Country artistCanaan Coxonce worked on a cruise ship, and it was on that cruise ship that he fell in love with a certain Kimberly Jane Billman. She was from England, he was from the States and while there was plenty of love between them, the couple doubted that the long-distance love affair could ever work.
“I was just naïve and stupid and scared of everything that we would need to do to make it work,” says Cox, 33, in an interview with PEOPLE. “So, we broke up.”
He lets out a laugh.
“My and my wife Kimberly’s story reads like some sort ofNicholas Sparksmovie,” Cox, whose forthcoming five-track EP'94 Accordis set for release May 5, tells PEOPLE. “There’s so many little twists and turns in our story, it truly would make Nicholas Sparks write a 600-page book.”
“I had been sent a bunch of songs, and I skipped anything with the word ‘whiskey’ in the title,” the North Carolina native laughs of the day he first heard what is now his current single “Twice.” “I had heard it all before. But when I heard this song where it was like, ‘We loved each other once, could we love each other twice,’ I knew we had found something very special.”
Canaan Cox.Annelise Loughead
Delivered with a passion seldom heard on country radio these days, “Twice” is made even more beautiful via the storyline that plays out in its new music video, premiering exclusively on PEOPLE.
“It’s really hard to fit really big storylines into two and a half minutes,” remarks Cox, who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre from Catawba College back in 2012 and made the move to Nashville in 2016. “I direct and produce and edit all my videos. I have connections with theNashville Repertory Theatrehere, and I just wanted to make the music video have this thrown together, art gallery kind of vibe.”
Canaan Cox.Reid Yarberry
And while the music video for “Twice” ends without a clear conclusion to the love story it tells, Cox says that’s exactly what he loves about it.
“It is a sad song, but it’s definitely a love song,” explains Cox, who will kick off his U.K. “Coming Home” tour in June. “At the end of the video, you kind of see me smile and it’s like there’s this memory of her … but then it’s a very slow digression to the fact that I’m still alone.”
source: people.com
