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Country music group Old Dominion, who have notched seven No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay hits including “One Man Band,” are the latest country act set to open a bar/music venue in Nashville.
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In the summer of 2024, the six-time CMA vocal group of the year winners will open ODIE’s at 1919 Division Street near Nashville’s Midtown area. The property was previously the longtime location of the venue Rebar.
The idea was the result of conversations between Old Dominion member Trevor Rosen and his good friend Ty Hauter, CEO of Good Time Design. Rosen recalled the good times the band had nearly a decade earlier, performing at Hauter’s Moonshine Flats and Moonshine Beach in San Diego.
From there, Hauter and OD members Rosen, Matthew Ramsey, Whit Sellers, Brad Tursi and Geoff Sprung began dreaming of creating a place outside of the hustle and bustle of downtown Nashville’s bar scene, a place that more closely recalled a time when Music Row-area songwriters and musicians would regularly meet up a local bars, talk music and play songs.
“Midtown in Nashville has played such a role in the history of our band,” Ramsey told Billboard via a statement. “From chilling at the bar after writing, to playing weekly into the wee hours of the morning. Even recently playing Whiskey Jam to launch our tour. It’s an important neighborhood for not only upcoming artists and writers, but for local people or tourists who want a good place they know they can go and have a good time. Odie’s will be that neighborhood bar for us all. – Matthew Ramsey
“We’ve obviously found success as a band, but we really got our start in the songwriting community. Odie’s will have touches of our band’s journey for sure, but at its heart it’ll just be a great place to hang in the heart of the midtown area where we spent so many years finding friends and collaborators and trying to our craft,” Rosen also told Billboard in a statement.
Hauter graduated from Eastern Illinois University in 1987, and got his start in larger-scale hospitality operations while working in the Chicago nightclub scene, prior to moving to San Diego in 1990 and running entertainment venues in the area. Hauter founded Good Time Design in 2006, initially focusing on venue design, construction and entertainment, before moving further into operations. Along the way Hauter began working with MTV’s Spring Break and TRL as well as acts including Blake Shelton, Pink and Ziggy Marley. He opened Moonshine Flats in 2014 and Moonshine Beach in 2016 — those venues have featured performances from artists including Old Dominion, Morgan Wallen, Cody Johnson and Luke Combs. Under Hauter’s leadership, Good Time Design opened six additional venues from 2020 until 2022. He now operates several restaurants and bars in California and Tennessee, with plans to expand to Las Vegas with a larger-scale entertainment concept in 2024.
On Friday night (Dec. 15), Old Dominion will bring their headlining No Bad Vibes arena tour to Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, performing not only several of their hits, but also album cuts from their latest project, Memory Lane.
Unless your name is Lainey Wilson, it can be pretty rough going as a woman in country music, especially at radio. That, of course, has been the case for the last several years, but the plight for women artists has not significantly improved despite multiple conversations, advocacy programs that promote women like CMT’s Next Women of Country and a considerable amount of handwringing about the situation over the past decade.
When the talented and extremely hard-working Wilson won entertainer of the year at November’s Country Music Association Awards, it was the first time a woman had taken home the trophy since Taylor Swift in 2011. Wilson and Swift, who also won in 2009, are the only women to have won the award in the last two decades.
Wilson holds another distinction. For the last five weeks, she has been the only woman in the top 20 of Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, but she’s not there for her own song — she’s listed as a featured artist on Jelly Roll’s “Save Me.” She is also the only woman to take songs to No. 1 on the chart as an unaccompanied solo artist in the last two years, with “Things a Man Oughta Know” in 2021 and this year’s “Watermelon Moonshine.”
In addition to Wilson, whose “Heart Like a Truck” rose to No. 2 on the Country Airplay chart this year, the only women to enter the Top 10 of the tally with solo hits in 2023 were Carly Pearce (“What He Didn’t Do,” No. 2), Megan Moroney (“Tennessee Orange,” No. 4) and Gabby Barrett (“Pick Me Up,” No. 6).
A 2019 study helmed by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that just 16% of artists were female across the top 500 country songs from 2014-2018. In a 2023 survey of 29 country radio stations in top markets conducted by Jan Diehm of The Pudding and Dr. Jada Watson, songs from women were played back-to-back an average of just 0.5% of the time in 2022. Numbers are even bleaker for artists of color. A 2021 SongData study by Watson titled “Redlining in Country Music” found BIPOC artists earned only 2.3% of country radio airplay over the past 19 years, with BIPOC women earning less than 3% of that small percentage.
“I’m in an industry that is trying so hard to not change,” says country singer Brittney Spencer, who is Black. “I’m so excited about putting out my new album, but when I look at the landscape of this industry, it kind of pulls some of that excitement away a little bit.”
It’s no wonder that a number of women artists are rethinking their role in the country music industry.
Maren Morris has been the highest profile act to distance herself. In October, the singer-songwriter switched from longtime label home Sony Music Nashville to the label’s pop counterpart and told the New York Times, “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’s hardly the only one. In December 2022, Cassadee Pope, whose “Think of You” with Chris Young reached No. 1 on Country Airplay in 2016, said she was “moving away from the country space” and returning to her pop-rock roots. By the time Kalie Shorr — known for her 2016 country hit “Fight Like a Girl” and a member of weekly writers round Song Suffragettes — posted in September on X, “Hey Nashville, have you noticed how many women have left country music? Even some of the most successful ones? Is that enough for you to change?,” she had already decamped from Nashville for Los Angeles.
Then last month, Black female country trio and America’s Got Talent finalist Chapel Hart, whose song “You Can Have Him, Jolene” earned love from Dolly Parton, posted a video on social media, saying while they will continue making country music, they “are no longer competing in the industry” after a wake-up call while attending the CMA Awards.
“Every single [executive] knew who Chapel Hart was,” said Chapel Hart member Danica Hart in the video. “Exciting news for us, but also sad news, because for us that means everyone knows who we are and we still don’t have a record deal, we still don’t have a publishing deal, we still don’t have sponsorships. We’re so busy trying to keep up in an industry who isn’t even acknowledging us.”
Yet despite tremendous obstacles, women artists and industry executives are finding creative solutions to keep new female voices in the forefront.
In late 2014, industry leaders Beverly Keel, Leslie Fram and Tracy Gershon formed Change the Conversation to address gender inequality in country music. Nearly 10 years later, Gershon says, “I do see improvement in signings [to labels], but no improvement for women in radio play. I am hopeful as I see some of the majors not banking on radio as the only way to break artists.”
Labels tell Billboard they aren’t slowing in signing women artists, they are just trying to be smarter about ways to grow their audiences. “Statistics tell us that not much has changed for the success rate of females in country, even though we’ve stopped talking about it quite as much,” says Katie McCartney, GM of Sony-distributed Monument Records. As Gershon suggests, Monument continues to be bullish on women artists: half its roster is female.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to stop signing females,” McCartney says. But she does think labels have to think differently about how to break women.
Instead of taking “Shoot Tequila,” the first single from new sister duo Tigirlily Gold, to radio in isolation, Monument broadened its promotional reach. “What we have decided is that our [radio promotion] regionals can’t go into a market and just visit radio, they have to go into a market and make contacts with the sports teams, brand folks, chambers of commerce, the tourism boards,” McCartney says. “There are charity aspects that we have drilled into in each of these markets. We started with the top 20 markets and sort of build out from there and Tigirlily was the first pass we took with this new approach.” “Shoot Tequila” reached No. 47 on the Country Airplay chart.
While this method is used for all artists on the roster now regardless of gender, McCartney says, “We definitely talked about how much better this would set [Tigirlily] up for success.”
Additionally, instead of doing a traditional radio tour, Lee Jeans sponsored Tigirlily’s concert tour in the top 20 markets that also tied in with the duo visiting hospitals through Musicians on Call and singing the National Anthem at sporting events. Because Tigirlily had built up a considerable social media following even before they were signed, fans were invited to text a community number to find out the show location. All the steps “elevated their profile to a degree that we would not have been able to do without all of these things firing at once,” McCartney says.
Spencer has also tried to build her following by getting close up with her audience. Stagecoach, which Spencer is playing in 2024, sponsored her Heaux Down party at a Los Angeles club in November, which featured line dancing and a sneak listen to her Elektra album coming in January. “I just want to get directly with fans,” she says. “I don’t need to throw a song in your face. I’d rather just party and walk around with a tray of drinks and talk to people and hear their stories.”
Spencer, who also held a Heaux Down in New York, says more such intimate events are planned based on where her fans are. “There are so many cool analytics that lets you know where people are listening to you. I know my top five cities where people listen to my music.”
Monument artist Pillbox Patti, who is known for her outsized personality, has also looked to the road instead of radio, touring with Jelly Roll, Koe Wetzel and Old Crow Medicine Show. “They’re really understanding her and she’s sort of going in with the group of people that she fits with, and that consumer really responds well to that authenticity,” McCartney says.
Similarly flamboyant act Hannah Dasher also got creative in putting herself in front of fans. Even before she parted ways with Sony Music Nashville this year, she would “crash” tailgate parties prior to concerts by Eric Church, Brothers Osborne and Jon Pardi to perform for fans who had gathered for their shows.
“One of my fans donated a flatbed F-350 truck and I drove that to concerts and played in the parking lots,” Dasher says.
Joining tours outside of the country genre has also been a successful strategy for women artists in building audiences. A few years ago, Morris opened for Niall Horan, Kacey Musgraves opened for Harry Styles and Cam opened for Sam Smith. More recently, Kelsea Ballerini played with the Jonas Brothers and Ingrid Andress played with Stevie Nicks. Spencer shared bills or sat in with Bruce Springsteen, Megan Thee Stallion, Lauryn Hill and Bob Weir. “I’ve gotten exposure in these different places and it’s a very vast audience,” Spencer says.
In another example of this strategy, CAA agent Sabrina Butera placed Lauren Alaina on the Pentatonix tour this year. “Normally people might not pair them together, but it was one of those conversations we were having about [both having] fanbases that started from television,” she says. (Big Loud artist Alaina appeared on American Idol and Pentatonix appeared on The Sing-Off.) “She had them in the palm of her hand by the end of the set. I could tell from comments on her socials and from the people that were in the Pentatonix audience that she was gaining new fans. We really try to think outside the box for things like that to keep the artists excited.”
Social media has also played a vital role in building audiences. Beyond promoting her music, Dasher’s Stand By Your Pan cooking series on TikTok has helped bolster her followers on the platform to over 1.5 million.
“I couldn’t play shows [during COVID], so I made social media my stage,” says Dasher. “I’ve always loved cooking and I thought, ‘Well, there are a lot of women my age and younger that don’t know how to cook and now everyone is sheltered at home, so I decided to make cooking videos and include music to promote my music and other music that I love.”
Dasher, who self-released the 7-song The Other Damn Half in October, teamed with online influencer Cornbread Cowboi on multiple video clips, including “Redneck Ass,” a fan-favorite that they cross-promoted across both of their social platforms.
“A lot of artists lean heavily into their social media,” Butera says, adding that Alaina’s “TikTok growth has been 69%, which is fabulous. She’s leaning into viral moments, partnering with other artists, especially on ‘Thicc as Thieves’ with Lainey Wilson.”
Branding deals are also propelling women artists as companies look to work with more country artists. Recently, Alaina teamed with Barstool Sports Academy, Maddie & Tae aligned with Chevy, Ballerini and Wilson partnered with Sonic and Priscilla Block worked on a summer capsule collection with Shein.
“The fanbase for country music has expanded quite a bit, which is opening up brands [to country],” Butera says. “Brands are noticing that our artists go above and beyond to perform for the brands. Sometimes we start with a very small partnership with these brands, maybe a teaser just to really build those relationships, and a lot of them end up turning into a long-term partnership, which is a really great goal to have.”
For Dasher, radio play may not be part of her path. “I’ve never been on a radio tour in my life. I don’t know that radio is going to be the route for me,” she says. “I would welcome that, but I’ve had to rely on other outlets to put my music out there. But I think my TikTok and Instagram following is proof that what I do is working.”
McCartney says there are also no plans to take Pillbox Patti to radio. “She’s not palatable to mainstream country radio,” she says. “She’s very relatable and very real, but I don’t know that a 45-year-old mom would be okay with their children hearing a lot of the things she talks about in her songs.”
With radio not seeming receptive to most women artists regardless of the subject matter, McCartney stresses that females will have to continue finding their own way. It’s a notion Gershon agrees with, advising women to “find your unique voice and vision. Don’t depend on country radio and [know] women still have to work harder.”
Texas singer-songwriter Joshua Ray Walker has revealed he is battling colon cancer and will be undergoing surgery in January. Walker, who released his album What Is It Even? earlier this year, took to social media on Thursday (Dec. 14) to update fans on his health battle.
“I have been dealing with some health issues this year that have made my quality of life on the road and off pretty brutal lately,” he wrote. “Even though my prognosis isn’t what I would have hoped for, it is a huge relief to have some answers and a course of action moving forward. Basically, my doctors have found a localized cancer in my colon, and I will be undergoing surgery to remove part of my colon on January, 3rd. Luckily, we found it early, and it’s likely I’ll make a full recovery without further treatment. This is great news, but I will need to take a few months off after the surgery to recover.”
In September, Walker opened two concerts for The Killers but soon was forced to cancel some of his shows in October after being diagnosed with appendicitis. Walker recorded those live performances opening for The Killers and released the humorously titled live project I Opened for The Killers and All I Got Was Appendicitis in October.
“This is deeply disappointing and frustrating, but I’ve consulted with my doctors and I have been advised that after some setbacks during the healing process I need more time to rest before getting back on the road,” Walker said in an Instagram post announcing those show cancellations earlier this year.
In his new post, Walker also revealed that he will release a new song, “Thank You for Listening,” at midnight and shared a performance video of the song.
“I’ve had the idea for ‘Thank You For Listening’ for a while now, but it has definitely been colored by what’s been happening in my life throughout the process of creating it,” he said in the social media post. “What started as a simple “thank you” to my fans, ended up having a much deeper meaning, including my mortality, but this is in no way a goodbye. I’m going to fight with everything I have, and my odds are great. All I ask is for your patience and healing thoughts during this time.”
He also thanked his fans for supporting his music and standing by him.
“I can’t believe what I’ve been able to accomplish because of your support,” Walker said. “That is what this song is about. I would have written songs and continued to play them to empty bar rooms forever, but because of you I’ve been able to accomplish more than I ever could have dreamed. I still can’t believe that people want to hear my songs. So “Thank You For Listening”, and we’ll get through this together. This song is for you. Love y’all!”
Walker released his debut full-length album, Wish You Were Here, in 2019. He followed with 2020’s Glad You Made It and 2021’s See You Next Time. He made his Grand Ole Opry debut in 2022. His album What Is It Even? featured Walker covering hits made famous by several female pop artists, including “Cuz I Love You” (Lizzo), “Halo” (Beyonce), “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” (Whitney Houston), and “Joshua” (Dolly Parton).
See Walker’s post below:
Warner Music Nashville has appointed Stephanie Wright as senior vp of A&R, reporting to label co-chair/co-president Cris Lacy. Wright joined the company as a consultant in October. Wright has spent more than 23 years in A&R at Universal Music Group in Nashville, beginning as an assistant at Capitol Records and rising through the ranks to […]
This year, country music’s popularity has not only surged in the United States, but globally as well.
No one knows that better than Luke Combs. As part of his WME-booked 44-show 2023 tour, the superstar played in 16 countries, one of the most expansive outings ever by a country artist. In addition to sold-out stadium dates in the U.S., Combs spent August through October playing 23 sold-out shows — primarily in arenas — in New Zealand, Australia and in 12 European countries.
Combs’ efforts have earned him the Country Music Association’s 2023 international artist achievement award, which recognizes outstanding achievements by a U.S.-based artist who has demonstrated significant growth and development outside of the U.S., and has helped promote the country music industry.
The CMA took advantage of Combs’ tour to find out more about country music’s international fans and to help spread the word of the genre’s popularity abroad by embedding Milly Olykan, CMA’s vp of international relations and development on several tour dates.
Unlike pop and rock artists, country artists haven’t toured internationally as often, but with streaming dominating discovery, borders have come down, making it easier for international audiences to learn about country artists.
Combs’ ticket sales were propelled by soaring streaming numbers for country acts like him, Morgan Wallen and Lainey Wilson internationally. On-demand audio and video streams for country music are up 24% in the U.S. through the third quarter of 2023 over the same time frame last year, according to data provided to the CMA by Luminate, and other territories are seeing even bigger growth. The U.K. experienced 34.7% growth in country music streaming over the same time, with September breaking the record for most country streams in a month at 213 million. Germany saw 33% growth and Canada 32% growth.
Combs’ audience has been growing steadily internationally. The two-time CMA entertainer of the year has accumulated more than 5 billion streams outside of the U.S. over the last six years, according to his label, Sony Music Nashville. In addition to expected strong markets such as Canada and Australia, Combs has seen tremendous growth in other territories, including year-over-year streaming increases of 128% in Ireland and 166% in the Netherlands and 130% in Sweden, partially boosted by the success of his international hit cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”
Combs’ manager, Make Wake’s Chris Kappy, studied the analytics, but he also was aware of the international demand for Combs based on anecdotal evidence, including emails from Combs’ passionate base, social media and fans who were traveling from overseas to U.S. dates. “When I’m seeing ‘Luke, come to Sweden,’ ‘Come to New Zealand,’ and you look at the analytics and see that Sydney has more people in it that want [to see] Luke than markets where we’re doing double stadiums, I was like, ‘We’ve got to pay attention to this,’” he says.
Kappy positioned the international tour to Combs as a mission much bigger than just expanding his own audience.
“I sat him down and said, ‘Look, man, this is an investment in your career, this is an investment in country music, this is an investment in taking the genre to the next level,’” Kappy says. “’You’re not going to make as much money as you do in [the United States], but you’re going to put the entire genre on your back, and you’re going to take it to the people and you’re going to show promoters, DSPs, record labels, publishers [and] venue buyers that country music is not only alive and well, but as strong or stronger than any other format that can tour over there.’ And he did it.”
Though he says he didn’t feel like an ambassador for country music, “I knew that’s what we were trying to do,” Combs says. “That was the ultimate goal. I’m going to give the credit to Kappy for that. That was his vision from day one. He was adamant that this was bigger than United States and Canada. No [country act] has ever been fully in. But you not only get to grow the genre, you get to extend the lifetime of your career.”
Combs first toured internationally in 2018, starting in clubs. Though he had been to many cities on the 2023 international leg before, there were certain territories, such as three dates in Scandinavia, where he had “never set foot in and he sold out arenas in all three,” Kappy says.
Tickets went on sale in August 2022 and in many markets, smaller venues were upgraded to arenas when it was clear the demand was there. In a few markets, like Paris, where Combs played the 950-seat La Cigale, or in Brussels at the 740-seat Ancienne Belgique, restrictions on moving shows kept him from being able to relocate despite the potential to sell more tickets.
Combs says playing a handful of smaller venues provided some adjustments for him and for his crew now that he’s a stadium act. “It was a huge challenge to my team to adapt to that size venue,” after playing stadiums and arenas. “We’re lugging 45 guys into a venue that has dressing rooms for 10.” Ultimately, though, he says the Paris show provided some of the best memories of the tour. “We started by playing the bar scene and didn’t realize how much we miss doing that,” he says. “It was cool to get to do that again.”
Kappy says the outside-U.S. dates broke even, and next time Combs tours internationally, he will likely be in stadiums. “We could have already done stadiums in Australia, but we couldn’t get them because the Women’s World Cup was at the same time,” Kappy says.
For the CMA’s Olykan, Combs’ tour was the perfect outing to join.
“I knew I had to leverage Luke Combs’ shows because he’s been building an international audience,” Olykan says. “He was the only one doing a world tour like this and had already done some international touring, so he was the poster child for me to attach myself to.”
Olykan’s purpose was two-pronged: to educate the international market on country music and, upon her return, to educate the U.S. country industry on her findings on potential global markets.
Coordinating with the local Sony office in different territories, Olykan held CMA-funded receptions in eight markets, including Auckland, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg and London. The guest list included local promoters and media, as well as festival, label, streaming and radio executives. “I just knew if I could get those people to the show and around country music in the market, I knew they would [discover] it’s a young audience,” she says. “I was trying to have a converting moment for the industry in the local markets. We’ve engaged an industry around there [who] can lean in now when they hear about country music because they know the potential.”
From her time with Combs, Olykan especially sees growth potential in the Nordic countries. “If artists continue to go to the Nordics, they’re going to build good arena business there and eventually there will be a country music festival that will be a tentpole kind of moment for them,” she says. Based on her findings, the Nordics could leapfrog Germany as the next big country market, joining already established markets like the U.K. and Australia.
In additional to the cocktail parties, the CMA conducted surveys with Combs’ audiences. Though that information is still being tabulated, among the questions asked were how attendees discovered Combs, their listening habits in terms of radio and streaming and their ages. “That data will inform us and we’ll use it to talk to the industry here,” Olykan says, adding that the information will be shared with CMA’s members.
The activities expand on connections the CMA already has established based on existing task forces Olykan set up in the U.K., Canada, the Nordics, Australia and Germany. She meets with the task forces, which include industry executives, every two months.
The CMA also aligns with the Country 2 Country festival (C2C), which takes place every March in London, Glasgow, Belfast, Rotterdam and Berlin. CMA programs the opening slot on the shows with a lineup of new country artists. Based on Olykan’s research, this year, in addition to providing talent for C2C, the CMA will bring a number of developing artists for shows in Stockholm and Oslo.
Since the age of 14, Jelly Roll has been in jail upwards of 40 times on a variety of drug charges. But the 39-year-old “Save Me” singer (born Jason DeFord) told People that before he became a best new artist Grammy nominee and landed three No. 1 country chart hits he realized he needed to […]
12/13/2023
Our 10 favorite sets from the world of country this year, from breakout artists to underground favorites and established stars.
12/13/2023
Luke Combs apologized Wednesday after he accidentally sued one of his fans in federal court and won a $250,000 judgment against her, saying she had been caught up in a lawsuit aimed at “illegal businesses” and that she was “never supposed to be involved.”
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The apology came a day after news broke that lawyers representing the country star had sued a woman named Nicol Harness for selling Combs-themed mugs on Amazon. Harness, who suffers from congestive heart failure, sold only 18 tumblers for a total of $380 but was ordered to pay a whopping $250,000 in damages for infringing Combs’ intellectual property — all before she ever realized she had been sued.
In an Instagram post on Wednesday, Combs said he had just learned about the situation and that it “makes me absolutely sick to my stomach.” He said he had already contacted Harness directly and apologized for the incident.
“I spent the last two hours trying to make this right and figure out what’s going on, because I was completely and utterly unaware of this,” Combs said in the video. “We do have a company that goes after folks only, supposedly large corporations operating internationally that make millions and millions of dollars making counterfeit tee shirts, things of that nature, running illegal businesses. Apparently, this woman, Nicol, has somehow gotten wrapped into that.”
The lawsuit against Harness, filed in June in Illinois federal court, accused more than 200 online entities of selling unauthorized Combs merchandise on the internet. It included screenshots of unauthorized t-shirts sold on Amazon that directly copied real apparel the country star sold on his own site.
“This action has been filed … to combat online counterfeiters who trade upon the reputation and goodwill of the American artist Luke Combs,” his lawyers wrote. “The aggregated effect of the mass counterfeiting that is taking place has overwhelmed the plaintiff and his ability to police his rights against the hundreds of anonymous defendants which are selling illegal counterfeits at prices.”
The case highlights a common legal tactic used by big brands like Nike and Ray-Ban to fight fake products on the internet. Filed against huge lists of URLs, such actions enable brands to shut down pirate sellers en masse, win court orders to freeze their assets, and continue to kill new listings if they pop up. They usually result in large “default judgments” against many defendants who never even saw the lawsuit, ordering them to pay large sums in damages.
Though they’re more often employed by retail brands, artists and bands have increasingly turned to such lawsuits to combat counterfeit merch. Nirvana sued nearly 200 sites for selling fake gear in early 2022; a few months later, the late rapper XXXTentacion’s company filed a similar case; in January, Harry Styles filed one.
Such lawsuits are effective at combating a difficult problem, but they’re also increasingly controversial. In a study released last month, professor Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University’s School of Law called the mass-defendant counterfeiting cases “abusive,” saying they allow rightsholders to bypass “basic procedural safeguards” like making sure each defendant is properly served with notice of the lawsuit.
Harness says that’s what happened to her. As reported by Tampa’s local NBC outlet WFLA, she says she had no idea she had been sued until she returned from a hospital visit and saw her Amazon account had been frozen. Harness says she later found an email from Combs’ lawyers, sent to an address she rarely uses and stuck in her spam folder, notifying her of the lawsuit. By the time she was fully up to speed, she says the case had been closed and a judge had granted a default judgment ordering her to pay Combs $250,000.
Though the lawsuit was filed directly in his name, Combs’ Instagram post on Wednesday suggests that it was handled entirely by outside attorneys or other entities empowered to enforce his rights. The attorney who filed the case, Keith A. Vogt, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Combs’ manager Chris Kappy declined to comment on how the case came to be filed, but confirmed that Combs had absolved Harness of any legal debt. And in his Instagram post on Wednesday, Combs said he was committed to making things right.
Since a total of $5,500 was still frozen in her Amazon account, he said he was “going to double that, send her $11,000 today, just so she doesn’t have anything to worry about.” Combs also said that he was going to make his own tumblers to sell in his official online merchandise store and that money from sales of those tumblers will also go to Harness to help with her medical bills.
“This is not something I would ever do,” Combs said. “This is not the kind of person I am, greedy in any way, shape or form. Money is the last thing on my mind, I promise you guys that. I invited Nicol and her family out to a show this year so I can give her a hug and say sorry in person.”
For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard is counting down our staff picks for the top 10 pop stars of 2023 all this week. At No. 6, we remember the year in Morgan Wallen — who put up mind-boggling stats all year, but was still surprisingly invisible at times.
Few artists, if any, were as set up to put numbers on the board in 2023 as country superstar Morgan Wallen.
It had been two years since the release of his massive-in-all-ways Dangerous: The Double Album and the backlash following his use of the N-word in a video captured on TMZ, making 2021 both the best and worst year of his career. He had spent the rest of that year mostly laying low as Dangerous continued to produce – it would ultimately break the Billboard 200 record for most weeks in the top 10 – and then took 2022 to reintroduce himself to fans. He set out on the Dangerous Tour that February, then began to release a slow trickle of music, leading to Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits like the trap-influenced “You Proof” and mama-I’m-crazy ballad “Thought You Should Know,” which proved how hungry most of the public still was for new Wallen material.
Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2023:Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Rookie of the Year: Peso Pluma | Comeback of the Year: Miley Cyrus | No. 10: Drake | No. 9: Doja Cat | No. 8: Bad Bunny | No. 7: Olivia Rodrigo | No. 6: Karol G
By early 2023, that slow trickle would turn into a broken dam. In late January, Wallen announced the March release of One Thing at a Time, to be a whopping 36 tracks long – Dangerous ran a scant 30 – and to be promoted on his One Night at a Time World Tour, kicking off that April, which would take Wallen to stadiums for the first time. Even before its release, the album was all but a pre-certified blockbuster, with the tracklist including the already-minted hits “Proof,” “Thought” and the pop-rocking title track, the latter one of three new songs he’d released along with his tour announcement in late 2022.
Matt Paskert
Matt Paskert
But one song he released while divulging the One Thing details would end up dwarfing them all, as well as anything on Dangerous. “Last Night” was part of another three-pack (along with the Allmans-interpolating “Everything I Love” and the cleverly Bible-wary “I Wrote the Book”) released by Wallen, this time to hype the One Thing announcement. The liquor-soaked, maybe-breakup anthem took off immediately following its mid-week release, reaching the top spot five weeks after its debut – not only a career first for Wallen, but a first for any solo male country star since Eddie Rabbit back in 1981.
The final push that got “Last Night” to No. 1 came with the March release of the full One Thing album, which unsurprisingly bowed with the biggest first-week total of the year to that point: 501,000 units, nearly doubling the 265,000 posted by Dangerous in its opening frame. One Thing would also chart all 36 of its tracks on the Hot 100 in its debut week, as Wallen blew past the previously Drake-held record of 27 for the most songs notched by an artist on the chart in a single week. If Wallen’s superstardom had escaped anyone’s notice to that point, it was finally unignorable.
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And it would stay that way for months. Both “Last Night” and One Thing would continue their rule on the Hot 100 and Billboard 200, respectively – occasionally getting knocked off by a big debut or surging hit, but seemingly always returning to their perch. All in all, both song and album would reign for 16 weeks total, giving Wallen the longest reign on each chart yet this decade – and the longest ever for any unaccompanied solo artist on the Hot 100.
In the process, Wallen also laid claim to territory that had largely eluded him to that point: top 40 radio. While he had been laying siege to country radio for a half-decade already, he’d yet to score much success on the pop airwaves. But “Last Night” was simply too huge to be overlooked, and it reached No. 5 on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart – an extremely rare level of top 40 success for a country song without a major non-country guest or obviously crossover-aimed production. And of course, his dominance at country radio practically went without saying: four songs from One Thing (“Proof,” “Thought,” “Night” and “Thinkin’ Bout Me”) topped the Country Airplay chart in 2023, and a fifth (“Everything”) is currently lurking around the top five.
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Meanwhile, all 2023, Wallen was leading the charge for a country takeover on the Billboard charts, with the genre particularly beginning to catch up to pop and hip-hop in its streaming presence. Though “Last Night” was the first country Hot 100 by a solo male in over four decades, it opened the floodgates for three more immediately after it – from Jason Aldean, Oliver Anthony Music and Zach Bryan (with Kacey Musgraves), all with songs that were massive streaming successes. In our December cover story on Wallen, Billboard’s Melinda Newman called him “the tip of the spear for the genre’s new generation,” and pointed out that while country grew by grew by 24% in on-demand audio and video streaming from 2022 to 2023, Wallen’s numbers alone accounted for 31% of that growth.
So if he had the No. 1 album of the year, the No. 1 song of the year, and was the biggest driving force behind arguably the most consequential trend in the (English-language) music industry this year – by the way, he also finished No. 4 on Billboard Boxscore’s Year-End Top Tours ranking, highest of any artist who released an album in 2023 – how is Morgan Wallen only our No. 5 Greatest Pop Star this year?
Well, there’s no arguing that there were four artists with more impressive portfolios of commercial achievements and statistics this year. But were there four greater pop stars? We think so, mostly because as huge as Morgan Wallen’s music was this year, the man himself was a much-less-conspicuous presence. He had no major award show or late night appearances, released no official music videos, had no particularly viral moments (besides a fan brawl outside his show that he wasn’t involved with), barely posted on TikTok – the app once integral to his early success – and until Billboard’s cover story, made no major media appearances. Millions of people caught Wallen on the One Night at a Time tour, but if you weren’t one of them, you could’ve very easily gone the entire year without seeing the man in action.
It’s an unsurprising and arguably wise strategy for an artist whose biggest career moments in the spotlight have mostly been embarrassing ones – from his 2020 arrest for public intoxication and disorderly conduct to his violation of SNL’s COVID-19 policy and subsequent removal from the show later that year, to, of course, his filmed racial slur usage in 2021. And while a large portion of the public appears to have moved on from these incidents, Wallen’s continual underperformance at major award shows – shut out at this year’s CMAs, and with no nominations at the 2024 Grammys (“Last Night” is up for best country song, but he’s not nominated since he didn’t write on it) – suggests there may remain (understandable) hard feelings from some folks in the industry. It makes sense that Wallen would continue to tread lightly re-inserting himself into the mainstream’s center.
Meanwhile, his chart fortunes have clearly not suffered for his lack of national visibility or award wins – regardless of Wallen’s presence in the headlines or lack thereof, his commercial momentum has only ever trended upwards since his 2018 breakthrough. This year, he even proved he could cross over to the pop world without really playing the pop game. So as long as he can top the charts and sell out his tours while letting his music do the talking for him, there’s not necessarily a lot compelling Wallen to do more.
Fair enough. But true pop stardom – from Madonna and Michael Jackson to BTS and Bad Bunny – has always been about more than just the numbers. It’s about impact, about presence, about being the whole package. It’s about putting yourself out there, in just about every way possible, and sometimes risking it all in the process. Wallen can and most likely will continue to top nearly every official Billboard chart while laying low, relatively speaking, but it’ll take him being a little more willing to step into the spotlight at his brightest to get to the top of these rankings.
A star-studded assembly of performers has been added to help Nashville count down the minutes to 2024 on New Year’s Eve in the music-spotlighting way that only Nashville provide, as part of the CBS special New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash. Trace Adkins, Grace Bowers, Kane Brown, Jackson Dean, HARDY, Cody Johnson, Parker McCollum, […]
