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Shania Twain may be an indisputable country queen, but what she really wants to do is rock. The “Giddy Up!” singer lived out her ultimate rock and roll fantasy on Saturday (Oct. 7) when she hopped up on stage with the Foo Fighters at the Austin City Limits Festival to help the band rip through […]
Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Oct. 14), rising 3-1, notching a 16th nonconsecutive and total week atop the list. It earned 74,500 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 5 (up 2%), according to Luminate.
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One Thing at a Time continues to have the most weeks at No. 1 among all albums since Adele’s 21 logged 24 nonconsecutive weeks atop the list in 2011-12.
One Thing at a Time debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated March 18 and spent it first 12 weeks atop the list. It stepped aside for two weeks, and then returned for another three weeks in a row at No. 1 (June 24-July 8-dated charts). Now in its 31st week on the chart, the album has yet to depart the top four.
Also in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200, Ed Sheeran collects his seventh top 10-charting effort — all of which have reached the top five — as his latest release Autumn Variations debuts at No. 4. It’s his second top five debut of 2023, following – (Subtract) in May.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Oct. 14, 2023-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Oct. 10. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of One Thing at a Time’s 74,500 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Oct. 5, SEA units comprise 71,500 (equaling 97.56 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 36 songs), album sales comprise 2,000, and TEA units comprise 1,000.
One Thing at a Time’s 74,500-unit sum is the smallest total for a No. 1 album in nearly a year-and-a-half, since Pusha T’s It’s Almost Dry debuted atop the chart dated May 7, 2022, with 55,000 units.
Rod Wave’s Nostalgia falls to No. 2 in its third week on the chart (71,000 equivalent album units; down 20%), after spending its first two weeks atop the list. Olivia Rodrigo’s chart-topping Guts dips 2-3 with 67,000 (down 23%).
Sheeran logs his seventh top 10 charting album on the Billboard 200 — all of which have debuted in the top five — as his new studio set Autumn Variations bows at No. 4 with nearly 62,000 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, album sales comprise 46,500 (making it the top-selling album of the week), SEA units comprise 15,000 (equaling 18.78 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 14 songs) and TEA units comprise 500.
Autumn Variations was announced on Aug. 24, a little over a month before the album was released on Sept. 29. The album’s arrival comes only five months after Sheeran last bowed on the chart, when his previous studio effort, – (Subtract), launched at No. 2 on the May 20-dated tally.
Four former No. 1s follow Sheeran on the new Billboard 200, as Zach Bryan’s self-titled release is a non-mover at No. 5 (59,000 equivalent album units; down 11%), SZA’s SOS is stationary at No. 6 (48,000; down 3%), Travis Scott’s Utopia is steady at No. 7 (46,000; up 4%) and Taylor Swift’s Midnights rises 10-8 (43,000; up 2%).
Rounding out the top 10 of the Billboard 200 is Doja Cat’s Scarlet, falling 2-9 in its second week (41,000 equivalent album units; down 42%), and Peso Pluma’s Génesis, dipping 9-10 (41,000; down 5%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Tim McGraw adds his milestone 60th top 10 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, as “Standing Room Only” pushes from No. 11 to No. 10 on the list dated Oct. 14. In the tracking week ending Oct. 5, the single gained by 4% to 18.7 million impressions, according to Luminate. The song was written by Tommy […]
The Core Entertainment, known for its work with artists including Billboard’s 2023 country rookie of the year winner Bailey Zimmerman, as well as Nickelback and Nate Smith, has launched a new producers management division, with a focus on guiding the careers of emerging writer/producers.
Founded by The Core Entertainment’s Kevin “Chief” Zaruk and Simon Tikhman, the new producer management division will be led by Tim Crane.
The new venture launches with Zimmerman’s producer Austin Shawn, as well as writer-producer Marty James and Josh Ross’s producer Matt Geroux.
Shawn, a writer/producer/mixer/engineer who worked on Zimmerman’s Religiously: The Album, has spent 11 weeks atop Billboard’s Hot Country Producers chart, for his work on Zimmerman’s three No. 1 Country Airplay singles “Fall in Love,” “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Religiously.” His credits also include Chase Matthew’s breakthrough song “County Line.”
Geroux produced Ross’s single “Trouble,” which topped the Canadian Country Radio Chart, and debuted at No. 43 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart earlier this year. Another Geroux-produced song from Ross, “On a Different Night,” was nominated for single of the year at the 2023 Canadian Country Music Awards.
Meanwhile, James is credited as a co-writer on the Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee (feat. Justin Bieber) song “Despacito,” which spent 16 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2017. James also co-wrote Zimmerman’s “Religiously,” with other credits including songs from Enrique Iglesias, Wiz Khalifa and Christina Aguilera.
“The idea behind creating this division is to work with the most talented writers and producers that are not afraid to push the boundaries of music,” the company’s co-founders/CEOs Tikhman and Zaruk said in a joint statement. “With Austin, Marty and Matt, they have all shown exactly that. They challenge artists to be the best they can be, while maintaining their visions and the integrity of the songs. The goal here is to work with producers around the globe that touch every genre of music and continue to disrupt the industry with their unique artistry.” The Core Entertainment launched in 2019 as an artist management company in partnership with Live Nation, with a roster including Zimmerman, Nickelback, Smith, Ross, Dillon James and Valley. In July, Zaruk and Tikhman launched The Core Records, via a separate partnership with Universal Music Group; The Core’s producer management division operates as a third standalone team.
Singer-songwriter Oliver Anthony, known for his breakthrough Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping hit “Rich Men North of Richmond,” is playing one more show before the end of the year, and he’s making it a hometown celebration.
In an Oct. 4 social media post, Anthony noted that he will close out his run of concerts for 2023 with a show at Longwood University’s new Joan Perry Brock Center in Farmville, Va., on Oct. 28. Tickets for the show will go on sale Oct. 6 beginning at 10 a.m. ET, and tickets will be $25 each.
He also teased that since the show falls just days prior to Halloween, it may involve a few surprises.
“This one’s going to be close to Halloween, and we may or may not have gotten a gorilla suit. I’ll leave it at that,” he wrote on Instagram, adding a laughing emoji. “If you want to bring a costume, no one is going to stop you.”
The singer-songwriter also noted another reason for the reasonably early final show of the year: His wife is expecting a baby boy in November. “I had to squeeze in one more show before baby boy comes,” shared Anthony, who currently has two kids. “There’s no place like home.”
The concert news comes as Oliver Anthony recently aligned with United Talent Agency for booking representation. Among UTA’s clients are Jamey Johnson, Parmalee and Megan Moroney.
“I am pleased to announce that I hired two gentlemen in Nashville this week to help me with creating the 2024 tour,” he said on social media. “We’re going to be all over the U.S., and even doing some international travel. There’s no way I can pull that off by myself. Curt [Motley] and Jeffrey [Hasson] at UTA do all the legwork to make the performances happen safely and professionally.”
In August, the singer-songwriter’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” spent two weeks atop the Hot 100, while several of his other songs, such as “Ain’t Gotta Dollar” and “I’ve Got to Get Sober,” quickly populated the Hot Country Songs chart.
See his concert announcement below:
The CMT Music Awards are headed back to the Lone Star State. The 2024 CMT Music Awards will return to the Moody Center in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, April 7, 2024, airing on CBS Television Network, and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+ with Showtime. The awards show will air from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET.
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“We couldn’t be more excited to bring the CMT Music Awards on CBS back to Austin in 2024! From the electrifying, sold-out Moody Center crowd to fans packing the streets for our outdoor Congress stage, and Bevo himself walking the Red Carpet, our Texas-sized welcome proved to be one of our biggest and most unforgettable shows yet,” CMT Music Awards executive producers Margaret Comeaux, John Hamlin and Leslie Fram said in a statement. “We’re thankful to our incredible partners at Moody and the City of Austin and thrilled to bring CMT’s signature blend of world premieres, genre-blending surprises and once-in-a-lifetime collaborations back this April!”
Jeff Nickler, sr. vp, Oak View Group, added, “Oak View Group and Moody Center are honored to welcome CMT, CBS and Paramount back to Austin. We look forward to building upon the success of last year’s record-breaking event and to hosting another sold-out audience for Country Music’s biggest party.”
Jelly Roll was the big winner in 2023, taking home CMT Music Awards trophies for male video of the year (“Son of a Sinner”), breakthrough male video of the year (“Son of a Sinner”), and CMT digital-first performance of the year (“Son of a Sinner”).
Meanwhile, artists including Jelly Roll, Kelsea Ballerini, Wynonna Judd and Ashley McBryde provided some of the 2023 awards show’s most talked about moments. Performers and nominees for the 2024 CMT Music Awards will be revealed at a later date.
In 2022, the CMT Music Awards shifted from its longtime home on CMT to CBS, and in 2023, the CMT Music Awards earned its biggest audience yet. The 2023 show was the first to be held at the Moody Center.
First loves are always the strongest, and Darius Rucker knows the feeling first hand. The country star spoke with People about the backstory of his song “Sara” — in which he sings fondly of his fifth-grade girlfriend — and how pal Ed Sheeran helped him write the song that is set to appear on Rucker’s […]
Even before the reigning CMA vocal group of the year country quintet Old Dominion had inked its label deal with Sony Music Nashville in 2015, the group’s songwriting prowess and well-honed onstage showmanship had attracted the attention of country superstar Kenny Chesney.
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Seated at Nashville’s Morris Higham Management, who manages both acts, Old Dominion lead vocalist/guitarist Matthew Ramsey recalls the first of the band’s career-elevating, stadium concert-opening stints for Chesney, not long after signing their label deal.
“San Francisco 49ers Stadium,” Ramsey says. “I remember I had my AC 15, playing a stadium stage with this little barely working, crappy amp that I had pretty much moved to Nashville with. We played the show and someone told our tour manager, ‘You need to get your crew to get your gear off the stage a little faster.’ And he’s like, ‘What crew? We don’t have anybody.’ And from that moment they were like, ‘We got you.’ The generosity of his whole team is incredible. And it became the beginning of this.”
‘This’ is more than a decade in which Old Dominion’s members have established themselves as hit writers behind hit songs for Chesney, Craig Morgan, Chris Young and other artists, but also as purveyors of their own hits, including their debut single “Break Up With Him,” the dreamy, romantic “One Man Band” and the liquor-fueled, post-breakup kiss-off “On a Boat that Day.” They’ve earned seven Billboard Country Airplay No. 1 hits, won five CMA vocal group of the year honors (they are the reigning winners in the category and up for the same honor this year) and six ACM group of the year statues, while also scoring a Grammy nomination and two Top Country Albums chart-toppers.
With the group’s new album, Memory Lane, out Friday (Oct. 6), band members Ramsey, Brad Tursi, Trevor Rosen, Geoff Sprung and Whit Sellers aim to add to their chart-topping status.
Along the way, Old Dominion has also painstakingly built a reputation as one of country music’s leading live acts. They’ve now joined Chesney’s tours five times — more than any other artist — and have long progressed from filling clubs to selling out arenas, including on the fall leg of their headlining No Bad Vibes 2023 tour, which includes stops at Grand Rapids, Michigan’s Van Andel Arena, Boston’s TD Garden, Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena and Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
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Just weeks into the tour, the onstage spontaneity hammered out from years of road-dogging and playing gigs ranging from clubs to stadiums is readily apparent.
The band recently shared footage and photos of heart-tugging audience interactions from the tour on social media. During one show, Old Dominion aided in an audience member’s baby gender reveal, and later welcomed a woman who had been battling cancer to join them onstage to sing a song from their fan-favorite album Meow Mix. During another show, the group welcomed a young boy onstage to sing with the band.
“At the time, we didn’t realize his full story,” Ramsey says. “We found out later that he had some hearing impairment problems that he had overcome, and it was pretty cool to have him onstage. The same night as the gender reveal, was the night that the woman who was battling cancer just wanted to sing ‘Meow Mix’ with us, so we’re meowing and crying at the same time.”
“No matter what venue we are playing, we try to make it as intimate as possible,” says bassist/vocalist Sprung. “We just try to be authentically us, and when we see moments like that that show us our music is affecting somebody, it’s pretty great.”
Their approach to making albums has progressed, too. While their early albums were crafted piecemeal, slotting in recording sessions between tour dates, they took a different approach with their 2022 project Time, Tequila and Therapy, decamping to Asheville, North Carolina and steeping themselves in writing and recording.
They brought that same mindset into Memory Lane, including spending four days in Key West to focus on writing (which resulted in two of the album’s songs, “Ain’t Got a Worry” and “Easier Said With Rum”).“We don’t have to feel like we have to make it sound like a radio hit,” Tursi says. “We can explore a lot of different things if we want to throw a steel guitar and we chase the song wherever it takes us and there’s just no worry about where it ends up.”
That ethos rings true on their new album. Sonically, Memory Lane ranges from the remorseful “Both Sides of the Bed,” to the vivid swirl of lyrics on “Different About You,” such as “Don’t nobody want to be the yellow Starburst/Everybody reaching for the cherry first.”
“I have a good friend who works with inner-city, underprivileged kids and she became attached to this one young girl, [who] was dating a guy who wasn’t abusing her or anything, but she wasn’t getting the love and affirmation she needed. And she had said, ‘I don’t want to be your yellow Starburst.’ I knew exactly what she meant, and I wrote it down. Sometimes a whole song just hinges on one line.”
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Another album track, the free-spirited “Some Horses,” marks the first song Old Dominion has ever recorded that they didn’t have a hand in writing (the song comes courtesy of two of the band’s longtime musical collaborators, Matt Jenkins and writer-producer Shane McAnally). But the group has been familiar with the song for more than a decade.
“They wrote it back when we were just trying to all struggle and be successful songwriters, playing writer’s rounds and things,” Ramsey says. “It was written in third person, but one day, I was talking with Trevor about songs we loved and that song came up. Then I was at home the morning before we went into the studio to work on the album and I started playing the song and just changed it to first person, because I identified with it so much more. We talked to Shane and texted Matt and said, ‘Do you mind if we change the song a bit?’ They said ‘yes’ and we gave it a shot.”
Old Dominion has been judicious with its collaborations on record, featuring soul icon Gladys Knight on Time, Tequila & Therapy, and fellow country music group Little Big Town on the Happy Endings album. With Memory Lane, it enlists “Tennessee Orange” hitmaker and Sony labelmate Megan Moroney for “Can’t Break Up Now.” The tart ballad, the group’s new single, debuted at No. 54 on the Country Airplay chart. It follows the album’s first single, the title track, which peaked at No. 4 on Country Airplay.
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“We had that song for probably three years now,” says Ramsey, who wrote “Can’t Break Up Now” with Rosen, Tofer Brown and Emily Weisband. “We talked about what kind of partner we would want in that — there was a million ideas and we never could quite land on one that we agreed on really. Then Megan shows up with ‘Tennessee Orange.’ She’s such a unique voice and so confident in who she is at this early stage in her career. It just seemed like the right fit. Luckily, she was interested in recording it.”
Elsewhere, Blake Shelton joins on “Ain’t Got a Worry.” “He’s been telling us that we’re his favorite band for years and years and years,” says lead guitarist/vocalist Tursi with a sly grin. “He finally was like, ‘You guys, let’s do a song together’ — so we sent him a few things and he liked that one. We happened to be in the same studio at Ocean Way [in Nashville], recording some other songs, so we hopped over and he sang the vocal.”
With the release of Memory Lane, the band is ready to introduce new songs into their live shows, bolstering their already deep catalog of hits with a new batch to further expand the ties between artist and audience.
“It’s like how Jimmy Buffett built his world and Kenny built his world,” says Ramsey. “We’re trying to build a whole culture when fans come to our shows.”
Maren Morris is further explaining her decision to distance herself from the country music industry.
In an hourlong interview on the New York Times’ Popcast podcast with reporters Joe Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli posted Wednesday (Oct. 4), the singer laid out a scenario where she says she always felt at odds with the country music business, even as she experienced success. Over the last few years, after the pandemic and Black Lives Matter, the feeling has only deepened.
“I felt like I don’t want to say goodbye, but I really cannot participate in the really toxic arms of this institution anymore,” she said. “I love living in Nashville, I have my family there. … There’s a reason why people come there from L.A. and N.Y. to write with us because we have amazing songwriters there, so that’s not going to change. But I couldn’t do this circus anymore of feeling like I have to absorb and explain people’s bad behaviors and laugh it off. I just couldn’t do that after 2020. … I’ve changed.”
Even so, she said, “It’s a little bit hyberbolic to be like ‘She’s left country music,’ because that’s ridiculous, but I certainly can’t participate in a lot of it. I’m OK kind of just doing my own thing. Come with me if you please; everyone’s welcome.” She also stated that she will no longer submit her music for country awards consideration. Morris is also transferring from Sony Nashville to New York-based Columbia Records.
The new podcast follows her Sept. 15 interview with the Los Angeles Times in which Morris said she was “moving forward,” adding, “I thought I’d like to burn [the country music industry] to the ground and start over, but it’s burning itself down without my help.” The same day, she released two Jack Antonoff-produced songs, “The Tree” and “Get the Hell Out of Here,” that further explained her position.
“These two songs are incredibly key to my next step because they express a very righteously angry and liberating phase of my life these last couple of years, but also how my navigation is finally pointing towards the future, whatever that may be or sound like,” she said in a statement.
In the New York Times podcast, she says as far back as her 2016 breakthrough, she felt unwelcome by some sectors. “It was very clear even from early stages, ‘My Church’ into my next single, ‘80s Mercedes,’ which leaned more pop,” she said. “Ironically, it was, ‘She’s not country. Look at the way she dresses. Get the hell out of here.’ Like ‘You don’t belong here, this is not like Dolly.’ I was like, ‘I know it’s not, I’m not trying to be.’ … All the negativity and that initial backlash … was the writing on the wall for what was to come.”
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She went on to say that the industry still circles the wagons any time someone criticizes country music or an artist, even from within. “It’s so ingrained and Pavlovian that you are not allowed to criticize this family ever,” she said. She felt any critical comments were interpreted as a greater attack on country music as an institution. When she spoke out, it was like, “‘Not only are you criticizing our way of life,’ which I’m not, ‘you’re criticizing every fundamental belief we have, you’re criticizing Jesus, you’re criticizing blue-collar workers, your criticizing farmers.’ Like, they will go to these lengths to justify the abuse and discrepancies that exist within the machine of what this is.”
A flashpoint came after she tweeted that Morgan Wallen’s use of a racial slur in February 2021 would be condoned by the industry. She tweeted in part, “We keep them rich and protected at all costs with no recourse.” She was in Hawaii recording and felt very far removed from Nashville.
“I didn’t realize I had lit the fuse,” she said. “I underestimated — like I have a lot — the power of the town and also kind of every broken thing about it and how it protects itself no matter what.”
Following her tweet, she says she not only received death threats, but so did her infant son. “I could have never fathomed that it would go there just off of criticizing a racial slur,” she said. “It felt like a warning shot.”
Over the past year, she said that she came to the conclusion that in order to save both her mental and physical health, it was time for her to give up commenting on every issue (“I don’t feel like that is my crown to wear every single time”) and find a more hospitable environment. “I’m so ready to just go elsewhere and look at the light and bring the people who want to come along with me, but honestly I just truly, as someone who has grown up listening to country music, growing up on the women of it, particularly — I’ve just had to find my own patch of grass with all of it.”
With women still struggling mightily for country radio play, she worries that the situation is not improving and that women artists will become even more reticent to speak out. “I kind of said this in my LA Times piece, kind of just the indoctrination of ‘Stay in line, do not ever question the way we do things because you’re looking at the door. We only ever let three of you in, and you made it, so shut up.’ That’s terrifying, especially as a new artist.”
But she then added the playing field is so tilted toward male artists at radio that it may not matter whether women speak out or not. “So, look at the [women] doing the same exact things I did, putting great music out, not getting played, doing all the same radio tour even after Covid, even though streaming is starting to greatly surpass it, and it’s even worse than ever on the chart. And even the playlisting is extremely slanted,” she says. “It’s hard to be like, ‘I’m the one that got affected by it,’ when there are no women on the chart. Whether you speak up or you keep playing the game, they’re still not going to play you.”
Her concern extends beyond artists and to the next generation of listeners. “In country, what standard are we setting? What is a little girl or like a little gay kid in the South at home when they look at this format right now, what are we teaching them? That they’re not welcome,” she says.
Looking also at prospective young female artists, she continued, “Even if they do everything right and look exactly like they’re supposed to or sound or say or have the perfect twang to their voice, thank Jesus in everything you do, you’re not allowed here until you’ve eaten enough sh–, I guess, to do it,” she said, comparing the genre to the current pop field, which is female-dominated.
“I feel like now more than ever, the women in these audiences, the little girls at home, they only see themselves in these songs as scenery or objects,” Morris said. “It’s heartbreaking because the few women that are kicking ass and still writing the best songs can’t even get radio play, and I thought they’d been given the keys to the kingdom 15 years ago.”
—Assistance in preparing this story provided by Jessica Nicholson
Jelly Roll offered up a surging, open-hearted performance of his song “Halfway to Hell” during his Tuesday night (Oct. 3) performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
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Like many of the other songs on his album Whitsitt Chapel (released on BBR Music Group), Jelly Roll sings of the struggle between harmful vices and being his best self–or as he sings on “Halfway to Hell,” it’s the struggle between “a bottle and a Bible.”
“I’m a rolling stone disciple with a cross across my face,” he sang passionately, pointing to his signature cross tattooed on his cheek.
On social media, Jelly Roll offered his gratitude for the opportunity to perform, saying, “What an incredible experience this was–thank you Jimmy Fallon for having me–this was unreal.”
Over the past year, Jelly Roll has notched two No. 1 Country Airplay hits, with “Son of a Sinner” and “Need a Favor.” He was also Billboard‘s cover star for its 2023 Country Power Players issue, and performed and spoke during Billboard‘s inaugural Billboard Country Live in Concert event in Nashville earlier this year.
He has earned armfuls of awards wins and nominations from the CMT Music Awards, the upcoming CMA Awards and the inaugural People’s Choice Country Awards. Jelly Roll has five nominations leading up to the CMA Music Awards, including musical event of the year, single of the year, music video of the year, and new artist of the year and male vocalist of the year.
In addition to his own music, Jelly Roll has been a king of collaborations of late, teaming with Lainey Wilson for “Save Me,” but also joining Dustin Lynch on “Chevrolet,” a song from Lynch’s new album. Jelly Roll also joins Craig Morgan on a version of “Almost Home” on Morgan’s upcoming album. His collaboration with Jessie Murph, “Wild Ones,” will release Oct. 6.
See Jelly Roll’s performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon below.
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