Tyler Nance Talks ‘Insane’ Success of Viral Hit ‘Keeps Me Sane’: ‘It’s Like the Song Was Meant to Be’

Before Tyler Nance released his debut song “Bad News” last fall and eclipsed it this year with his current Billboard Hot Country Songs debut entry “Keeps Me Sane,” he worked as a welder and grew up tending cattle on his family’s farm near Lamar, Missouri, a map dot town northwest of Springfield.

“I thought that was what I’d be doing for the rest of my life,” he tells Billboard.

But the success of his music has put Nance on a different trajectory. “Keeps Me Sane,” released via Santa Anna Label Group, has earned 17.9 million official U.S. on-demand streams since it released in July, according to Luminate, while the song’s success propelled Nance to his current No. 32 position on the Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart. “Keeps Me Sane” earned six million streams within two weeks of its relea