Watch Brett Young Discuss ‘Mercy’ Music Video & His ‘Idol’ Gavin DeGraw at CMT Music Awards

Rebecca Schiller
·2 min read
Watch Brett Young Discuss ‘Mercy’ Music Video & His ‘Idol’ Gavin DeGraw at CMT Music Awards
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Brett Young took some time to speak with Billboard’s Taylor Weatherby on the red carpet at the CMT Music Awards on Wednesday (June 6) in Nashville, discussing his CMT-nominated video for “Mercy” and his “idol” Gavin DeGraw.

Speaking of his clip for “Mercy,” which picked up a nod for video of the year, Young said of the shoot that took 26.5 days to film, “It was long. We decided to split the shoot between L.A. and White Sands, New Mexico, so part of that was a travel day in between, but with no time off really.”

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“Luckily, the director [Seth Kupersmith] was a really close friend of mine for a lot of years,” he continued. “First time we worked together and we had a lot of fun with it.”

“[Kupersmith] did, probably very wisely, wait to tell me that I was going in a pool fully clothed and he told me the day of,” Young added, also noting that his co-star Tiffany Brouwer “killed it. “To drop that single tear at the end of the video, what a pro. And my buddy Seth directed the hell out of it and everybody was really fun to work with.”

Young, who recently posted a throwback picture with Carrie Underwood, was also asked if there are any other musicians he met years ago that are now stars. “The only other one I randomly met kind of around the same timeframe, maybe a year or two later than that, is my idol,” he explained. “I randomly ran into Gavin DeGraw at Mel’s Diner on Sunset back in probably like 2006/2007. We were fast friends. We’ve stayed buddies ever since and just recently got to do a collaboration together.”

You can hear much more from Brett Young in the video above.

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