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FanDuel’s Kentucky Derby Party is returning to Louisville this year with Shaboozey headlining the event, Billboard can exclusively reveal. The exclusive, invite-only event is set to take place May 2 at Paristown Arts and Entertainment District in Louisville, Kentucky. “I’m hyped to be part of the Derby this year,” Shaboozey said in a statement. “It’s […]
A year ago, Dasha seemingly came out of nowhere riding an almost Western melody atop a stomp-clap groove with “Austin (Boots Stop Workin’),” earning a top five country single, platinum certification and several awards nominations as a new artist.
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All great. But what comes next? No one understood that question better than she did.
“My team was kind of breathing down my throat being like, ‘Dash, we need a follow-up. We need a follow-up,’ ” she remembers. “I was stressing out because, holy s–t. How do you follow up your first hit single?”
An artist’s sophomore single has some built-in challenges. In most instances, it needs to have some elements that help the listener connect both songs in their mind, creating a foundational sonic brand. But if it’s too close to the first hit, it makes the act seem a bit limited. Fortunately, the sophomore single’s creative tightrope is not a secret.
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“That’s my main thing in the room with an artist like that,” says songwriter Ashley Gorley (“I Am Not Okay,” “Love Somebody”). “I want to help her get that follow-up hit, show some different colors, but also kind of be a cousin to the song that drew everybody into your music.”
Gorley had that in mind when he met Dasha for the first time on May 8, 2024, as he hosted a writing session that included Ben Johnson (“Truck Bed,” “Liar”) at his Nashville-area home. Dasha was aware of Gorley’s record-setting reputation as a songwriter, but she wasn’t intimidated. Instead, she was intent on impressing him. Respect was OK; deference was not.
“I feel like what makes an artist’s music special is really relying on their taste and what they find appealing about music and words and cadences and melodies,” she says. “I was just like, ‘I’m really going to lean on Ashley Gorley and Ben Johnson. But I’m also going to really pull the artist card because I need this to feel like me or else it’s not going to do well.’”
Early in the process, Dasha handed Gorley her cellphone and told him to pick an idea from her titles list.“I already liked all of them,” she reasons. “Obviously. I wrote them down.”
“Not at This Party” jumped out at him. Gorley was unaware that the phrase was derived from her early experiences as an artist in the national spotlight. Just weeks prior, she had reluctantly gone to a gathering when she wasn’t feeling particularly social. Her budding fame made her interesting to a few people who didn’t read her mood well.
“So many people trying to small-talk me,” she notes. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’m just not at this party. I’m so mentally checked out.’ And then I was like, ‘That is such a cool song idea.’ And so I take my phone out and I write the title down.”
Once Gorley settled on that title, Dasha specifically envisioned a banjo at the center of the track, and Johnson had just what she needed.
“I came up with that banjo riff pretty quickly,” he says. “I definitely was conscious of trying to make something that fit in her world — and obviously, you know, ‘Austin’ was one of the first songs to really do the stomp-clap thing. My background is so much in bluegrass, and bluegrass is all about that choppy kind of backbeat thing with the mandolin. But in this instance, you kind of replace the mandolin with the claps.”
The claps and stomps were authentically Dasha. “I held my iPhone up and had her stomp and clap into my iPhone,” Johnson recalls. “Most of the stomps and claps on the record are all from that day, just her stomping and clapping in the room.”
They fashioned “Party” in chronological order, placing the female protagonist in the bathroom at a club, staring into the mirror and attempting to hype herself into a good time. Dasha led the melodic charge with short phrases that captured the character’s hesitance.
“It seemed like you’re hyperventilating in the bathroom,” she says. “You’re reminding yourself how to small-talk, how to be normal at a party.”
By the chorus, the melody explodes as the character takes over the dancefloor, publicly exuding a good time while she flashes back internally to an intimate moment in a car with a guy who has backed away from her. The chorus used a repetitive melodic phrase for the first three lines before breaking into a couple of longer, anthemic lines, then returning to the primary theme.
In all, they invested about 90 minutes into writing “Not at This Party,” then another 90 minutes into cutting a demo that used the stomp-clap percussive backbone, the banjo, guitar, plus a fiddle part that Johnson’s wife, Lauren Conklin, remotely whipped up. Dasha knocked out her vocal in just two takes with a handheld SM7 mic. That performance became the centerpiece of the final recording.
“If I had time to overthink it, I might have sung it differently and it wouldn’t have hit as hard,” Dasha says. “I’m so grateful that that happened the way it happened.”
Johnson enlisted Johnny Reno to co-produce, with both of them playing additional instruments on top of the existing track. They also brought in drummer Aaron Sterling and multi-instrumentalist Jonny Fung, blending acoustic melodic pieces with disco-like percussion.
“I remember them making little tweaks for months to get this thing just to be perfect,” Gorley says.Johnson and Reno passed the track between them, each working separately, adding and subtracting small pieces. Reno piled more than 40 clap tracks onto the production, though the volume of parts involved isn’t necessarily evident in the final cut.
“That is an interesting thing about production,” Reno says. “If you have something not doing a lot, then you can fit a lot of things that aren’t doing a lot. But if you have one thing that’s doing a lot, it’s kind of hard to fit things around it.”
One unique thing Reno fit into it is a short sound around the 1:35 mark that sounds like a car screeching to a halt. “That’s just a big ‘hey’ sample,” Reno says. “It’s just a bunch of yelling, ‘Hey!’”
When “Not at This Party” became the choice for a single, a line about “s–tty beer” became a problem. Dasha discussed it with syndicated personality B-Dub when she took part in a Feb. 21 panel at Country Radio Seminar. He looked on ChatGPT for a synonym, and the best option was “pity beer.” She sang it into her phone in a closet at the host hotel, then emailed it to Johnson for the radio edit. Warner shipped it to broadcasters via PlayMPE on March 10.
“It’s similar enough to ‘Austin,’ ” she says. “It lives in the same world, but it’s so different. It adds this new sonic flavor to my repertoire, and it just felt like the biggest, and the realest, and the most eye-catching song out of this new album cycle.”
Britton Moore stepped into unfamiliar territory during The Voice Season 27 Knockouts — and came out with a win.
The 21-year-old Texan, known for his pop-leaning vocals, embraced his country roots on Monday’s (April 7) episode with a soaring, heartfelt rendition of Zac Brown Band’s “Free,” drawing major praise from all four coaches.
Moore, who originally turned four chairs in the Blind Auditions with Coldplay’s “Yellow,” delivered a masterclass in control and tone, earning him the Knockout win over teammate Ari Camille.
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“There’s this youthful beauty and this clear gorgeous tone,” said coach Michael Bublé following Moore’s performance. John Legend added, “It was like pitch-perfect, but also you made some really great stylistic choices.”
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Coach Kelsea Ballerini was so impressed with his precision that she joked, “Every note is so crisp and perfect, it’s almost like you’re self-auto-tuned.” Legend jumped in with a laugh, calling Moore “God-o-tuned.”
Coach Adam Levine, who had to make the final call between Moore and Camille, didn’t hold back in his praise. “You just sing the living crap out of everything you sing,” he told Moore, ultimately declaring him the winner of the round.
In a feel-good twist, John Legend used his only steal of the round to keep Camille in the competition, bringing her back to his team for the Playoffs.
Moore’s Knockout performance marked his first time singing country on the show, despite growing up in Texas with a strong appreciation for the genre. His version of “Free,” originally released on The Foundation in 2008 by Zac Brown Band, stayed true to the original’s spirit while infusing his smooth vocals and gentle grit.
The young artist has impressed week after week this season. During the Battles, he delivered a haunting version of Radiohead’s “Creep,” with Bublé exclaiming, “You hit that top note!” and Legend calling his vocal power “stunning.”
Alan Jackson recently shared a sweet moment with his wife Denise during his performance in Texas.
On Saturday, April 5, the Country Music Hall of Fame singer-songwriter, 66, performed a headlining show at the Two Step Inn. During his performance of “Remember When,” he invited his wife Denise to the stage to dance with him. Denise’s birthday was on April 6 and the couple has been married for more than 45 years.
The two shared a sweet slow dance and a kiss while Jackson’s band continued to play an instrumental version of the song, before Jackson returned to the microphone to continue singing the song.
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“Remember When,” which was a two-week Billboard Country Airplay chart No. 1 for Jackson in 2004, revisits the triumphs and challenges of the couple’s love story.
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They were high school sweethearts in Newnan, Georgia. They wed in 1979 and Denise played a key role in helping Jackson get discovered as an artist. Denise began working as a flight attendant. At one point she saw Glen Campbell in the Atlanta airport and approached Campbell to tell him her husband was an aspiring singer-songwriter. According to Denise Jackson’s 2007 book It’s All About Him, Campbell gave her the business card for music executive Marty Gamblin, who ran Campbell’s music publishing company at the time. According to the book, Gamblin became an early supporter in Jackson’s career.
The couple has three daughters: Mattie Denise (born in 1990, the same year Jackson released his debut album Here in the Real World), Alexandra Jane (1993) and Dani Grace (1997).
Other artists who performed at the Two Step Inn festival on April 5-6 included Miranda Lambert, Sturgill Simpson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Treaty Oak Revival, Flatland Calvalry and more.
Jackson is also on his Last Call: One More for the Road Tour, which launched in April and is set to conclude in May. Jackson hasn’t called the trek a farewell tour, though an announcement for the tour last year noted the tour will mark “the last time he’ll ever perform his more-than-30 years of hits in that city and surrounding areas.”
“Cozy” hitmaker Braxton Keith has been on the road promoting his debut EP, Blue, and during a recent tour stop, he brought the concert to a halt to call out some concertgoers for throwing a barrage of beer cans at the stage.
While performing his song “Honky Tonk City” at a show in Gilmer, Texas, he continually dodged beer cans being thrown onstage, before finally stopping the show to address the crowd. “Hey listen up, pause this s–t,” he said, signaling to his band to stop playing. “I didn’t come here to get beer cans thrown at me, alright? This isn’t a godd–n Gavin Adcock concert, okay?” he added, referencing his fellow country musician’s audiences.
Keith continued, admonishing his crowd and reminding them to be respectful not only to him, but to their fellow concertgoers. “Don’t be throwin’ f–kin’ beers out here,” he said. “These people at the front are gettin’ wet up here and it’s gonna piss them off and it’s gonna piss me off.”
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He also noted the presence of a younger concertgoer in the audience, in an attempt to get the crowd to curb their can-tossing behavior. “This little girl right here’s never been to a country concert before, and it’s her first d–n time, okay? We’re gonna have a good show for her, okay?” he said, before concluding that “we’re comin’ here to listen to country music” and continuing with his song “Honky Tonk City.”
Keith shared a video clip of the moment on TikTok, and doubled down on his on-stage comments in the caption. “This is unacceptable behavior for any concert including my brother @GavinAdcockMusic,” he wrote. “Nobody likes beer and trash getting thrown at them. I love live music and when given the opportunity to speak up about unruliness in the concert community, I will protect my audience, band, crew, equipment, and most importantly, the integrity of live performance experiences.”
Adcock offered his own take on the situation, writing a comment admonishing Keith for bringing his name up on Country Central’s Instagram post about the incident. “Maybe he should learn how to handle HIS fans without bringing someone else into it,” he wrote. “I do it every night without bringing anybody else up. Welcome to the big leagues kid.”
Keith’s next show is April 11 at the Galveston County Fair and Rodeo in Hitchcock, Texas.
Duos lead this week’s crop of new music. Brothers Osborne returns with a hard-driving, barroom-ready new track, while another brother duo, Band Reeves, melds country and pop with a faith-leaning message. Duo the Band Loula brings a haunting song of shattering norms in favor of one’s own freedom and redemption. Bluegrass group Sister Sadie opens up about bringing an end to generational trauma with its devastatingly vulnerable new release, while Cody Jinks returns with a blistering indictment against devious people.
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Check out all of these and more in Billboard‘s roundup of the best country, bluegrass and/or Americana songs of the week below.
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Brothers Osborne, “Finish This Drink”
Sibling duo Brothers Osborne return with their first new music since its EP Break Mine, and with the hard-charging “Finish This Drink,” the bros are determined to keep the good times happening all the way ’til last call — and likely beyond. Written by TJ Osborne and Alysa Vanderheym, with production from TJ and John Osborne, the song is a sonic slab of vibrant, rock-tilted country, spurred by John’s blazing guitar work and TJ’s booming vocal.
Sister Sadie, “Let the Circle Be Broken”
This all-women bluegrass group serves up a haunting yet hopeful message about finding the courage to sever cycles of generational anguish, to halt the tide of trauma. “It didn’t start with me but this is where it stops,” sings Sister Sadie member Deanie Richardson, who wrote this deeply resonant song with Erin Enderlin and Dani Flowers. Fiddle plays an inspirational melody, while the members of Sister Sadie join their voices in haunting harmony. Essential listening from one of bluegrass music’s most-lauded groups.
The Band Loula, “Running Off the Angels”
This Georgia duo, featuring Malachi Mills and Logan Simmons, blend sabulous, soulful vocals with a story of finding grace and redemption far away from Sunday morning church pews. They first gave a preview of the song last year, but with its full-fledged release, fusions of organ, bass, fiddle and dobro heighten the dramatic, southern gothic feel. An immensely promising release from this duo.
Cody Jinks, “Snake Bit”
The longtime Texas stalwart Jinks follows his recent releases “Put the Whiskey Down” and “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll)” with this new track, which finds him boldly calling out the deception of “snakes in the grass” in his life (a concurrent Instagram post from Jinks stated that the song was aimed at unscrupulous music industry types). The song brims with defiance, melded with Jinks’s classic country-rock instrumentation and the burly, world-weary vocal that has become his calling card.
Band Reeves, “Outrun You”
This brother duo blends country, pop and CCM on its debut single for this airy track with a heartfelt message, chronicling band member Jeramy Reeves’s own faith journey. The song’s polished, twangy vibe, closeknit sibling harmonies give it a resonant, relatable feel, while still keeping the song’s hopeful message at the fore. Written by Band Reeves’ Jeramy and Cody Reeves, along with co-writer and producer Jeff Pardo, this is a promising introduction to this new talent.
When the Country Music Association (CMA) announced the Country Music Hall of Fame inductees for 2025 on March 25, event host Vince Gill recalled a moment in the 1990s when producer Tony Brown (George Strait, Reba McEntire) spotted one of his signature songs.
“He’s the one, single-handedly, that talked me into recording ‘Go Rest High on That Mountain,’ ” Gill recalled. “I was not going to record it. It was too personal. It was a little too hard for me to sing. And he heard it, he said, ‘You have to record that song.’ ”
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“Go Rest High” was unconventional as a single. Instead of positive and uptempo, it was slow and reverent; it lasted more than four minutes; and it drew on the deaths of Gill’s brother and Keith Whitley for its memorial character. It peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard country singles chart, breaking Gill’s string of a dozen top five titles. But “Go Rest High” won best country song at the Grammy Awards and song of the year at the CMA Awards, and the hundreds of times Gill has sung it publicly include the funerals for Ralph Stanley, Little Jimmy Dickens and George Jones.
Brown, Gill concluded, “couldn’t have been more right” when he insisted on Gill recording it.
That story pointed to one of the secondary effects of the Hall of Fame. Officially, the inductions recognize people who made a huge impact on country. The music doesn’t exist without them. But those same people don’t rise to legendary levels without the music, either. Or, more specifically, without the songs. With few exceptions, nearly every plaque in the building’s Rotunda — where the announcement was held — can be quickly associated with a signature song. Or two. Or three or five.
Tammy Wynette? “Stand by Your Man.” Alabama? “Mountain Music.” Glen Campbell? “Wichita Lineman,” “Gentle on My Mind,” “Rhinestone Cowboy.” Charley Pride? “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.” Loretta Lynn? “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough.”
“Would we really know even Johnny Cash, if not for the songs?” asks MCA Music Publishing Nashville chairman/CEO Troy Tomlinson. “I can’t imagine we would, right? It’s always the song.”
That reminder was easy to see during the Hall of Fame announcement. Brown has guided a number of signature songs during nearly 50 years as a producer: Brooks & Dunn‘s “Believe,” David Lee Murphy‘s “Dust on the Bottle,” Reba McEntire‘s “Fancy,” George Strait‘s “Blue Clear Sky,” Wynonna‘s “No One Else on Earth” and Steve Earle‘s “Guitar Town,” for example.
But Brown’s fellow 2025 inductees reinforce that thought. Kenny Chesney has built his career on songs such as “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems,” “I Go Back” and “Don’t Blink,” touching on beach life, nostalgia and life lessons as he has packed stadiums across the country for two decades.
“I just wanted to record and write songs that reflected the lives of a lot of people that came to our shows,” Chesney said. “I just wanted to spread as much positive energy and love as I possibly could.”
Fellow inductee June Carter Cash, meanwhile, was most closely associated on the chart with “Jackson,” a rollicking duet with Johnny, and with “Ring of Fire,” a classic she wrote about the heat she felt for the Man in Black. But even before she married him, June — as a second-generation descendent of the original Carter Family — was already associated with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” the song that provides the theme for the Hall’s Rotunda.
“That song has ancient origins,” John Carter Cash acknowledged during the March 25 press conference. “But there’s one person who sang that song more than anybody else in her lifetime — or anyone else’s lifetime, for that matter — and that was my mother, June Carter.”
June and Chesney both can trace at least a portion of their success to their connections with two of the oldest publishing houses affiliated with country music. A.P. Carterbuilt the family’s catalog by collecting songs from the mountains that would form the backbone of its repertoire. “Wildwood Flower,” “Keep on the Sunny Side” and “Wabash Cannonball” became some of the earliest — and most enduring — titles associated with the genre. The group’s producer, Ralph Peer, administered the copyrights through his publishing company, now known as peer music, with the royalties he generated setting a template for Nashville’s song-centric music business. The Carters’ songs carry influence not only in country, but also in folk and Americana.
“They are the canon of American music, the foundation,” John said.
Chesney signed his first songwriting contract with Acuff-Rose, the first country publishing firm established in Nashville. Formed by Hall of Famers Roy Acuff and songwriter Fred Rose (“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Kaw-Liga”), the company published songs by the likes of Hank Williams, Don Gibson, Roy Orbison and Boudleaux and Felice Bryant (“Bye Bye Love,” “Rocky Top”).
Tomlinson, who was employed at Acuff-Rose in the early 1990s, believed strongly in Chesney’s talents as a writer, unaware of the onstage reputation that he would eventually build.
“The reason I signed him was the songs,” he recalls. “I was not thinking ‘artist,’ and I’m not sure to what degree he was.”
Writing daily for a company with the legacy of Acuff-Rose helped shape Chesney’s song sense. He routinely frustrated Tomlinson when he would cut seven or eight of his own titles for an album, then drop them in favor of songs from other writers. But through his training, Chesney could identify the good stuff and ended up building long-term success by routinely attracting some of Nashville’s best material.
“If you don’t have a great song,” Brown says, “you don’t have shit.”
Once Chesney, Brown and June have their plaques installed, they’ll join an entire room of people who similarly built their reputations on songs with lasting value. The Nashville Songwriters Association International likes to say that “It all begins with a song,” and the inductees already there attest to that with their signature melodies.
Kris Kristofferson? “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Dolly Parton? “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” “I Will Always Love You.” Merle Haggard? “Mama Tried,” “Okie From Muskogee.” Willie Nelson? “On the Road Again,” “Crazy.”
As much as the Hall of Fame honors the people, it really recognizes a body of work that reflects the working-class audience who form its consumer base.
“That’s what creates the history,” Gill says. “The artists sing them, but we’re going to pass on and go away. The songs are what’s going to live forever.”
On Kelsea Ballerini‘s most recent album, Patterns, she explored and considered various behavior patterns in her life, with the music on the project detailing her journey in adjusting or breaking those patterns when needed.
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In an interview with People, Ballerini spoke up about another pattern in her life that needed breaking- -namely, her relationship with social media. In a recent concert, she was open in telling fans that she would still regularly read comments that were posted about her online, but she’s had to make changes in how she approaches certain online platforms.
“I got rid of Twitter a long time ago. That was helpful. Twitter kicked my ass,” Ballerini told the outlet. “I discovered Reddit. I went through a very toxic phase with that, but it was when my life was a bit chaotic. Then I was like, ‘We need to have some boundaries.’ So that’s no longer.”
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These days, she says she primarily gravitates toward Instagram and TikTok. “Even that feels like too much, but I’m not sure how to not because I’m a people pleaser, and I like the feedback,” she noted. “I think my intention is because I like feedback and I like to edit set lists, or we’re tweaking things on the tour because I’m seeing stuff on TikTok. But yeah, I’m a girl. I’m sensitive. I’m an artist. If I see a mean comment, it affects me.”
Ballerini has been transparent about the benefits of therapy, and has said working with a therapist helped her work toward overcoming her tendency to be a people-pleaser. “My therapist told me a while ago, ‘Kelsea, you need to care more about less,’” Ballerini said, adding that she’s less emotionally impacted by mean-spirited online comments than she used to be. “Although I still care about that feedback, I don’t give it the gravity that I used to.”
She says doing the hard work to sustain emotional and mental health also involves accepting both the positive and not-so-positive aspects of oneself.
“I’m very aware of my flaws. I have a relationship with them, and I do the work to keep growing up and growing out of certain things,” she said. “But in the same breath, I fully accept and celebrate myself right now. I don’t think I’ve ever been truly able to before because I had to go through life. You have to learn yourself before you love yourself — and I had learning to do.”
That personal growth has also led to career growth, with Patterns becoming her first No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart last year, while her Kelsea Ballerini Live on Tour 2025 tour has been selling out arenas across the country. She also just notched her first ACM entertainer of the year nomination ahead of the upcoming Academy of Country Music Awards on May 8.
Over two decades ago, Texas native Jessica Simpson was known for her pristine, sleek pop image — as the vocal purveyor of massive pop hits like “I Wanna Love You Forever,” “I Think I’m in Love With You” and “With You,” but also for her work as a fashion industry titan and a reality television star.
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But her new music video, “Blame Me,” off her March 21-released, five-song EP Nashville Canyon: Pt. 1, showcases Simpson in a laid-back, creative mode, working with a cavalcade of writers and musicians to bring the song to life. She wrote “Blame Me” with Lucie Silvas, Brothers Osborne’s John Osborne, Teresa LaBarbera, and writer-producer JD McPherson (who recently toured with Alison Krauss and Robert Plant).
“Being in the studio, what you see with ‘Blame Me’ is really the process of me becoming the artist I’ve always wanted to be,” Simpson tells Billboard.
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Nashville Canyon: Part 1 marks Simpson’s first new music in 15 years — and a project where she explores the nuances of healing after heartbreak, fusing her own written lyrics with elements of rockabilly and Americana. Following a split from husband Eric Johnson, she decamped to Nashville in late 2023, and found solace and strength through songwriting — chasing emotional connection rather than simply widespread audience consumption.
“We gave them a playlist of songs with artists like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sierra Ferrell, Fred McDowell, and we just said, ‘Anything you want off the playlist, let’s go with that vibe.’ Don’t say the word ‘single,’ don’t say the word ‘hit,’ we’re traumatized by the word ‘smash,’” Simpson said.
Many of the songs filling the EP are drawn from a notebook of what Simpson calls “Jessica’s Golden Nuggets”: an assortment of quotes, ideas and musings Simpson has jotted down throughout her days, which served as inspirations for the songs on the new project. “I’ve always journaled. If I don’t journal for a few months, I know there’s something I’m not wanting to confront, emotionally. So, I went to Nashville and was like, ‘Let the confrontation begin,’” Simpson says.
In “Blame Me,” knowing her own story and her own worth, she dares an ex-lover to go ahead with trash talking her to those around them and laying the responsibility for the fizzled relationship at her feet.
“I think it’s such a powerful song. I think it’s a strong heartbreak anthem that we’re all strong enough to go through whatever hand gets dealt and we can find power in the pain of things,” she says.
Simpson says more music is on the way, with part two of the project in the works. “We’re finishing that up in the next couple of weeks, which is exciting,” she says.
Simpson spoke with Billboard about the video for “Blame Me,” creating her new project in Music City and rediscovering herself as an artist.
The video for “Blame Me” features you and the musicians, your fellow creators, all in the studio together. Why was that so important for you to showcase?
When I walked into the studio with all the musicians, at first I thought I was going to throw up in my mouth. I was so nervous, but then it was just so welcoming and everybody just looked to me for direction, which I’m not used to as an artist. You would think I’d be used to that, but I’m so used to somebody else directing me.
To have other musicians that do this every day of their lives for all kinds of artists looking at me and wanting to really understand where I was at lyrically and understanding me as an artist, this just feels so authentically me. And it was important to show the process in such a vulnerable song. We have to feel to heal. It was the last song we wrote for EP One. We didn’t have a ballad and I really wanted to have one.
You wrote “Blame Me” with a few co-writers, including Lucie Silvas and Brothers Osborne’s John Osborne. What was that like?
We also did “Leave” on the EP with John and Lucie. They are incredible, and John — what a guitar player. He’s so incredible, I was just blown away.
You named the EP Nashville Canyon. Why was Nashville the right place for you to record this project?
I love Nashville so much because lyrically, it’s such a place where you can say anything and you can open up about anything without judgment, and you are just automatically connected to the other songwriters. It’s truly like therapy sitting in front of a therapist, yet nobody’s a therapist. It depends on what kind you go to. They can ask you questions that make you discover. And I feel like the way that writers do that, they talk you through things as well. They offer advice. A lot of people have gone through the same things and they’re so used to being so open.
You released Nashville Canyon independently. How has that been different?
I’m not with the record label. I don’t have money behind me. Everything you’re seeing is just my own change that I have. I’m not paying for radio. I do feel like a new artist all over again. But this time I have the reins. Early on [in her career], I never met the musicians behind any of my music, and I never even knew the songwriters. So, until I started writing with people… the first song that I got to write was actually my first huge song [2003’s “With You”]. I realized early on that people respond to who I am as a person, my work — they know when it’s real. They know when it’s authentic. I think I’ve taken such a long break that people are now discovering me all over again.
One of the last albums you released was the country album Do You Know. Last month, you played your first live show in 15 years, at SXSW, and Nashville Canyon: Pt. 1 went to No. 1 on iTunes’ country albums chart. How has that felt?
It was shocking that it went to number one on country. I was like, “Wait, I had a number one country album [in 2008 with Do You Know] and I was dropped that week, and I never understood it.” I just thought people didn’t want me singing country. [With Nashville Canyon: Pt. 1] I wanted it to be genreless. When you’re not focused on radio and you’re not focused on that type of thing, the music really can land wherever the people put it.
I was dropped [from her former label] in 2007, 2008. I had a record deal since I was 14 years old. It’s losing a part of yourself that you thought made you who you were. I didn’t really have a deep understanding of it until a bit later. But they also didn’t know that I was such a different artist than they were trying to push and I never got that freedom of discovery. I did another project, a Christmas project [2010’s Happy Christmas], but that was the last thing I’d ever done. My kids [Maxwell (12), Ace (11), and Birdie (5)] have never seen me perform still. I did the Rockefeller Tree lighting and the Macy’s Day Parade, but they have never seen me perform, so when they do, it’ll be such a beautiful moment for me.
What do you hope people take away from this record?
I wanted to give people a piece of me, and that is what art is: they watch it and they apply it to their own lives, and they know that I’m just like they are. Just like reality TV was important for people to take me off of a pedestal and not just be an unapproachable, pretty singer. It was important to show my personality so people knew that there’s some things in life I take seriously and there’s some things that I don’t. I definitely say everything that comes into my mind out loud. I have no filter and I don’t have a filter when it comes to music.
What is ahead for EP two?
We just recorded at a different place called The Bomb Shelter, which had different acoustics and vibes for EP two, but the sounds will be cohesive. We have steel guitar on there, but not steel guitar in how you would think country… it’s more like how Tom Petty or Neil Young would use a steel guitar player.
An annual tradition on American Idol continues on Monday (April 7) – Hollywood Week, an integral part of the process of finding a winner, which has been part of the series since season 1 in 2002. But this year’s Hollywood Week is different from any previous edition, with the addition of Idol’s first artist-in-residence, Jelly Roll.
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“Hollywood Week is even more chaotic than what you see on TV. The episodes are pretty chaotic, but the camera can’t catch all of the chaos,” Jelly Roll tells Billboard during a sit-down interview. “I love it because it reminds me of the music business. It’s real. They’re not hazing these kids. This is stuff that happens in our business all the time. I can’t wait for the world to see this – the show brings me in when the kids are picking their head-to-head songs, so I am in the trenches with these babies. I watch them pick their songs. I give them advice and I catch them picking their partners. Some of them probably picked the wrong partner,” he shares.
“There was one group of singers who didn’t know how to communicate with each other, and I said, ‘This is the biggest decision you’re going to make because this is the last time the judges decide who goes forward. I’m going to give y’all my advice right now. Take it or leave it and I won’t be offended, but I think at this point your best bet is to pick a song that you feel safe doing together, not where one has to carry the other.’
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“Another group picked a song that the girl knew really well, and the guy didn’t know, and they thought it was the best for them. I said, ‘At this point, if y’all aren’t going to change the song, then there’s going to be a point where you’re going to have to carry this song,’ and that’s exactly how it shook out. She ended up having to carry the song and then, as happens in American Idol, there’s a plot twist, but I can’t give that away.”
Season 23 is not the first time the producers have shaken up the Hollywood Week format. “We refresh it here and there, year-to-year,” executive producer and showrunner Megan Michaels Wolflick explains over breakfast with Billboard. “The auditions are the auditions. The live shows are the live shows. Hollywood Week is the round that has the most flexibility, but I do think that it’s really important to keep the integrity of the challenges the same as far as actually giving them real experiences that they might have in the industry, like staying up all night, collaborating with someone you’ve never met before, learning a new song. Some years you have duets or groups. With Carrie Underwood coming back, it was important for me to maintain some of the things that she had experienced in her season.”
And what did Underwood think of that? “Hollywood Week for her was the biggest eye-opening experience,” says Wolflick. “She remembers so much about all of it and her group round with Vonzell Solomon singing ‘Please Mr. Postman’ and all the little things, like forgetting her words in the first round. She sang ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ by Candi Staton. She didn’t really know that song. It was a different era then with no original music and you couldn’t play guitar. So she’s definitely seen the evolution. It was nostalgic, yet she was still excited about it.”
Wolflick elaborated on adding Jelly Roll to the mix, following his appearance on the season 21 finale and his mentorship during the Hawaii shows in season 22. “He was so great last year. He sat with the panel and he brought so much charisma and excitement. When the show aired the feedback was very positive and we and ABC were eager to do something with him. I’m sure every other show, like The Voice, were asking him too. He’s very hot. He loves American Idol. He told me, ‘This is one of the biggest things to ever happen to my career.’ He literally watched every single tape. He watched every single bio. He took the kids off to the side before going on camera and made them feel comfortable. I’ve never experienced mentoring on this level. I think carving out his role on the live shows is going to be interesting, too.”
In a separate interview, Jelly Roll confirmed his feelings about the show. “I love Idol. I’ve been an Idol fan my whole life. Who doesn’t love watching a kid’s dream come true on national TV? That’s what we get to see. To come back this year and have a full-time position with the cast is really great.”
Expanding on his role on Idol this season, Jelly Roll’s enthusiasm was apparent. “It’s fun. I’m glad we’re talking about this, because I look at my role probably different than anybody else does. I think I am the bridge from these young artists to the people’s living room. I am a bridge between them and the judges. I’m a constant mentor and source of advice, but more than anything, my job is to try to make these kids feel as good as I know they sound.”
Wolflick explained why this new role was created for Jelly Roll. “The word mentor seemed a little cliché and I wanted something with some weight. An artist-in-residence matches the gravitas that he has. He’s there with us all season. Hopefully he’s here for the long haul. He’s invested above and beyond what we would really expect of him.”