Country
Page: 172
For years during their concerts, contemporary christian music sibling duo For King & Country — brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone — have been sharing the story of their family’s immigration from Australia to the United States. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Now, their story is coming […]
Nate Smith reveals his favorite Northern California slang at the Billboard Country Live event. Nate Smith:Hi, I’m Nate Smith, and here are some of my favorite Northern California slang words. In Northern California, we say “hella.” Southern California doesn’t like that — they think it’s kind of silly, but we say “hella cool,” “hella this,” […]
As Jason Aldean‘s “Try That in a Small Town” tops the Billboard Hot 100, giving the country singer his very first No. 1 on the all-genre tally of his career, his wife Brittany Aldean took to social media to celebrate — and to clap back at critics on social media as the song and its video have been embroiled in controversy.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Brittany shared the news of her husband’s chart-topping status on Tuessday (Aug. 1) with her 2.5 million Instagram followers, saying, “Well, yesterday was a monumental day for Jason Aldean. #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart!!…a career first. That sure did backfire, didn’t it?? The best fans EVERRRR,” followed with four heart emojis.
The post also included photos of the couple hugging, as well as a photo of Jason with the couple’s son Memphis and daughter Navy.
Aldean previously earned a Hot 100 top 10 song in 2011, with “Dirt Road Anthem.”
The country singer’s chart-topping moment is part of a history-making week on the Hot 100. With Aldean at No. 1, Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” at No. 2 and Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” at No. 3, country hits take the Hot 100’s top three spots in a single week for the first time, dating to the Hot 100’s inception in August 1958.
“Try That in a Small Town” was released back in May, but garnered attention after the video — which featured footage of looting, carjackings, rioting and flags burning — was released. CMT soon pulled the clip from its video rotation, sparking both praise and backlash from music fans. Many social media commentators criticized the music video as racist, pro-gun, anti-Black Lives Matter and anti-protests.
Aldean later issued a statement regarding the controversy. “In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to a comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests,” his message on Instagram Stories and Facebook said. “These references are not only meritless, but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage- and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music- this one goes too far.”
The video was later edited to remove imagery of a Black Lives Matter protest and additional footage later in the video, shortening the clip by six seconds. Aldean’s label, BBR Music Group, noted the removal was due to clearance issues, according to ABC News.
See Brittany Aldean’s post below:
One of Jimmie Allen‘s sexual assault accusers has a message for the embattled country star: You can’t sue me for handing over your cell phone – which she calls “evidence of a crime” – to the police.
The new court filing came from a woman who claims that Allen assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel room and secretly recorded it. In her June lawsuit, she said she took the phone as evidence and handed it over to police. But in a countersuit last month, Allen claimed she essentially stole his property by doing so.
On Tuesday, Allen’s accuser (known as Jane Doe 2) asked a federal judge to dismiss that accusation – calling his claims about theft “nothing more than harassment of a victim and abuse of the judicial process.”
“Now, in addition to being a victim of sexual abuse and illegal video voyeurism, Plaintiff is faced with Defendant’s attempt to harass and intimidate her,” Doe 2’s lawyers wrote. “Allowing a defendant to sue a crime victim for reporting a crime and turning over evidence of that crime to the police is directly contrary to public policy.”
A representative for Allen did not immediately return a request for comment.
Allen, a once-rising country music star, has faced a swift industry backlash after being hit with two separate sexual assault lawsuits. The first case, filed on May 11, claims he “manipulated and used his power” to repeatedly harass and assault an unnamed “Jane Doe” on his management team.
The second case, filed on June 9 by Doe 2, claims that while she “willingly joined Allen in the bedroom” of a Las Vegas hotel, he later ejaculated inside her against her explicit wishes – and filmed the entire sexual encounter without her knowledge. Doe 2 says she took the phone with her when she left and, after Allen refused to share the password so she could delete the recordings, that she passed it along to the Las Vegas Police Department.
Last month, Allen responded to both lawsuits by denying all the allegations against him. In the case of Doe 2, he admitted to having “unprotected sex” with her, but said he “did not ejaculate during the encounter.” He also admitted to recording the incident but, crucially, said he had secured her explicit permission to do so.
He also countersued with allegations of his own, accusing Doe 2 of “conversion” — a civil tort similar to theft that involves someone taking property that doesn’t belong to them: “By taking his camera phone without permission, Jane Doe 2 wrongfully exerted a distinct act of dominion over Allen’s personal property,” his lawyers wrote at the time.
In her response on Tuesday, Doe 2’s lawyer say that taking the phone was not a form of civil wrongdoing, but merely “her exercise of rights as a victim of crime.” She cited previous cases that excused such seizures, like one in which a babysitter was sued for taking photos of child abuse.
“Plaintiff turned evidence of alleged illegal conduct, i.e., the recording of Plaintiff in a state of undress and of sexual acts without her consent, over to the police to investigate,” Doe 2’s lawyers wrote. “The law does not condemn victims for doing so.”
A decade after 22-time Grammy winner Vince Gill and steel guitar virtuoso Paul Franklin (who has more than 30 CMA Awards nominations to his credit) crafted Bakersfield, which paid homage to the central California country sounds made famous by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, the two musicians have reunited to shine a light on the music of Country Music Hall of Famer Ray Price on Sweet Memories: The Music of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys, out Aug. 4.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Seated in Gill’s home recording studio in Nashville — a space with shelves lined with many of the Grammys, CMA Awards and ACM Awards Gill has amassed during his nearly five-decade career, but also a room filled with dozens of guitars, including a white guitar he’s played since 1978, another guitar his parents gifted him for Christmas and one he bought when he was 18, living in Kentucky and “dead broke,” Gill says — longtime tourmates and studio collaborators Gill and Franklin discuss an album that chronicles Price’s life and career, pairing Gill’s illustrious tenor and fleet guitar fretwork and Franklin’s nimble steel playing.
“I’ve told everybody that in the making of these records, it’s more about the musician in both of us than it is about me as the singer,” Gill says. “We chose the songs we chose because it gave us more freedom to play than maybe we would have had on some of those big ballads.”
Between 1952 and 1989, Perryville, Texas native Price entered more than 100 songs on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, earning 46 top 10 hits and eight No. 1s, including “Crazy Arms,” the Bill Anderson-penned “City Lights” and the Kris Kristofferson-penned “For the Good Times.” Price also recorded more than 50 albums during his career.
Gill and Franklin eschewed recording many of Price’s biggest hits; instead, Sweet Memories largely favors more obscure Price recordings.
“I gotta be honest, there were several songs that I didn’t know who wrote them. I didn’t know ‘Kissing Your Picture’ was a Mel Tillis song, and I didn’t know Bobby Bare had a part in writing ‘Walking Slow and Thinkin’ About Her.’ I knew Willie Nelson wrote ‘Healing Hands of Time,’” Gill says with a soft laugh.
Longtime on-air personality and music scholar Eddie Stubbs, who retired from his roles as WSM Radio personality and Grand Ole Opry announcer in 2020, played a key role, pointing Gill and Franklin to more arcane songs.
[embedded content]
“He’s the greatest disciple of loving Ray Price,” Gill says, recalling a time when he listened to Stubbs’ radio show while on tour with the Eagles. “He played a song I had never heard before and I called him from Australia and said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘I’ll play it again for you again.’ And I’d just call him up out of the blue and say, ‘Play me something,’ and I would take notes and write down some of the songs he would play. He was a big part of pointing me toward some stuff that was not the obvious choices.”
“I remember we were trying to find five or six songs. I came over and Vince broke out this legal pad and I’m expecting it to be one page — but Vince had like a hundred songs,” Franklin recalls. “I didn’t know a lot of these. We’d listen to songs and compare them — it wasn’t like, ‘We gotta pick a shuffle.’ We listened to a lot of shuffles.”
During his career, Price helped usher in two major sonic innovations in country music, beginning in the 1950s with his signature “Crazy Arms,” written by Ralph Mooney and Charles Seals. That song introduced what would become the signature “Ray Price Beat,” a 4/4 shuffle, spearheaded by Buddy Killen’s bass line, bringing a ferocity to his brand of honkytonk that would influence country music for decades. The song cemented itself atop Billboard’s Country Songs chart for 20 weeks, toppling Carl Perkins’s “Blue Suede Shoes” from the chart’s pinnacle during a time when rockabilly artists such as Perkins and Elvis Presley were regularly making inroads on the country charts.
A decade later, Price was again prominent as country music recalibrated into the pop-aimed, string-laden sounds of the 1960s. Sweet Memories includes a rendition of the classic folk song “Danny Boy,” written by Frederic Weatherly, which became a top 10 country hit for Price in 1967, representing a shift from hard-charging honky-tonk singer to countrypolitan crooner.
[embedded content]
“He was probably the first successful country singer to do the full orchestra with ‘For the Good Times,’ and all that,” Franklin says.
Unlike Price’s version, the Gill/Franklin rendering of “Danny Boy” features steel guitar front and center. “This song allowed Vince [to do] voice leading, when the voice gets up to the change and it’s like he’s pulling the band along. You can’t hardly do that in modern music, but these old songs had a lot of space. It’s a unique cut,” Franklin says.
Two songs on the album — “Healing Hands of Time” and the Hank Williams Sr.-written “Weary Blues From Waitin’ — nod to two of Price’s essential musical connections.
In the early 1950s, Price joined Williams on tour and recorded “Weary.” At one point, the two musicians were roommates and Price used Williams’ backing band, The Drifting Cowboys, as his own backing band. After Williams’ death on New Year’s Day in 1953, Price continued touring with members of the Drifting Cowboys, which later morphed into Price’s the Cherokee Cowboys.
Price’s musical acuity bore out not only in his ability to encompass an array of styles, but also in the caliber of talent that passed through the Cherokee Cowboys over the years: Johnny Bush, Buddy Emmons, Buddy Spicher, Nelson, Roger Miller, and Johnny Paycheck, among them. Meanwhile, Nelson, Harlan Howard and Hank Cochran wrote for Pamper Music, which Price co-owned (two Cochran tracks, “I’d Fight the World” and “You Wouldn’t Know Love,” appear on the album).
“That speaks to his talent,” Franklin says. “You can see it happening in any period of country music, where there’s somebody out there that everybody’s going ‘Wow, this guy,’ and everyone wants to be around them. Ray was that guy and he schooled a lot of other great artists.”
While Nelson was playing bass as part of the Cherokee Cowboys, Price recorded his song “Night Life,” making it the title track for his 1963 album. The two would go on to record together several times, including the 1980 album San Antonio Rose, the 2003 project Run That by Me One More Time, and their 2007 album with Merle Haggard, Last of the Breed. Nelson and Price earned a Grammy for their duet “Lost Highway” in 2008.
“Their friendship played a part in this,” Gill says. “All this stuff has a deep, personal meaning. He and Willie were best buds, and these are just crazy great songs.”
Adding to the musical ties, Franklin and Gill worked with Price on his last album, Beauty Is…The Final Sessions, which released in 2014, just four months after Price’s death in December 2013, at the age of 87. Gill lent vocals to two tracks on the album. Franklin and Gill, as part of The Time Jumpers, also played an indelible role in another Price tribute project: Nelson’s 2016 album For the Good Times: A Tribute to Ray Price.
“The Time Jumpers were on about half of those songs and we cut a bunch of great shuffles and triple fiddles. Gill recalls, adding, “It was a great experience until [producer] Fred [Foster] called me and said, ‘I need you to sing harmony on about half of this record.’ I said, ‘That’s hard to do,’ and he said, ‘You’re the only man I know that can do it,’ so I gave it a whirl. I was doing like three words at a time. It was painstaking, but it was cool,” Gill says of the process of singing harmony to Nelson’s famously fluid vocal phrasing.
Franklin and Gill hope Sweet Memories will bring listeners deeper into Price’s works.
“I think that Ray’s legacy will be how much he changed music,” Franklin says. “Everybody was following him because he was a singer. When he put strings on, you had Faron Young, you had everybody else doing the same thing. I think there are new artists now, like Ernest, who want to know about the past, and have a deep respect for older artists. Hopefully this record will say, ‘Hey, it’s worth looking at these songs.’ And there are a lot of great singers out there, but the songs they sing are really wordy. It’d be nice every now and then, maybe they’ll slip a song in there and get influenced by Ray.”
Gill notes that Bakersfield and Sweet Memories are just the beginning of salutes by Franklin and him.
“We always intended on doing a series and we still have several in our back pocket that we’d love to do — George Jones, Conway [Twitty], Little Jimmy Dickens, are still kind of in the works of possibilities.”
[embedded content]
In the chorus of his latest single, “Burn It Down,” Parker McCollum fantasizes intensely about reducing the memories of a freshly ended relationship to “smoldering coals.”
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
It’s a subtly unique idea, that word “smolder.” It’s not particularly obscure, but it’s not one that appears in songs every day, and it’s a key entry point to the tone of “Burn It Down.” The production is an all-out blaze by the time it reaches a guitar solo more than two minutes through its three-minute, 36-second running time. But it’s a slow burn getting there, and McCollum credits producer Jon Randall (Dierks Bentley, Miranda Lambert) for that patient pacing.
“I wanted the first [chorus] to really just floor it,” McCollum says. “He was like, ‘Man, you just got to make them wait, you just got to make them wait.’ And I remember being like, ‘I think he’s got to give it to them.’ Now when I hear it in the store or on the radio or whatever, I’m glad we waited to grow.”
McCollum’s enthusiasm is the opposite of the attitude he brought to the writing session when he hosted the Love Junkies — a.k.a. songwriters Liz Rose (“You Belong With Me,” “Girl Crush”), Lori McKenna (“Humble and Kind,” “It All Comes Out in the Wash”) and Hillary Lindsey (“Blue Ain’t Your Color,” “Ghost Story”) — at his Nashville home on Sept. 27, 2022.
“I was burned out, and I so did not want to be a songwriter at all for several months,” he remembers.His album Never Enough, released May 12, was already finished, and when Rose arrived first, he confessed to her in the kitchen that he wasn’t sure why they were even writing. It wasn’t an encouraging start.
“I’m thinking, ‘Oh, thanks, you know. We’re all here,’ ” she recalls. “And then I thought, ‘You know, Parker, you say that, but you know what always happens. You write that song that you didn’t have, and you can’t believe that you wrote [it].’ He goes, ‘I know. How many times has that happened?’
[embedded content]
Neither told McKenna or Lindsey he wasn’t into it, and once the actual work began, they spent about a half-hour just talking and strumming guitars. At some point, he worked into a slow-boiling groove and repeated the phrase “Burn it down” as if it were a mantra. “I love songs like that,” says Lindsey. “But it felt like the emotion wasn’t all the way there.”
McCollum soon shifted into another gear, filling in extra lines after each “Burn it down”: “ ’Til it’s ashes and smoke,” “To the smoldering coals,” “ ’Til I don’t want you no more.”
“It’s almost like it’s an answer to ‘Burn it down,’ ” Lindsey says. “It just started to develop.”
As they inserted those extra lines between the “Burn it down” phrases, McCollum began to see its bigger-picture potential, and that’s when he became fully engaged.
“He was just sitting down in a chair — I feel like it was an armchair vibe, like one of those cushy armchairs,” says Lindsey. “But he threw his hand back. It was as if he were onstage, and he was like, ‘Burn it,’ and he started visualizing what he wanted onstage. He was like, ‘Oh my gosh, y’all. I think we’re on to something. I need this. I need this visually. I need the fire in the back. I need this energy for my set.’ It all just started coming together, and when he threw his arm back, I was like, ‘Hell, yeah. You throw that arm back, partner.’”
They wrote a good part of the chorus, then shifted back to the beginning, where McCollum developed a symbolic line about an ex scattering the goodbye across the lawn. The protagonist finds himself stuck with a house full of memories. “Burn it down,” he concludes. Then in verse two, he considers the bed and the passion it represented. “Burn it down.”
By the time they got to the third verse, they focused more closely on vanquishing abstractions rather than physical items, and that brought more clarity to the song’s metaphoric disposition.
“My drummer was telling me he actually knows a guy who burned down his girlfriend’s house,” notes McCollum. “He’s literally going to go to prison for a considerable amount of time, and I kind of made the joke, ‘I hope he hasn’t been listening to my song.’ I don’t think anybody has listened to the song and actually done it, I would hope. I guess in today’s world, you never know.”
They made a guitar/vocal work tape at the end of the session with Lindsey providing harmony. Ahead of the third chorus, Lindsey freestyled another smoldering “Burn it, burn it,” teeing up the finale. McCollum brought that rough recording to Randall, who prefers that bare-bones format.
“I love listening to the work tapes,” Randall says. “Because I’ve spent enough time as a writer and I know what goes on in those rooms, I can get a pretty good idea of what the mindset was just because I kind of know the process. And I think that that works in my favor, more than it doesn’t.”
Randall recognized McKenna was using an alternate guitar tuning and wanted to re-create its open, droning sound during the tracking date at Nashville’s Blackbird Studios. Session player Jedd Hughes invented a staccato counterpoint riff, and the band built up gradually with each new stanza, primarily from drummer Chad Cromwell’s ascending intensity: After two verses, the kick drum joins subtly at the chorus, and the full kit is employed by verse three. The searing guitar solo brings the entire band to its maximum point and, after a quieter bridge, maxes out again for the finale.
Engineer F. Reid Shippen helped even more in post-production, adding a shaker at verse two and, most notably, running McCollum’s voice through a filter during the first two verses. The effect hollows out his tone and emphasizes the consonants and breaths in his performance. “I think his vocal is smoldering,” says Rose. “The whole song is, honestly, the tempo and the mood of the track, and the way he’s singing it. It’s a lot of smoldering.”
When MCA Nashville decided to make it a single, Randall did a quick, more typical, remix that dropped the vocal filtering and ramped up the sound before the first chorus. By then, everyone agreed that the slow-building approach was right for this release.
“Everybody kind of fought me on it, and I think everybody thought I was crazy to not go big on the first chorus,” Randall says. “But eventually everybody came back and said, ‘The coolest part of the song is that it waits to get big.’ Which breaks [with] the way everybody thinks in town.”
Country radio received the single via PlayMPE on June 5, and it moves to No. 45 on the Country Airplay chart dated Aug. 5. “Burn It Down” seems positioned for a long, smoldering life rather than flaming out in a flash, which would aptly reflect both the slow build McCollum experienced on the day he wrote it and the arrangement that Randall oversaw.
“He’s such a seasoned veteran,” McCollum says. “He knew exactly what he was doing. I was the young guy trying to bust it out real quick, and he was right. He usually is.”
As Tim McGraw prepares to hit the road in 2024 for his Standing Room Only Tour featuring Carly Pearce, the singer and 1883 actor is speaking out about the troubling trend of concertgoers throwing items onstage at artists. “I think it’s terrible,” McGraw told CNN in a new interview. “I mean, you could really injure […]
Four-time CMA entertainer of the year winner Kenny Chesney‘s longtime affinity for the islands was on display recently, when he dropped into Captain Tony’s Saloon in Key West, Florida. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Chesney posted a video on his social media of himself, dressed down in […]
When Dolly Parton debuted her latest single, “World on Fire,” during the Academy of Country Music Awards on May 11, Nate Smith was aghast.
RCA Nashville was set to release his single with the same name to radio four days later.
“What are the odds of that?” Smith asks. “That’s crazy to me.”
The odds of two different songs with the same title being worked to the marketplace at the same time are not that large, though the likelihood that a title has been used before is pretty good:
• Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse,” the top debut on the current Country Airplay chart, uses the same two-word moniker as a 2008 Taylor Swift single and a 1984 pop single by Laid Back.
• Gabby Barrett’s “Glory Days” shares its name with a Bruce Springsteen classic and a recent Chapel Hart single.
• Parker McCollum’s “Burn It Down” mirrors the title of a 2012 Linkin Park single that topped Hot Rock & Alternative Songs. Jason Aldean also launched a Burn It Down Tour behind the similarly titled “Burnin’ It Down,” and back in the ’90s, Marty Stuart’s “Burn Me Down” and Clint Black’s “Burn One Down” were fairly close.
• Meanwhile, the July 26 death of Sinéad O’Connor, best known for “Nothing Compares 2 U,” occurred just nine days after the release of Mickey Guyton’s properly spelled “Nothing Compares to You,” featuring Kane Brown.
Using the same title isn’t a sin, as “Glory Days” co-writer Seth Mosley discovered early in his career. His first hit was The Newsboys’ “Born Again,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Christian chart in 2010. It came a year after Third Day reached No. 3 with its own take on “Born Again.”
“You can write the same title five different ways,” says “Glory Days” co-writer Emily Weisband.
Actually, five is a low number. There are nearly 300 songs with the name “Glory Days” in the Songview database, an online catalog of titles represented by performing rights agencies BMI and/or ASCAP. The index also features over 330 songs named “World on Fire,” more than 650 called “Burn It Down” and more than 50 titled “Nothing Compares to You.” Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” in fact, is one of at least 1,000 songs with that moniker.
“I guess if everybody else has been trying to do it, maybe we were on to something,” “Burn It Down” co-writer Hillary Lindsey reasons.
Whether or not a title has been written before hinges in great part on the familiarity of the phrase. Songwriters tend to lean toward songs that feature common language. Thus, the everyday phrase “Change of Heart” -— associated with hits by The Judds, Cyndi Lauper, Tom Petty and Eric Carmen — appears nearly 800 times in Songview, while the Joe Nichols semi-novelty “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off” is the only song with that title.
The age of existing hits with a particular title can influence whether a phrase gets reused. Springsteen’s version of “Glory Days,” for example, was a hit in 1985, a full 15 years before Barrett was born. When the title came up in the writing room, she didn’t know about the Boss’ version, and nobody told her about it, either. The live-in-the-moment plot she and her co-writers developed is distinctly different from Springsteen’s nostalgic take on it.
Similarly, the writers on Carrie Underwood’s “Dirty Laundry” had little or no awareness of Don Henley’s 1982 anti-media take on that title. And Old Dominion’s current “Memory Lane,” a title that appears more than 900 times in the Songview database, has not been a top 20 title since Paul Whiteman’s Pennsylvanians took it to No. 1 in 1924. And Brothers Osborne’s first top 10 single, 2015’s “Stay a Little Longer,” came 70 years after Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys recorded a Western swing hit with the same name.
“Shit, if you know the Bob Wills song, then more power to you,” T.J. Osborne said at the time.
Still, standard titles — such as “Georgia on My Mind,” “I Will Always Love You” or “Your Cheatin’ Heart” — are mostly out of bounds.
“There are some that when you hear it, you would never touch it or you look like assholes, like ‘Yesterday,’ ” says “Burn It Down” co-writer Liz Rose.
Titles and basic ideas cannot be copyrighted — it would be unrealistic to ask writers to avoid “Without You” (a hit for Badfinger, Keith Urban and Dixie Chicks) as a title, or to not address a widely familiar topic such as heartbreak, simply because those subjects had been broached before.
It would also be difficult to referee disputes when more than one version of a title emerges at the same time. When “Day Drinking,” for example, became a hit for Little Big Town in 2014, it was one of several songs with that title that had circulated around Music Row simultaneously. That sometimes happens when specific themes become popular and multiple songwriters attempt to capitalize on the trend. It could, however, derive from something deeper.
“Some people say that being creative, it’s just out there in the universe, and you have to just be open to it to let it flow through you,” Lindsey notes. “I believe in all that stuff. I haven’t dove all the way into all that stuff, but I believe it.”
That title, “I Believe It,” has already been written more than 150 times, and it has yet to become a hit.
Subscribe to Billboard Country Update, the industry’s must-have source for news, charts, analysis and features. Sign up for free delivery every weekend.
Grand Ole Opry member Craig Morgan surprised the audience by enlisting and being sworn into the U.S. Army Reserve during his set on the Opry stage on Saturday night (July 29). Morgan, who was inducted as an Opry member in 2008, became a newly sworn in Staff Sergeant and Warrant Officer candidate, who will continue touring and releasing new music in his civilian career while simultaneously serving in the Army Reserve.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Morgan first took to the Opry in civilian attire, performing a trio of his hits: “That’s What I Love About Sunday,” “Redneck Yacht Club” and “Almost Home.” Then, Morgan briefly exited the stage before returning donned in his military uniform for the swearing-in ceremony, officiated by General Andrew Poppas, commander, US Army Forces Command. Morgan followed with a performance of his song “Soldier.”
“It’s been awhile since I’ve sung in uniform,” he told the crowd. Backstage, several members of Morgan’s family watched the performance and ceremony, along with many of Morgan’s military colleagues, who joined him onstage during the swearing-in ceremony.
Of course, Morgan’s dedication to the U.S. military and his own military service are well-known to his fans; he previously served 17 years in the Army and Army Reserve with the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions as an E-6 Staff Sergeant and Fire Support Specialist. He includes Airborne, Air Assault and Rappel Master among his certifications. Morgan is also a recipient of the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service Medal and the USO Merit Award, as well as a member of the U.S. Field Artillery Hall of Fame.
Backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, prior to his swearing in ceremony, Morgan discussed with Billboard the significance of holding the ceremony on the Opry stage. Seated in a dressing room, Morgan looked at the walls that were covered in quotes from country artists and/or Opry members including Alan Jackson and Taylor Swift.
“I’ve got a quote on the wall around here somewhere. I said that there have been more people to climb Mount Everest than there are members of the Grand Ole Opry. There’s less than 300 people [who have been Opry members]; it’s very few. So I am humbled beyond words to be part of that group. And the military has been such a big part of my life for so long — 17 and a half years, and now to go back into the military and work with those folks again. To be able to do [the ceremony] here on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry to marry those two things, it’s historical; it’s special. It’s something that I will always remember.”
Next up, Morgan will go to warrant officer school for six weeks in November, and then will fulfill his Army Reserves commitment one weekend per month, and two weeks per year, alongside his music career commitments.
“I’m a singer and we want to take advantage of that, and use it as a marketing tool to encourage people to come in the military,” Morgan told Billboard. “While I’m out on the road touring, I believe they are looking forward to me going to a high school or college and speaking to young men and women who are considering the military.”
“I’m taking this just as serious as I take my occupation as a singer and songwriter,” he added. “I didn’t want them to think I was asking for any favors. I didn’t want to pass my PT test, I wanted to max it. I didn’t want to just pass my Army physical or Army Combat test; I wanted to max it, and I’ve done those things. I don’t want to go through officer warrant school and have them nudge me along; I want to be an honor grad.”
He also tells Billboard he has a special musical project in the works — “I’ve been in the studio recording a bunch of new stuff; I’m recording two new songs and then four of my hits, but I’m completely recording them differently — and with friends.”
This fall, Morgan will hit the road to reprise his God, Family, Country Tour in partnership with Operation Finally Home. The tour, which features special guests The Reeves Brothers, launches Sept. 20 in Englewood, N.J. and will find Morgan making 13 tour stops through the end of October.