State Champ Radio Country
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Head versus heart; science versus art.
In the digital era where data abounds, old-fashioned music skills and modern spread sheet analysis can coexist, but deciding when to employ them is part of the art.
That was a key takeaway from an Oct. 18 panel discussion featuring two Big Loud executives, senior vp/GM Patch Culbertson and senior vp of A&R Sara Knabe, presented by the Association of Independent Music Publishers at SESAC Nashville.
In the Big Loud model, gut-level assessments dominate in signing artists and writers, while number-crunching drives the decisions when the label takes singles to radio. But with digital consumption providing the bulk of record-company revenue, getting onto the nation’s airwaves isn’t even a consideration unless the numbers justify it.
“Radio’s honestly the last thing we talk about with any artist that’s interested in partnering with Big Loud,” explained Culbertson. “It is the last thing we talk about in terms of your marketing strategy and campaign. What I want to equip all our radio team with is the power of the audience telling those stations that [something] is a hit, not that the radio person has to convince them.”
He added, “Especially for developing artists, you’re talking about the 55- to 60-week debut-single campaign. If you don’t have the hit in your hand, why are you going to go and do three or five months of radio setup and launch with that, and it’s going to be crickets when you are performing those records in front of those fans?”
The label’s roster houses 27 artists, he said, and only three of them were “research signings”: “Everybody else was a story of just either an incredible voice, incredible songs, just flooring us either performing on a stage somewhere or in our own offices, or just star quality they give off when they walk into the room.”
The approach has worked. Since its 2015 launch, Big Loud has signed and developed the genre’s most-consumed current artist, Morgan Wallen, plus HARDY, ERNEST and Hailey Whitters, a Country Music Association Award nominee for best new artist. It has also developed gold singles for Larry Fleet and Lily Rose — signs of strong market penetration, even if the songs didn’t become top 10 titles at radio.
Big Loud’s volume approach to recording may play a part as well. Since core fans demand a constant supply of new music, the label encourages artists to cut songs when they’re ready, even if no album or EP is planned. It’s part of the development process — “Even studio experience is part of their growth,” Knabe said — and more music increases the possibility that something breaks through with strong numbers.
In the Big Loud model, that’s when the head takes over from the heart.
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For a third consecutive year, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit is bringing their tightly-honed, poetic country-rock stylings to Nashville‘s Ryman Auditorium for a multi-night run of shows. This year, the group’s eight nights kicked off Oct. 12 and will end Sunday (Oct. 22).
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Long a luminary and musical beacon in Americana music circles, Isbell has played over 50 shows at the Ryman. Saturday night’s (Oct. 21) performance, the seventh of the eight Ryman shows, served as a testament to not only the strength of the band’s nuanced performances, but a confidence in the room itself, whose sturdy acoustics and intimate capacity over just over 2,300 have become a trusted counterpart.
In 2021, the opening slots for the group’s slate of Ryman shows showcased mighty talents from several Black female artists, including Brittney Spencer, Allison Russell and Mickey Guyton. For 2023, the opening slots highlighted several LGBTQ+ artists, including artists that identify as nonbinary or trans. During his headlining set, Isbell praised Saturday night’s opener Adeem the Artist (known for the 2022 album White Trash Revelry), calling Adeem’s music “true, honest, and great music.”
Isbell and company launched the headlining portion of the evening with “24 Frames,” from the 2015 album, Something More Than Free, followed by the neo-classic “King of Oklahoma,” from his 2023 album, Weathervanes, which brought rowdy cheers from the crowd thanks to what became a lengthy guitar jam with scorching work from bandmember Sadler Vaden. From there, Isbell and company roared through over a dozen songs, a mix of songs from Weathervanes and dipping into the group’s previous albums. Along the way, the set brimmed with anthemic choruses, well-crafted narratives and free-wheeling rock.
“Take the spirit in here with you when you go out there, because they need all the help they can get,” Isbell told the packed Ryman Auditorium audience, which spanned generations of devoted Isbell fans, many of whom were attending multiple nights on this Nashville run of concerts.
Like so many singer-songwriters in Nashville and beyond, four-time Grammy winner Isbell’s musical sketches are largely drawn from his own life — a journey that has seen the Alabama-born songcrafter get his start in the alt-country group Drive-By Truckers, before issuing his debut solo album, Sirens of the Ditch, and forming the 400 Unit, along the way embracing sobriety (captured in his much-heralded album Southeastern), marriage and fatherhood. All the while, maturity and his gift for keen-eyed observations have further steeped his music in layer upon layer of timely-and timeless-sketches of his own experiences and of those around him.
From Weathervanes, they offered “Strawberry Woman,” “Death Wish” and fan-favorite “Cast Iron Skillet.” The crowd cheered their approval at Vaden and Isbell’s roaring-yet-intimate guitar tangling on “This Ain’t It.” The somber “Save the World” drew on the impact of school shootings, touching on parental anxieties with lyrics that ponder keeping a child home from school and details a heightened urge of self-preservation.
The set included the rollicking “Speed Trap Town,” which details the narrator’s need to escape a small town where his father is dying and his family’s story is known by everyone, as well as “Super 8,” a bleary-eyed look at wild nights on the road. They followed with “Streetlights,” “If You Insist,” and the sobering “Elephant.”
He closed with “Cover Me Up,” which has become a mainstay in his set and a lofty fan-favorite, and favored cover song for several other artists. Isbell slowly, painstakingly built the song from its threadbare beginnings — with just Isbell alone at the mic — as members of the band joined in, the song swelling into a righteous, half-sung, half-shouted plea. As it does in most Isbell shows, the torn-from-personal-experience line “But I sobered up and I swore off that stuff/ Forever this time,” brought a wave of cheers and applause.
As Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit left the stage, the audience cheered, clapped and stomped, demanding an encore. To the band’s credit, they made fans work for it a bit, waiting several minutes until the crowd had frothed to a fever pitch before returning to the stage to play “Alabama Pines,” followed by ceding the spotlight to drummer Will Johnson to play one of his own compositions.
The nine-time Americana Music Honors & Awards winners’ final Ryman show on on this run concludes Sunday (Oct. 22), one of several shows leading up to the group’s opening slot on “I Remember Everything” hitmaker Zach Bryan’s stadium tour next year — an appropriate pairing, given Bryan’s frequent nods to Isbell’s music as a key influence and the surge of Americana/rock-soaked, guitar-fueled artists such as Bryan and Noah Kahan into mainstream, genre-blurring music leaders.
Maren Morris returned to social media with an encouraging message following news that she filed for divorce from her husband Ryan Hurd. On Friday (Oct. 20), the singer-songwriter, 33, shared a positive quote through her Instagram account weeks after officially ending her marriage. The quote begins with partially scribbled-out text “It will be fine,” above […]
Morgan Wallen banks his 10th leader on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart as “Thinkin’ Bout Me” ascends from No. 2 to No. 1 on the ranking dated Oct. 28. The single increased by 5% to 32.5 million audience impressions Oct. 13-19, according to Luminate. The song was written by John Byron, Ashley Gorley, Taylor Phillips and Charlie Handsome, […]
It’s only October, but Jelly Roll is already doing his best to make the holidays a little happier for kids in Nashville. The country star, a native of nearby Antioch, Tenn., announced a toy drive in Nashville to help kids, in partnership with Coca-Cola, toy company Hasbro, iHeart and metro Nashville. In a video on […]
Lainey Wilson, who currently has a three-week No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay hit with “Watermelon Moonshine,” has revealed her headlining trek for 2024. Wilson’s Country’s Cool Again Tour will launch in Nashville on May 31 at Ascend Amphitheater. Joining her for the 35-plus shows are openers Zach Top, “Don’t Come Lookin’” singer-songwriter Jackson Dean and […]
“The enthusiastic acceptance of the new Hot 100 pop singles chart as the standard of the industry since its inception three months ago has made it possible for The Billboard to complete its plans to streamline its record research operation,” a story announced in the Oct. 20, 1958, issue of Billboard (to be formal, then The Billboard).
“Record dealers, disk jockeys and music machine operators have made it abundantly clear that their prime need in the pop singles area is the freshest possible data about breakout singles as well as established best-sellers,” the story continued. “This singles information is completely provided by The Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.”
After the Billboard Hot 100 began with the Aug. 4, 1958, listing, two new genre charts arrived: Hot C&W Sides and Hot R&B Sides, ranking 30 titles apiece. Today, they thrive as Hot Country Songs and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, each 50 positions deep and incorporating the same streaming-, airplay- and sales-based methodology as the Hot 100.
Billboard had presented various rankings for the two genres previously, with R&B first measured by the Harlem Hit Parade, starting in the Oct. 24, 1942, issue. Country popularity was first reflected by the Most Played Juke Box Folk Records listing, beginning on Jan. 8, 1944.
The makeover in 1958, as noted that issue, marked “a new and expanded form of service,” with Hot C&W Sides and Hot R&B Sides the first all-encompassing song rankings for each genre. “Hot C&W Sides provides the fastest and most accurate coverage available on country music records, with the emphasis on ‘traditional’ rather than pop-style disks,” Billboard noted that issue. “The other new chart, Hot R&B Sides, performs the same service for the rhythm and blues field.”
The first track atop Hot C&W Sides? Ray Price’s “City Lights,” which reigned for 13 weeks. Multiple covers have been recorded, with Mickey Gilley’s likewise a No. 1 in 1975. Price amassed over 100 entries on Billboard’s country singles charts in 1952-89, including six Hot Country Songs leaders among 33 top 10s.
Bobby Day’s “Rock-in’ Robin” flew in atop the inaugural Hot R&B Sides chart, leading for three weeks. It, too, became a hit in a new form, as Michael Jackson’s version reached No. 2 in 1972. Like Price, Day was born in Texas; “Rock-in’ Robin,” however, stands as Day’s only charted R&B single.
Sixty-five years on, Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” leads the latest Hot Country Songs chart (dated Oct. 21, 2023). “Flashing signs invite a broken heart to lose itself in the glow of city lights,” a lonesome Price sang in his hit; sings Combs, “Won’t have to drive too far, just across the border and into the city …”
Meanwhile, Drake’s “First Person Shooter,” featuring J. Cole, launches as Drake’s record-extending 30th No. 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. On the Hot 100, it’s Drake’s 13th leader, tying him with Jackson for the most among solo males.
Dolly Parton is just a month away from releasing her highly anticipated first rock album, fittingly titled Rockstar, on Nov. 17, and fans are particularly excited to hear her collaboration with goddaughter and fellow superstar Miley Cyrus.
The duo are teaming up for a fresh rendition of Cyrus’ 2013 Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Wrecking Ball,” and in a clip shared exclusively with Billboard on Friday (Oct. 20), the country icon revealed why she wanted to include the track on her album.
“To involve Miley in my rock ‘n’ roll album, I thought, well, I have to do ‘Wrecking Ball,’ because I love Miley and I love the song,” Parton shares in the video. “So I said, ‘Will you come and do this for me?’ And she said, ‘Of course,’ but it actually came from the fact that we had done the song on NBC for her New Year’s show that she does every year from Miami.”
Parton continued: “We got such a response from how we did ‘Wrecking Ball,’ and combined my song ‘I Will Always Love You’ with that one. Since everybody loved it, and we loved it, I thought, why don’t I just do that combination and have her sing on my rock album? So I love my Miley and I love that song and I’m very proud of it. My version, and hers, and ours.”
Following its release on Aug. 25, 2013, “Wrecking Ball” became Cyrus’ first No. 1 single on the Hot 100 and spent three weeks atop the chart.
Beyond “Wrecking Ball,” Parton’s Rockstar album will feature a number of superstar collaborations with the likes of Sting, Stevie Nicks, Peter Frampton, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Chris Stapleton, Lizzo, Elton John, P!nk, Brandi Carlile, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and more. Check out the full track list here.
Watch Parton talk the inspiration behind putting “Wrecking Ball” on Rockstar below.
Former Billboard cover star Jelly Roll has become one of country music’s biggest breakthrough success stories over the past year, notching hits on Billboard charts in multiple genres. His 2021 song “Dead Man Walking” topped the Mainstream Rock chart. He followed with “Son of a Sinner,” which topped the Country Airplay chart and “Need a […]
Luke Grimes may be known for his role as the confident Kayce Dutton on the popular television series Yellowstone, but the actor was equally enamored with music while growing up in Ohio, as he listened to the Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings records his Pentecostal preacher father played at home.
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Still, Grimes says the prospect of releasing his own proper album was “terrifying” at first.
“There’s some imposter syndrome there. Sometimes it feels like I stepped into somebody else’s job for a minute,” he told Billboard backstage at Tennessee’s Pilgrimage Festival, where he performed alongside Ashley McBryde, The War and Treaty and Zach Bryan. Grimes took courage to step into the music world from singer-songwriter, and fellow Yellowstone actor, Lainey Wilson.
“It was inspiring to watch Lainey step into those [acting] shoes,” he said. “As much as I was afraid that people would naturally be like, ‘What is this guy doing here?’ I realized that no one on our set was like, ‘What is she doing here?’ Everyone was like, ‘She’s awesome and we’re glad she wants to do this.’ That took some of the fear away for me.”
Grimes’ foray into country music begins with his eight-song EP Pain Pills or Pews, out Friday (Oct. 20) on Mercury Nashville/Range Music. His deal with Mercury Nashville came by way of his manager, Range Media’s Matt Graham.
“Matt was a fan of what I do on the show [Yellowstone] and he heard that I play music and asked me to send him some stuff,” Grimes recalled. “I started sending him a few work tapes of things I had worked on, but we talked about music for two years before I did anything.”
Earlier this year, Grimes’ debut single, “No Horse to Ride” (which he wrote with Tony Lane and Jonathan Singleton) was featured in the mid-season finale of Yellowstone. The song peaked at No. 7 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart in January and has earned 22.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate data.
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His grainy vocal and the stripped-down production proved an early signal that Grimes’ brand of country music has more in common with the gruff, singer-songwriter fare of his influences than with the highly-polished, pop-infused country that has proliferated playlists and airwaves over the past decade. Grimes’ playlists are filled with music from Americana stalwarts Bryan, Steven Wilson, Jr. and Colter Wall.
“When I heard The Highwaymen on records my dad would play, they seemed like tough guys, but when you heard their music, it could be really vulnerable and I liked that,” Grimes said. “I love all kinds of music, but when I tried to write my own songs, it always came out folky and Americana. I love the whole process of songwriting, just a bunch of people in a room bouncing ideas off one another.”
Grimes is a co-writer on six of the project’s compositions, working with a slate of top-shelf Nashville writers and artist-writers including Lane, Singleton, Jessi Alexander, Randy Montana and Josh Thompson.
Grimes worked with producer Dave Cobb (known for his work with Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit) to craft the rugged-yet-revealing sounds that permeate Pain Pills or Pews. To gauge Cobb’s interest in the project, Grimes sent Cobb a work tape with “No Horse to Ride,” “Oh Ohio,” and “Playing on the Tracks.”
“For him, it was like, ‘I just need to hear the songs.’ He wasn’t going to do it unless there were [good] songs. Most of the demos were just me and the other writers and acoustic guitars, recorded in the writing room on an iPhone,” Grimes said. “That’s how Dave likes to work — It’s a thing in Nashville to make the work tape sound like a huge production. For Dave, it’s like, ‘Well that painting’s already painted.’ He wants a sparse canvas so he can add colors and do his own thing. It’s like taking a masterclass, just watching how he works. He always wants what is best for the message of the song and for the singer.”
“Oh Ohio,” written with Alexander and Jon Randall, pays homage to Grimes’s home state, while grieving the deterioration that has come with time, as the lyrics recall “before they parked the trains on the tracks and the parking lots grew weeds.”
“One of my favorite Ryan Adams songs was [2000’s] ‘[Oh My] Sweet Carolina,’ where he’s singing about his lifestyle, traveling all over the place and just dreaming of being home,” Grimes said. “I wanted to take a swing at a song like that, but with a twist, where it’s not all completely positive messages, but you still love the place. For a long time, I would go home to Ohio and it would feel like home still — but about 10 years after leaving, I went back and realized, ‘Oh, this is not home anymore.’ It was a really crazy feeling.”
Foy Vance, who is signed to Ed Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man label, joins Grimes for “Hold On,” which Vance wrote with fellow singer-songwriter IIsey Juber.
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“Foy and Ilsey wrote that for a female [to sing], and Ilsey sang the demo, but I thought it would also be cool if a man sang it. It’s a very vulnerable message. I think those feelings of being afraid to fall head over heels for somebody are universal, but you don’t often hear men opening up that way. I played it for Dave and he loved it. And then we got Foy to sing on it with me.”
Grimes wrote the defiantly free-wheeling “Ain’t Dead Yet” with Aaron Raitiere. After sifting through notebook pages of ideas, they began discussing their shared musical inspirations, including Nirvana’s classic MTV Unplugged in New York album.
“We thought, ‘What if we wrote a Nirvana-sounding song? What if Kurt Cobain was a redneck from Kentucky, and had lived to be 70 years old and wrote a song for his wife? What would that sound like?’” Grimes noted.
Grimes’ love of music stems from years of playing drums, and later picking up guitar. When Grimes was 12, his parents’ church needed a drummer, so Grimes learned the instrument out of necessity. He played drums in various high school bands but was simultaneously drawn to acting.
“I would walk out of the theatre after seeing a movie and think, ‘I could do that,’” Grimes recalled. “I wasn’t able to do anything about it in Ohio — I could have done school plays, but that’s very different from films. Music came as another creative outlet at a time when I couldn’t do acting, but I fell in love with that, too.”
Grimes made his way to New York and then Los Angeles to pursue acting, which has included his role on Yellowstone, and roles in 2012’s Taken 2 and 2014’s American Sniper, as well as 2015’s Fifty Shades of Grey and its two successors. But along the way, Grimes continued dabbling in music. Grimes was previously part of alt-country band Mitchell’s Folly, which released an album in 2008.
“I honestly don’t see them that differently,” Grimes says of making music and acting in films. “It’s a similar process, whether you are coming up with a song idea or bringing a character to life. The really good artists do kind of create a persona that’s bigger than life, like Hank Williams Jr. People want to see that when they come to a show, and there’s different levels of that, clearly. I’m still trying to figure out what that is for me and where that lies.”
Coming up, Grimes will follow the EP with a full album, and will make his second performance at California country music festival Stagecoach in 2024.
“Right now, I just want to get more comfortable performing,” he said. “There’s definitely some nervous feelings before getting onstage, and then halfway through, it gets really fun. I’m waiting for that halfway through feeling to start in the beginning.”
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