. It should go to the fans, and then radio, and then critics.”
I mean, makes sense to me, but then again I’m a fan and not his record label. And apparently Dungan still wasn’t onboard. According to Church:
“I’m telling Mike all this and he’s not buying any of it. Any of it.”
Church continues to explain his plan to Dungan, including debuting the song and then having stores put the boxes of “Christmas albums” on the shelf. But the label exec spots another flaw in the strategy:
“He goes, ‘No name?’ I said, ‘Nah.’ He goes, ‘How does Best Buy and Walmart, retailers, know how to put your album out if you put ‘Christmas album?’
I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a good question. You ask hard questions, Mike.’
I said, ‘Well we’re gonna let ’em know that.’ He was like, ‘You do know that that’s what we do? Capitol Records.'”
Hey, you can’t expect him to think of everything.
And of course that turned out not to be the only flaw in the plan. Church performed “Mr. Misunderstood” on the CMA Awards as he had planned – but what he didn’t plan on was the very next performance being Justin Timberlake and Chris Stapleton, which turned out to be one of the biggest moments in country music in the last decade and ended up overshadowing his surprise album release.
Of course it all ended up working out fine. Mr. Misunderstood debuted at #3 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 200 album chart, and has since been certified 3x platinum. It also produced a #1 hit for Church with “Record Year,” and songs like “Mistress Named Music” and “Knives of New Orleans” that are still fan favorites and staples of his live shows.
Gotta think the label eventually got over it…and probably learned that they should just trust Eric Church with whatever he wants to do.
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♬ original sound – Whiskey Riff
(Oh and for the record: As a longtime Eric Church fan since pretty much the beginning, Mr. Misunderstood is still probably my favorite album he’s ever recorded).The post On This Day In 2015, Eric Church Surprised Fans – And Upset His Label – By Mailing Out A Brand New, Unannounced Album, “Mr. Misunderstood” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.
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