Mark Nelson Chesnutt (born September 6, 1963) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Between 1990 and 1999, he had his greatest chart success recording for Universal Music Group Nashville's MCA and Decca branches, with a total of eight albums between those two labels. During this timespan, Chesnutt also charted twenty top-ten hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, of which eight reached number one: "Brother Jukebox", "I'll Think of Something", "It Sure Is Monday", "Almost Goodbye", "I Just Wanted You to Know", "Gonna Get a Life", "It's a Little Too Late", and a cover of Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing". His first three albums for MCA (Too Cold at Home, Longnecks & Short Stories, and Almost Goodbye) along with a 1996 Greatest Hits package issued on Decca are all certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA); 1994's What a Way to Live, also issued on Decca, is certified gold. After a self-titled album in 2002 on Columbia Records, Chesnutt has continued to record predominantly on independent labels.
Chesnutt is known for his neotraditionalist country and honky-tonk influences, with frequent stylistic comparisons to George Jones. He has recorded several cover songs as both singles and album cuts, including covers of Hank Williams Jr., John Anderson, Don Gibson, Conway Twitty, and Charlie Rich. Artists with whom he has collaborated include Jones, Tracy Byrd, Vince Gill, and Alison Krauss. Mark Wright produced all but one of his albums released in the 1990s, while his work since 2005 has been produced by Jimmy Ritchey. Chesnutt has also won two awards from the Country Music Association: the Horizon Award (now known as Best New Artist) and Vocal Event of the Year, both in 1993.
Mark Nelson Chesnutt was born on September 6, 1963, in Beaumont, Texas. He drew musical influence from his father, Bob Chesnutt, who was a singer and record collector. Chesnutt first played drums as a child after receiving a drum kit as a Christmas gift, but at his father's persuasion, he stopped playing drums and chose to focus on singing instead. He dropped out of school in the eleventh grade to begin playing in clubs around southeast Texas. When he turned 17, his father began to take him to Nashville, Tennessee, to begin recording. For the next ten years, he began to record on small regional labels while he was the house band for local Beaumont nightclub Cutters. By the late 1980s, he had released eight singles, which would later be released together as an album titled Doing My Country Thing. Record producer Tony Brown heard one of Chesnutt's independent releases, and recommended him to Mark Wright, a songwriter, session musician, and record producer who helped Chesnutt sign with the Nashville branch of MCA Records in 1990. The same year, Bob Chesnutt died of a heart attack.

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