Hot 100 First-Timers: Sierra Ferrell & The War And Treaty Debut With Zach Bryan Features
Written by djfrosty on September 6, 2023
Sierra Ferrell and The War And Treaty are both officially Billboard Hot 100-charting artists, thanks to their featured appearances on Zach Bryan’s new smash LP Zach Bryan.
The set debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 200,000 equivalent album units earned in its opening week (Aug. 25-31) in the U.S., according to Luminate. It’s the third No. 1 country album of 2023, so far, after Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time and Taylor Swift’s Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), and the first rock No. 1 of the year. (The set is categorized as both a country and rock album.)
Bryan’s “Holy Roller,” featuring Ferrell, debuts at No. 37 on the Hot 100 purely on the strength of its first-week streaming sum: 12.1 million U.S. streams earned. That total helps the song open at No. 20 on the Streaming Songs chart. Genre-wise, it also starts at No. 14 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and No. 17 on Hot Country Songs. (The Hot 100, Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and Hot Country Songs charts all blend streams, sales and airplay data for their respective rankings.)
Ferrell, from Charleston, West Virginia, is a newcomer to Billboard’s charts. The country/folk/bluegrass singer-songwriter scored her first overall chart appearance in September 2021, when her third, and most-recent LP, Long Time Coming, reached No. 15 on the Americana/Folk Albums chart and No. 25 on Top Album Sales.
She’s returned to Billboard’s charts once since then with her featured appearance on Ray LaMontagne’s “I Was Born To Love You.” The song climbed to No. 38 on the Adult Alternative Airplay chart in June 2022.
Outside of the charts, she’s released two additional solo LPs: Pretty Magic Spell in 2014, and Washington By The Sea in 2016. She’s also collaborated with Diplo (“Rain on My Mind,” also with Paul Cauthen), Shakey Graves (“Ready Or Not”), and Old Crow Medicine Show (“Belle Meade Cockfight”).
Next year, she’s scheduled to open for Bryan on his stops in Las Vegas and Denver on his Quittin Time Tour.
Bryan’s “Hey Driver,” featuring The War And Treaty, debuts at No. 14 on the Hot 100, also largely on the strength of its first-week streaming sum: 18.3 million U.S. streams, plus 1,000 downloads sold. The streaming sum also generates a No. 5 debut on the Streaming Songs chart. It concurrently debuts at No. 2 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and No. 5 on Hot Country Songs.
The War And Treaty are a husband-and-wife duo, based in Albion, Mich., comprising Tanya and Michael Trotter Jr.
The pair are relatively new to Billboard’s charts. The act first appeared on a chart in 2018 with its second studio album Healing Tide. The set climbed to No. 11 on the Heatseekers Albums chart and No. 26 on the Independent Albums chart. Two years later, in 2020, the couple notched its first song entry on Billboard’s charts with “Five More Minutes.” It peaked at No. 20 on Adult Alternative Airplay.
Since then, the act’s third and fourth albums both charted on the Top Current Album Sales ranking: Hearts Town reached No. 70 in October 2020 and Lover’s Game peaked at No. 56 in March.
Aside from the charts, the War And Treaty have also collaborated with Shovels & Rope (“Tomorrow”), Blues Traveler (“Need Your Love So Bad”), Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (a star-studded cover of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin,” also with Rosanne Cash, Steve Earle and Jason Isbell), and Dierks Bentley (a live cover of U2’s “Pride (In The Name of Love)”).
Outside of the War and Treaty, Tanya Trotter (née Blount) forged a successful career as a solo act in the ‘90s. She charted three solo songs on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs list (billed as Tanya Blount): “I’m Gonna Make You Mine” (No. 57 peak in 1994), “Through The Rain” (No. 27; 1994) and “Hold On” (No. 66; 1995).
“Through The Rain” also crossed over onto the Hot 100, reaching No. 90 in October 1994. The track appears on Trotter’s sole solo album, Natural Thing (released via Polydor Records), which climbed to No. 58 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
She first rose to prominence after she was cast in the 1993 Whoopi Goldberg film Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit—as the role of Tanya. She has a breakout moment in the film, when she sings “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” alongside future No. 1 Hot 100 artist Lauryn Hill. The duet appears on the soundtrack to the film, which reached No. 74 on the Billboard 200 in 1994.