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Though Beyoncé wasn’t in attendance, the singer-songwriter (and her chart-topping hit “Texas Hold ‘Em”) has been a much-discussed topic during the annual Country Radio Seminar being held this week in downtown Nashville.
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Queen Bey recently made history when “Texas Hold ‘Em” debuted atop the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart; the song went on to top the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. In its second week on the Country Airplay chart, “Texas Hold ‘Em” rose from its No. 54 debut to No. 34.
During an early-morning panel on Friday (March 1) titled “Diversi-’Tea’: Spilling the Data on Inclusive Programming,” panelist Travis Moon, the current director of operations for Radio One Houston and the program director of KKBQ, spoke of being early adopter in playing “Texas Hold ‘Em.”
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“I saw the song come out and was waiting for the edit that we could play,” he said. “I could have overthought this, but my initial gut said, ‘Let’s go.’ A lot of times, we wait to see who moves first; safety in numbers. I didn’t care.” He went on to add, “If the listener turned on the station in the middle of that song, it sounds like something we would play.”
Moon didn’t see playing the song — and adding it during the day — as a huge risk. “I’ve been doing country radio for 32 years, we’ve played hundreds of stiffs during the day that we never play anymore. I don’t know how it will do in the research world, but it sounds great on the radio.” He also noted that during a recent event the station held, they played “Texas Hold ‘Em,” and “the dancefloor was full.”
“First of all, Beyoncé is part of a huge conversation, and you can’t ignore a song she puts out regardless of what genre you work in,” said fellow panelist Jess Wright, has served as the country format captain and host at LiveOne/Slacker Radio since 2016. Wright noted that in their metrics, they are seeing “Texas Hold ‘Em” “has the highest-banned score of any song on stations it is played on. It also has the highest heart score. We expected this because you will always have your traditionalists. There are people who won’t want to hear it.” She noted that listener reactions to “Texas Hold ‘Em” are very similar to those they saw with the 2019 Lil Nas X/Billy Ray Cyrus smash hit “Old Town Road.” “It was the most-panned and the most-hearted,” Wright said.
On the Country Airplay chart dated March 2, “Texas Hold ‘Em” was among the songs with the most increased audience and most increased plays. But it remains to be seen what will ultimately happen with the song at country radio. During a panel discussing “Debunking Industry Myths,” Gator Harrison, Senior VP of Programming for iHeartMedia’s Nashville Market, said, “I played [the Beyoncé track] as soon as I got it, we’re exposing it and once we’ve exposed it enough, we’re going to go to research and ask, ‘What do you guys think? Do you like this?’ We still have to have that local conversation through research with our audience.”
“Whether it’s a song that stays long-term, it does feel a little bit of a novelty, but it sounds good so right now we are sticking with it,” Wright said.
Earlier in the week, “Texas Hold ‘Em” was also part of the conversation in another diversity-focused panel, which featured BBR Music Group leader/president Frontline Recordings, North America Jon Loba, as well as singer-songwriters Frank Ray and Lily Rose, as well as consultant Jaye Albright, and moderated by the Country Music Association’s Senior Director, Industry Relations & Inclusion Mia McNeal.
Loba addressed some of the criticism that has swirled around the song being part of the country music format.
“To the Beyoncé point, I absolutely understand wanting to be protective with the format, and the young artists put in so much work and so much effort for that one shot,” Loba said. “So I do understand the thought of this taking a slot maybe of somebody who’s been here… and wanted to do it all their life. But I think that there is a balance. Maybe [country radio] won’t play every Beyoncé record, but right now one of the biggest icons in music is saying, ‘This genre is cool, this genre matters,’ and we should at least, in this moment, embrace that. Everybody wants to be here. Come to our house. We’re the coolest house on the block.”
Loba also offered a potent reminder regarding backlash surrounding the song, saying, “I also think the gatekeepers need to understand the loudest voice is not always the majority.”
“I’m not surprised by the way this industry has embraced this album,” McNeal said. “I think by and large, most people have enjoyed it. And if some people don’t, they don’t. And it’s OK. It’s art, and it’s something to be consumed and judged.”
On the same panel, Ray, who broke through with his Latin music-tinged song “Streetlights,” praised the lift that the song is giving to other Black women country artists on streaming and socials. “She’s elevating these other Black female artists that have been doing it for such a long time, like Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts and Tanner Adell — if we can do that with a Mexican artist, that’d be awesome.”
“That song is countrier than 33% of stuff that is on country radio right now… she just wrote a country song and it’s great, and it’s a tide lifting all boats,” Rose added.
Fellow “Spilling the Diversi’TEA’” panelist Jada Watson, an assistant professor of Digital Humanities in the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa (and the principal investigator on the SongData project), noted that since the release of “Texas Hold ‘Em,” there have been increased numbers of consumption and engagement on DSPs and social media platforms for Black country artists — including Rissi Palmer, Tanner Adell and Reyna Roberts — but that largely hasn’t translated to radio support.
“I’m not seeing it yet on radio, but I recognize this is week three,” Watson said. She also spoke of concerns as to whether this will mark lasting support for other Black women country artists: “That is where my concerns lie now — how and when will this translate into support for the Black women who have been pursuing country music?”
The comments from the panels came as part of an ongoing wider conversation about increasing diversity on country radio, and opening doors to include and elevate more women artists and artists from Black, Latino and LGBTQIA+ communities.
Moon advocated for radio taking more chances and looking beyond what research testing might show, pointing out as an example the success of Gabby Barrett’s 2020 hit “I Hope,” saying the song “had some high negative [scores] and huge high passion [scores]. I ignored the negatives and it ended up being a big hit. A lasting hit.”
“The reality is when you are testing music, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Moon said. “If we have less female artists in our music tests, when people are taking the test, it does hit them as a little more novelty. They’re unaccustomed to hearing a lot [of female voices on radio], so you’ll have higher negatives as a result. I have in the past ignored the negatives on female artists, and I look specifically at the love score,” he said, later adding, “That doesn’t mean I’m going to put it power, but that doesn’t mean I’m going drop a song. There’s certain context. I look at artists and I don’t [do] just one size fits all the negative scores. So that’s one rule I’m willing to break, [in order to] try to find, unlock that passion.”
Rose, who was named outstanding breakthrough artist at the 2022 GLAAD Media Awards, said, “I think with fans, you just have to give them patience. They just want to be moved. They just want to hear a good song.”
“We don’t give the audience enough credit,” Loba said. “At the end of the day, people want to hear great music. We as the labels just need to offer that up and gatekeepers do, too.”
Loba’s sentiment was echoed by during the Friday morning panel, with Wright telling attendees, “We need to play good songs and find great music wherever we can find them.”
Watson also noted the benefit of increasing the diversity of artists and sounds found in country music in reaching members of the vast country music audience, saying, “The audience of country music is far more diverse in every way than we even know. I think the exciting thing about this moment is that we have the tools to actually discover who that audience not just is now, but who they always been. And I think that once we start to know who that audience is, we’re going to start to see changes that reflect a greater diversity within the industry as well.”
On Georgia native Peytan Porter’s six-song, sophomore EP Grown, out Friday (March 1), she sheds light on a creative revival, the culmination of dismantling — then rebuilding — her sound to reveal her true self.
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“This past six to 12 months has been just reclaiming my entire life and setting myself on a really good direction,” she tells Billboard.
Porter’s music career gained traction not long after her 2020 graduation from Nashville’s Lipscomb University, where she studied public relations. A year later, she signed a publishing deal with Jody Williams Songs and Warner Chappell Nashville and saw her song “Therapy” go viral on TikTok. She followed with her pop-country debut 2022 EP In My Head. But while her debut only showcased one dimension of her musical abilities, Porter says Grown feels more akin to who she is. The album is lush with introspective lyrics and gauzy, Laurel Canyon vibes.
Porter name-checks the modern sounds of folk-rocker Foy Vance and the blues-influenced Chris Stapleton, as well as more classic influences, including Fleetwood Mac and Linda Ronstadt’s 1977 album Simple Dreams.
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“There’s just a kind of drifter, free nomad energy that comes with that whole timeframe,” Porter says of the 1960s and 1970s scene that birthed music from Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, the Mamas and the Papas and more. “I was doing a lot of digging into that whole era and was inspired by how touring fueled the music itself. It felt like they hashed things out on the road and brought it into the studio. I wanted my music to sound like it does live and I can’t do that if I’m using track and synthetic sounds. This record feels like I’m stepping into my own.”
Porter, who is managed by Red Light Management, and repped by CAA for booking, will get the chance to showcase her new music this year at festivals including Tortuga Music Festival and Gulf Coast Jam. Beginning in June, she will also open shows for Tim McGraw on his Standing Room Only tour.
Billboard spoke with Porter, Billboard’s March Country Rookie of the Month, about the stories behind the songs on her new project and her journey toward her newfound sound.
What was the catalyst for creating your new album?
When my first record came out, I felt kind of lost. A lot of exciting things had happened fast, and doors were opening. I was trying to keep up and didn’t have the capacity to stop and create a direction for myself — it felt like I was going with whatever was popping up. When the project came out, it felt like a finish line of sorts, and for the first time I had space to pause and be like, ‘Is this the direction I want to go for the next 20 to 50 years?’ And I felt a resounding ‘No.’ There were so many parts of myself that I wasn’t showing, and that didn’t feel authentic. I’m not a good enough actress to have kept up the gig that long.
How did you take the time to recalibrate, creatively?
I spent a lot of time alone in the woods. I went on a dating hiatus. I tried to just be alone and figure out my style, independent of the people around me. I started making decisions and not asking for opinions. I cut my bangs, moved into a sketchy apartment and started decorating it with candles and weird mushroom decorations, gaudy gold and jewel tones. I figured out how to stop apologizing for what I like, and that bled into the music. Luckily, my team supported me. And I had turned 25, so it was like my quarter-life crisis. A perfect storm.
The title track of the album touches on the apartment and some of the rougher moments that come with figuring things out on your own. Are there any particular moments that inspired that song?
I wrote this after I moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Nashville. It maybe wasn’t the smartest decision I had made. I had an outside-facing unit, ground level. I remember it was New Year’s Eve and I’m in my bed journaling and I hear gunshots right outside of my window. I crawl out of bed and am sitting on the floor and praying for protection. I grabbed my guitar and just started capturing what was going on around me.
That moment was so far from what everyone back home was doing — my sister was expecting a baby, my best friend was planning a wedding — and I was going through this artistic shift. I remember thinking, “This is what you wanted.” I wrote like half of the song and brought it to Steve Moakler and Mark Trussell, to finish it together.
“God’s Hotel” has a more bluesy vibe and a message of self-acceptance. What feel were you going for on this?
On the road, we close with “God’s Hotel,” and then go into “Lean on Me,” and I wanted this communal kind of feel. When I go to a live show, I feel that. Finding a place where we all belong is important to me, because it’s a journey we all take of figuring out who we are, and then finding people who will let us be that.
You reunited with Greg Bates, whom you also worked with on In My Head. How did the process of working on this album compare with your first project?
I was much more hands-on sonically, with this record. I came in with playlists and vision for sounds and different instrumentations. He trusted me to know what I wanted. He pulled in players like [steel guitar player] Dan Dugmore, who played with Linda Ronstadt. He was intentional with the people he brought in and the sounds we used.
You recorded this album live, all the musicians in the studio together. How did that impact the feel of the EP?
We wanted to capture the live concert feeling. That meant not bringing in a blueprint of stems from a demo and working from it, but rather creating it in the moment. We played it all together and I got to sing with them on every take. There was this energy of it being a live shared experience, that I feel got captured. We did come back and tweak a few things after the fact, but I wanted it to feel like we were doing something together.
This time in the studio, I had a lot more opinions. I came in and saged the studio, and got it ready to be the kind of energy I wanted. It was the first time I felt like I had a voice in a space like that. It can be daunting with a mainly male presence in a room like that — to be a female artist, and come in and have a vision — but they gave me space to follow that vision.
“Run the Radio” is about a breakup, but also reclaiming freedom. What’s the story behind this song?
I was on a balcony on vacation, writing songs, and thought about this guy I had recently been involved with, who had lived in a van. I thought the experience was worth at least putting in a song. I thought, “I didn’t like any of his music” — and then I thought, “I didn’t like any of my exes’ music.” When I dated an athlete, I listened to hip-hop and R&B. I dated a mountain guy who was into obscure folk. The guy with the van liked EDM and house music. I realized I was trying to cater myself to him.
That’s when I had this idea of, “I run the radio now.” I only listen to what I like. The song came out so beautifully. The more I appreciate my own instincts and styles, the more I want to offer that feeling of freedom, strength, and just pure joy to people.
You signed with Jody Williams Songs and Warner Chappell Nashville in 2021. How have they championed this self-discovery season?
He’s the best person and guru. I remember saying, “Jody, I think I’ll just cut my bangs.” It’s like when you go through a break-up and you want to cut off all your hair — that happened creatively. And he goes, “Maybe start with a trim.” That’s the most Jody response — don’t blow up your life, but just start somewhere. And they have seen me through this crazy journey. They signed me to write songs, and then three months later I have a song take off as an artist. They have rolled with the punches and trusted me to know what I want for myself.
As an artist and a songwriter, how do you balance the demands of both roles?
It is a vast difference. Some days I’m making graphics at 1:00 a.m. and I have a [writing session] at 11:00 a.m. and a coffee meeting, and I’m doing all the artist things that people don’t realize we have to do. Then having to figure out what I get to put out as an artist and what songs I’m in love with as a writer. It’s a juggle; You want to honor the craft and that’s always hard in a commercial setting. But I love that I have the option of doing both; I think there is a time and place for both and I think country music, especially, kind of honors the people who can toe the line between commercial and craft.
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Carly Pearce thought she knew what the title track of her fourth full-length album would be. Then she wrote “hummingbird.”
“When I wrote ‘Country Music Made Me Do It,’ I was like, ‘This is the title of the album,’” she says of the playful, cheeky song she released last summer. “’hummingbird’ was one of the last songs I wrote for the record and it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what it was meant to be the whole time.’”
The delicate, fiddle-laced title track about resilience closes hummingbird, coming June 14. “It’s kind of my little bluegrass moment,” she says, adding she got a tattoo of a hummingbird once she completed the project. “It’s lyrically way more abstract than what you would usually hear on a contemporary country record. It’s kind of an artistic way of saying that you’re not going to settle.”
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After the heaviness of 2021’s EP 29 and its full-length companion 29: Written in Stone, Pearce says writing the songs for hummingbird felt “light and airy and freeing and like a big exhale.”
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Both 29 and 29: Written in Stone received commercial and critical acclaim, including Pearce’s duet with Ashley McBryde, “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” which won a Grammy in 2023 for best country duo/ group performance. The sets fearlessly mined Pearce’s heartache following her divorce from Michael Ray and were filled with confessional reflections. The albums “really taught me just how vulnerable I could be and how that could transcend,” she says. “Even though I thought I was only writing my story, it seems like I’ve been writing a lot of other people’s stories.”
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Still, Pearce hit a bit of a stumbling block when it came time to start the new album. “I was so intimidated of how to follow 29 because I never wrote that thinking it would have any kind of success,” she says. “But what it did is it taught me so much about how strong I am. And so, to see this album be finished and for it to speak to so much that has happened to me, I’m really proud of myself, and hummingbird will forever remind me that I can really do anything.”
While love often still goes sideways in the songs on hummingbird, on many of them, including “Truck on Fire,” “Still Blue” and “Rock Paper Scissors,” Pearce is coming from a place of control and often humor. “I think there comes a lot of strength and almost a playfulness to laugh at what you’ve been through and not make a joke of it, but make light of it because it’s part of your story,” she says.
With the exception of the moving Grammy-nominated duet and current single “We Don’t Fight Anymore,” featuring Chris Stapleton, the first half of the 14-track album is more lighthearted than the second half by design. “It was important to me that the first songs that people heard from me were that I’m doing good,” she says “It’s a two-part album of healing because with the healing comes a great freedom and joy. Even the heavier side that can feel harder in moments, there’s still a sense of strength that 29 didn’t have because, quite frankly, I didn’t have the strength during 29.”
Carly Pearce, ‘hummingbird’
Courtesy of Big Machine Records
Pearce, who co-wrote 13 of the 14 tracks, produced the album with 29 and Written in Stone producers Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. “They know me on such a personal level now that I think they were the only people I could make this next record with,” she says. “They just had such a sense of where I was and where I wanted to go and sonically what I was wanting to do.”
That included “doubling down” on the traditional country instrumentation the Kentucky native featured on those two sets that was noticeably absent from her first two albums helmed by the late pop producer busbee. Songs like the twangy “Fault Line” recall her musical hero Loretta Lynn and the music she listened to growing up.
“My grandparents, when they figured out I wanted to be a country artist at 5, bought me all of these deluxe [compilations] from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and I studied those. While ‘90s country is such a big part of me, those classic sounds of Loretta and Tammy [Wynette] and George [Jones], I was just a fan of all of it.”
The gauzy, monochromatic, stripped-down visualizer for “hummingbird,” which premieres above, sets the tone for the images for the project. “There’s less makeup, less of the really fixed hair. There’s prisms in the lens of the camera,” Pearce says. “All of it has been super intentional and super important to me to make the visual feel different than anything I’ve ever done.”
Pearce drew inspiration from one of her fellow country artists. “Especially in country music, it can get very, very polished and predictable in imaging. I’ve been really inspired by people like Kacey Musgraves, who has stayed competitive, but always has something different in the way that she looks in her photos. And I wanted to find how I could challenge myself from a visual standpoint to just look a little different.”
Pearce will debut the title track at Big Machine Label Group’s luncheon at Country Radio Seminar on Friday (March 1). “That’s certainly not a song that you would think I would choose to sing at a radio luncheon, but I’m singing it because this is the kind of music that I make. This is the kind of message that I want to send,” she says. “It’s a really important record for me and I think just being able to sing something like this has also shown me that country radio has accepted me for me. And I feel really lucky that that is where I’m at in my career four records in.”
Just days after premiering “The One (Pero No Como Yo)” at the 2024 Premio Lo Nuestro, Carin León and Kane Brown have released the track’s music video, which Billboard is premiering exclusively. Fusing country and regional Mexican — two genres that are more similar than different (for starters both center on storytelling and live instruments) […]
Olivia Rodrigo is bringing her Guts World Tour to Texas, so naturally, she’s turning up Beyoncé‘s chart-topping new ode to the Lone Star State. In a TikTok posted ahead of her Wednesday (Feb. 28) show in Austin, the 21-year-old singer-songwriter sports a purple cowboy hat and springs in and out of a hollow, oversized birthday […]
Singer-songwriter Maren Morris is among the 2024 Billboard Women in Music honorees, where she will be honored with the Visionary award.
Billboard takes a deep dive into Morris’ crossover chart successes that have make her a force on both the country and all-genre charts. Since her debut with “My Church” in 2016, Morris has fashioned a mesh of country, pop and R&B that has resonated with fans and propelled her to seeing 12 songs cross over onto the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 chart, including a top five hit with her 2018 track “The Middle” with Zedd and Grey.
Meanwhile, she’s earned top milestones on the Hot Country Songs chart, too. Morris’s 2020 hit “The Bones” spent 19 weeks atop the Hot Country Songs chart, making it the second-longest running No. 1 on the chart by an unaccompanied solo woman in history. It also peaked at No. 12 on the Hot 100.
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She’s also earned four No. 1 hits on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart, including “I Could Use a Love Song” and the Thomas Rhett duet “Craving You,” “Girl” and “The Bones.”
Her 2016 album Hero and 2019 album GIRL topped the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, and her 2022 album Humble Quest debuted at No. 2 on the tally. GIRL also picked up the Country Music Association’s album of the year honor in 2019.
The 2024 Billboard Women in Music ceremony will be held March 6 at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles, and will celebrate women who are making an impact across the music industry.
Other honorees include Billboard‘s Woman of the Year honoree Karol G, Hitmaker award honoree Ice Spice, Icon honoree Kylie Minogue, Powerhouse award winner Charli XCX, Impact honoree Young Miko, Rising Star honoree Victoria Monét, Group of the Year NewJeans, Breakthrough winner TEMS and the recipient of the new Global Force award, Luísa Sonza. The evening will be hosted by actor-producer Tracee Ellis Ross.
Billboard revealed the full slate of its 2024 Women in Music honorees, across the spectrum of music industry sectors, from record labels to publishing to touring on Feb. 29.
Garth Brooks‘ fans who can’t be at the March 7 opening of the superstar’s new Nashville bar and honky tonk Friends in Low Places can still experience the excitement through a new Prime Video docuseries.
The six-episode series, Friends in Low Places, chronicles Brooks and his wife Trisha Yearwood as they build the four-story, 54,715-square-foot venue on Nashville’s Lower Broadway. The show, which also debuts March 7, follows the couple, as well as Brooks’ tour team and hospitality group, as they go through the adventures of trying to realize their vision for the club.
“This was so much more than I bargained for! With that said, what we have built is far more than just a business,” Brooks said in a statement. “This is by far the craziest ride I have ever been on.” The singer acquired the property, located at 411 Broadway in Nashville, in December 2021. He performed at the venue on Black Friday last November and the first two floors have been open during weekends for the past several weeks.
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“I know this sounds corny: I want it to be the Chick-fil-A of honky-tonks,” Brooks told Billboard in June. “I want it to be a place you feel safe in, I want it to be a place where you feel like there are manners and people like one another. … Our thing is this: If you [are let] into this house, love one another. If you’re an a–hole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway.”
“We started down this road fueled by passion, dedication, and a shared vision,” added Yearwood. “I’m really proud of the team that has built the Friends Bar and Honky Tonk. We are excited to share the culmination of everyone’s efforts. It’s even bigger than we dreamed!” The venue’s menu will feature recipes from Yearwood’s best-selling cookbooks.
Max Goldberg, Jenny Deathride Bratt, Trisha Yearwood, Garth Brooks, Camille Tambunting and Benjamin Goldberg in ‘Friends in Low Places’
Prime Video
The series also follows the travails of hospitality experts Benjamin and Max Goldberg, who oversee all aspects of hospitality at the honky tonk, as well as Jenny Deathride Bratt and Camille Tambunting, heads of Strategic Hospitality and the team on the ground at Friends in Low Places.
Friends in Low Places is produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Casey Patterson Entertainment. Brooks, Patterson and Carol Donovan serve as executive producers.
Fans can also buy Brooks’ and the venue’s merchandise through Brooks’ Amazon store, as well as stream his music catalog through Amazon Music.
Country music duo LOCASH has launched Galaxy Label Group in partnership with Studio2Bee Entertainment, founded by veteran Nashville music executives Skip Bishop and Butch Waugh.
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BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville will distribute the label, Billboard can reveal.
LOCASH’s Preston Brust and Chris Lucas celebrated the newly-announced venture on Wednesday evening (Feb. 28) during an event in downtown Nashville, just as radio programmers descended on Music City for the annual Country Radio Seminar.
“We’re all blessed to be part of this music business and we have a chance to do what our passion is, and to have Skip and Butch back on the team with us, it’s great,” Lucas tells Billboard during a Zoom call with LOCASH and Bishop.
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In launching the label, LOCASH, who formed in 2008, draw on nearly two decades of experience as artists and writers. In 2016, they earned a top 5 Country Airplay hit with “I Love This Life,” and followed with the chart-topper “I Know Somebody,” top 20 song “Ring on Every Finger,” and in 2019, earned another top 5 Country Airplay hit with “One Big Country Song.”
“We’ve talked about doing a label for years,” Lucas says. “Some of the best success we’ve had was when were have been more hands-on with it.”
Bishop and Waugh had previously worked on the campaign for “I Love This Life,” and the full-fledged staff that Studio2Bee has with marketing and radio reps, “seemed like a perfect match,” Bishop explains.
A nod to the label’s name, Brust says the ideal artist roster will include genres beyond country, though they haven’t signed additional artists just yet. The hard lessons LOCASH has learned along the way as artists and songwriters influence the business model for the new label.
L-R: PETER STRICKLAND, GENERAL MANAGER, BMG; KATIE KERKHOVER, VICE PRESIDENT, A&R, BMG; SKIP BISHOP, STUDIO2BEE ENTERTAINMENT; PRESTON BRUST, LOCASH;
CHRIS LUCAS, LOCASH; JON LOBA, PRESIDENT, FRONTLINE RECORDINGS, NORTH AMERICA, BMG; QUINN BAUDUCCO, SENIOR MANAGER, BUSINESS & LEGAL AFFAIRS, BMG; JOJAMIE HAHR, EVP, RECORDED MUSIC, BMG NASHVILLE
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“The main thing that we’ve seen on some bigger labels is that sometimes some artists would be to the side because another artist was hot at that moment,” Brust says. “We’ve always talked about that and how it’s not fair, because there is so much talent in this city.”
Galaxy Label Group will also serve as home to LOCASH’s new music; BMG Nashville’s Wheelhouse imprint had previously released their albums. The duo has been in the studio working on their upcoming album, with their first single, “Hometown Home,” expected to release in the spring.
“This song just stepped into the roots of what Locash is about,” Lucas says. “It’s about hometown love and being the guy who says, ‘We could go anywhere in the world and start a new life together, but if you want to stay here in our hometown, that’s good with me too, because I just want to be with you.’ It’s one of those messages that is relatable and hits you in the heart.”
Beyond signing artists, Galaxy Label Group aims to aid songwriters. The duo says Galaxy Label Group will give songwriters a percentage of the master royalties (out of the label’s share) on every recording for the label, including Locash’s upcoming album. The commitment could mean a boost for songwriters, whose incomes have seen significant, negative impact in the steaming era. When physical albums sold regularly, songwriters would be paid on each album sold, earning a solid income regardless of whether their song was picked as a radio single. But with streams comprising the bulk of music consumption, songwriters are increasingly dependent on radio hits, losing out on the valuable income avenue physical records once provided.
The commitment follows in the footsteps of some smaller indie labels such as Facet Records and Good Boy Records, as well as individual artists such as Kip Moore, who in 2017 pledged an annual bonus for songwriters.
“We want to be fair,” Lucas says. “It’s one of those things where if we sit down and before the album comes out, we say, ‘This [percentage] seems fair.’ We could get down the road and if the single just goes into another realm, who knows? We could change a percentage at that point.”
Ultimately, Brust says, they hope to “create new revenue streams in this the industry.” He adds, “Nashville is built on the song. The best songwriters in the world—I would put us up against anyone. Nashville has it, period. There’s no one better than that. We want songwriters to have a fair chance. If someone’s getting 700 million streams and the songwriter’s barely seeing a dime, that’s not fair. We want to get a part of this ahead of the game and get a fair percentage for them. That’s what we’re most excited about right now—giving back to the community that has been there for us.”
Chris Young has joined the artists roster at Coran Capshaw’s Red Light Management, the company tells Billboard. At Red Light, Kailyn Finnegan will serve as Young’s manager. Finnegan worked with Young at his previous management home, The AMG. Prior to The AMG, Finnegan worked at Live Nation. “I’m excited to work with her and everybody […]
John Fogerty is continuing to speak out about the mysterious cancelation of his performance at this year’s Country Fest Queensland in Australia.
Chatting with Billboard on Wednesday (Feb. 28), the Creedence Clearwater Revival founder says that he’s still “in total shock” over the festival’s Tuesday (Feb. 27) announcement that his performance was canceled due to “unforeseen circumstances.”
“I’m bewildered,” he says, sounding jovial but confused. “I still remain able and ready and willing to do this show. I take the commitment of playing for the fans very seriously. Throughout my career, practically my whole life, there’s hardly ever been a cancelation.”
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The performance, which had been scheduled for the weekend of March 30, would have marked Fogerty’s first show in Australia in more than a decade. According to the singer and his rep, Country Fest Queensland alerted his agent Friday (Feb. 23) that he’d been removed from the lineup without explanation, but continued to sell tickets with his name attached to the event for four days afterward, up until announcing the the cancellation of his performance to the public on Tuesday. (Country Fest Queensland did, however, offer refund options to ticketholders no longer interested in attending in light of Fogerty’s “non-appearance.”)
Fogerty and his team maintain that they have not been made aware of any reason for the sudden change. Billboard has reached out to Country Fest Queensland for comment.
“I really don’t know a lot,” Fogerty tells Billboard. “I was happy to be coming down to Australia to play. It sounded like a really fun event.”
Soon after Country Fest announced that Fogerty was no longer part of the billing, the “Old Man Down The Road” singer posted a statement on Instagram. “I was ready to celebrate with you all for my one and only show this year in Australia when the Country Fest Queensland blindsided me yesterday by canceling my appearance,” it read.
“It was posted that I would not be appearing due to unforeseen circumstances,” his statement continued. “Well, I can tell you, my friends, I was not the reason for the ‘unforeseen circumstances.’”
Country Fest has since shared a follow-up statement claiming that negotiations with Fogerty’s team “did not reach a final outcome” and ceased on Friday (Feb. 23). “The matter is now subject to court proceedings in the Supreme Court of Queensland,” it continued, adding that the festival does not “intend to comment further” until the case is heard mid March.
However, neither Fogerty nor his rep know of any details regarding the “court proceedings” mentioned by Country Fest Queensland, they tell Billboard. They also expressed confusion over the festival’s assertion that negotiations had never been finalized; according to Fogerty, his contract was signed and fully agreed upon in mid-January.
“My wife Julie and I and our people … we started making all the usual preparations to arrive at the showplace on the show date and, you know, do my show,” he tells Billboard. “Everything was normal as far as I knew.”
What’s most important to Fogerty now is that his Aussie fans know how much he wants to perform for them. On Tuesday night, he posted a video dedicated directly to them, in which he plays an acoustic rendition of CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising.”
“It’s a big disappointment what’s going on right now,” he says in the clip before diving into the song, sitting in a chair with his golden retriever lying at his feet. “A shock, actually. Sometimes things get complicated, beyond my grasp anyway.”
“I’d certainly never cancel for convenience, or for [the sake of being] – what do you call those – a diva,” he tells Billboard. “There were some people that were going to travel quite a distance. I just feel really bad about it. As far as I’m concerned, the fans come first.”