Pam Tillis + Paige King Johnson Take Us Behind the Scenes of ‘Famous Enough’ Video [Exclusive Premiere]
There is no doubt that the music video for Paige King Johnson’s new single “Famous Enough” looks nothing short of beautiful. But getting there was not easy.
“[Director] Pam [Tillis] ended up getting a flat tire on the first day of the video shoot,” Johnson admits with a laugh during an interview with Taste of Country. “On the second day, we were running about three hours behind the set schedule, and then it started raining between shots.”
“Serendipity is so important,” Tillis adds in a special behind-the-scenes chat about the music video for “Famous Enough,” premiering exclusively on Taste of Country. “The things you don’t plan can sometimes be the things that elevate the whole thing.”
Leave it to the Grand Ole Opry member and country legend to be right. Because while Tillis is best known for hits including “Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life)," “Maybe It Was Memphis” and “Shake the Sugar Tree,” she is now carving a brand-new career as a director of music videos including “Famous Enough.”
“What I've learned from Pam is that there is no plan,” says Johnson, who came out of the country music gate with her debut single, “Water Down the Whiskey.”
“Everything that you try to plan is going to go awry. Pam is such a creative person that in the moment she will come up with these like genius thoughts that completely made the video.”
For example, all the extras in the music video for “Famous Enough” were actually Tillis’ real-life friends.
“Not only were we shooting a video, but Pam was getting to catch up with friends,” says Johnson of the video for the song that is featured on her long-anticipated album, Honky Tonk Heart. “We were about to use their cows and to use their houses as sets, and literally, they were making us ham sandwiches while we were on set.”
“Famous Enough” serves as the third video that Tillis and Johnson have worked on together, but the relationship between the legend and the country newbie goes further back, with the two first introduced to one another in 2020.
“When I was working on my single ‘Just Like You,’ Pam heard it and ended up getting in touch with my management and said that she wanted to be involved with what I had, and that she believed in me,” remembers Johnson. “She is now more so a friend than she is this big superstar that I'm, like, scared to death to work with anymore.”
The experience of working behind the scenes has been a welcome change of pace for Tillis.
“I’ve been in front of the camera for 35 years,” she explains. “It’s so nice to be on the other side. I’m not worried about being 10 pounds overweight or if I should have gotten a better haircut or if I forget to Botox. I wasn’t worried about any of that stuff.”
“I'm just so grateful to have her in my corner, not only on this professional working level, but as a mentor, too,” concludes Johnson, who will finish out the month of August with a series of shows in her home state of North Carolina. “She’s here to give me these little nuggets of advice about when she, too, was a young woman in country music. She always says, ‘If I can save you five minutes of heartache, then I will have done my job.”