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Bobby Brown: Opry-Bound?!

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Country fans are known as the hardest to win over, and the most loyal once you've got them. Can you really cross over?
BOBBY BROWN: John picked people that he knew had a chance of crossing over into country music. 'Cause country music, it's not how great you can sing. It's what you sing about, and if you can connect with the country crowd, then they're with you. I sung about personal things. About things that actually happened in my life, which made it really easy but also made it really hard, because it was like therapy for me.
CARNIE WILSON: I remember the night [John] critiqued our songs. I was really sweating. I was really f---in' nervous 'cause I knew that John was gonna speak the truth, which he does. I was really looking forward to hearing what he had to say because I wanted to learn. And by that point, [the cast] had gotten to know a little bit about each other, and everyone's song had a little bit of them inside it, and it was emotional. [To Bobby] Your song and Maureen's? Forget it, I was a goner.
JOHN RICH: Honestly, I was really shocked that everybody's song was at the level that it was at. Some of them were all the way there. Some of them were 80 or 90 percent there. But they were all legit. I was hoping that some of them would suck — that way I could mark them off the list. [All laugh] That did not happen.
WILSON: When the writing process started, that's when the competition set in a little bit more. At first it was so like, ''You're nice.'' ''You're nice.'' ''Oh, no, we're not competing.'' But then it was ''Oh s---. We are.''
BROWN: [Laughs] 'Cause we want it.
RICH: [To EW] Hey, ask Bobby how he felt when he stepped up to sing ''My Prerogative'' in a Nashville honky-tonk and 300 people knew every word to that song. That would be like me going to a hip-hop club and singing ''Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)'' and everybody knows every word. That would freak me out.
BROWN: It would happen.
RICH: It might. You see the barriers between us ain't what we think they are.... I think Bobby wrote a song [for the show] that country artists could cut. Honestly, George Strait could sing the song Bobby Brown wrote. He could. I could sit down with Bobby's song, me on a guitar, and sing it, and in a million years, you would never guess Bobby Brown wrote that. That's for real. So that was one goal I had, that everybody understood, hey man, you can come here and you can write great songs. Your talent can transfer to what we do. The other reason I wanted to be involved in this show Dee Snider summed up right off the bat, when he said, ''I don't like country music 'cause it's about losing your wife, losing your dog, losing your job, car broke down,'' that stereotypical thing. [Brown laughs] It's like saying ''Everybody that sings R&B carries a pistol and they're all shootin' each other.'' No, that's not the way it is. I wanted to get the point across that country music is not a narrow thing, It's actually wider than any other format. It goes from traditional to the most out-there stuff you can think of, all on the same radio station. You don't have to look like me to do it.

Did you know Dee felt that way before he said it at dinner the first night?
RICH: No. Not until he opened his big mouth. [All laugh]

That's one of my biggest pet peeves. People who make blanket statements like ''I like all music but country,'' ''I like all music but rap.''
BROWN: Some people are narrow-minded. Or they just haven't had the opportunity to sit down and listen. Sit down and listen to country music before you judge it. Because one of them songs that you listen to might be the key to fix your whole life. That's the realness of it. The things that you discuss with country music are real-life situations. And everybody needs a little help from a song. A song can do so much for a person's soul.

What do you hope people take away from the song you co-wrote, Bobby?
BROWN: From my song, I hope people get that I have a lot of things that happened in my life that I regret. I have a lot of things in my life that I'm grateful for. I just hope they get that I'm serious about what I do. I'm serious about my career. I'm serious about life. I want to live. And I want to live right. Righteously. And I want love, too. [Laughs] I want to be loved.
WILSON: Goddamn it, how cute is Bobby? So real.

Before you came, John, Bobby told me that there's talk of a spin-off for him and Maureen.
RICH: First of all, when you meet Maureen, you're convinced right off the bat she's a basket case. She's always either laughing at the top of her lungs, or bawling her head off.
BROWN: That's true.
WILSON: Hysterical.
RICH: There's very little in between. But you come to realize that's just the way she is. She's not nuts. She's very smart.
WILSON: She knows what the hell she's doing.
RICH: She's just a wild card.
BROWN: You never know what to expect from Maureen.
RICH: You would think that Bobby and Maureen would be 180s from each other, but they were probably more similar than anybody else because Bobby is all out and Maureen is all out — they're just all out in different ways.
BROWN: When I first came on [the bus], she was like, ''Oh, is he gonna have a gun?'' [To Wilson] You said something about ''Does he have a crack pipe?'' [Laughs]
WILSON: I'm sorry! Oh s---. [Laughs]
BROWN: I would think those same things about a person like me. But people are people, and people change. And people grow. I'll be the first one to say that I'm grateful for everything that I've been through to be here right now today. Alive. Without a gun. [All laugh] And I left the crack pipe in the car. [More laughter]
WILSON: All I can say is, I used to drink a lot — I've been sober for a few years now — but I thought to myself, if I weren't sober, it would have been a lot different on this show for me. The cameras were everywhere but in the toilet, literally, and so, the last day, I totally flashed the camera. I got, like, crazy.
RICH: It makes you a little crazy.
WILSON: I was like, I don't care anymore. The t--ties are comin' out! So I cannot imagine if you gave me a martini. Woohoo!
BROWN: When I was sleeping, my private parts came out.
WILSON: I found it. Bobby was sound asleep, snoring, and I was like, ''Bobby, it's Momma. Wake up.'' And he [snore noise], and he moves the covers, and hi, how you doin'. Apparently, it made it into the show.
BROWN: Oh no.
RICH: It's blurred out, it's fine.
BROWN: Somehow, somebody's gonna find it unblurred.

NEXT PAGE: ''Like the second day we were there, Maureen comes in [to the girls' bedroom] saying that she slipped on Bobby's pee. That's how she woke up.''

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