Country
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Since CMT pulled the video for Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” after three days in rotation, as reported by Billboard July 18, a firestorm of publicity about the clip’s intent and political messaging has followed.
Sales and streaming surges catapulted the single to No. 2 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, dated July 29. The song, released in May, scored the biggest sales week for a country song in more than 10 years, up 27,625% to 228,000 sold July 14-20, according to Luminate. It also vaulted by 547% to 11.6 million U.S. streams.
How is that translating to country radio?
On the Aug. 5 dated Country Airplay chart, the song, on Macon/Broken Bow, sports a 21% gain to 7.9 million impressions July 21-27, as it holds at No. 25.
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Says consultant Joel Raab, who advises programmers in both blue and red states, “Stations that I work with are largely sticking with the song. Listeners are asking for it, and there are very few objections to playing it. One station I work with did pull it for a short time because a policeman had been killed in their town. Another station was doing a country fair and one listener hadn’t even heard the song, but said he’d stop listening if his station didn’t play it.
“Much of the reaction is similar to what happened when Morgan Wallen was banned from radio [in 2021],” Raab continues. “Fans are afraid Jason will be banned, too. That’s not going to happen, though I do applaud him for editing his video.”
Raab further muses, “This song reminds me of when Merle Haggard sang ‘The Fightin’ Side of Me,’ which appealed to the pro-Vietnam War, conservative-leaning part of the country, and contains the line, ‘If you don’t love it, leave it.’ It was a huge hit at the time. Historically, country has waded into controversy, and it will again, particularly if it’s profitable.”
High Five
Meanwhile, Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” tops Country Airplay for a fifth total and consecutive week (33.8 million, down 3%).
The remake of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 Hot 100 top 10 extends its record for the longest Country Airplay reign among covers of pop hits.
The update also becomes Combs’ fifth of 16 Country Airplay No. 1s to rule for five weeks or longer. He logged his longest command with “Beautiful Crazy,” which dominated for seven frames beginning in March 2019.
As Tim McGraw gears up to release his 17th studio album, Standing Room Only, on Aug. 25, he is also setting his sights on a tour for 2024. The Live Nation-produced Standing Room Only tour will launch March 14, 2024, in Jacksonville, Fla., and will hit more than 30 cities, including Chicago, Denver and Seattle. […]
Jimmie Allen is known for infusing jokes and humor into his concerts, but he’s now making an interesting career pivot. The country singer announced via Instagram on Thursday (July 27) that he will launch a three-date comedy tour, the I Said What I Said Tour, in October. No dates or venues have been shared at […]
Just hours before their slated headlining concert at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, The Chicks revealed that they are postponing the show due to illness. A statement from The Chicks’ team said they are working to reschedule the show, noting that fans are encouraged to keep their tickets for the newly scheduled date. “The Chicks are looking […]
A Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum exhibit was well-suited for a fashionable country/rock reunion that took place July 20 in Nashville.
A rhinestone suit worn by Flying Burrito Brothers bassist Chris Ethridge on the cover of the band’s 1969 album Gilded Palace of Sin was unveiled in a museum display, placing it alongside the other three band members’ ensembles for the first time since that year. Clothier Manuel Cuevas custom-made the apparel for the group, tailoring it to the individual musicians’ personalities, when he worked at Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors in North Hollywood. Cuevas attended the reunion, held in the midst of the museum’s exhibit, “Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock.”
The Burritos also included guitarists Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons, and steel guitarist “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow. Gilded Palace was the only album to feature the original lineup, as members shuffled in and out of groups in the era’s fluid Southern California scene.
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“The Flying Burrito Brothers introduced new generations of fans to the beauty of country music and made the steel guitar rock,” said the exhibit’s co-curator, vp of museum services Michael Gray. “They have influenced everyone from The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty to many of today’s Americana artists. Their cosmic couture perfectly reflected their music, taking the rhinestone-studded suits identified with country music and adding their own psychedelic twist.”
The path that Ethridge’s suit took to a Nashville glass display case was twisted as well. It was stolen in 1969 from a station wagon owned by road manager Phil Kaufman, who also attended the reunion. Unknown to the band, the outfit ended up back on the rack at Nudie’s, where Elton John — who was likewise unaware of its history— purchased it in 1970. John wore it on the British TV show Top of the Pops, on the U.K. sleeve of his single “Rocket Man” and at the 1971 wedding of co-writer Bernie Taupin.
An anonymous buyer purchased it during a 1988 Sotheby’s auction, and the suit was stored for over 30 years until it popped up last year at a British online auction of John’s memorabilia.
An Ethridge family friend, musician Tommy Miles, stumbled across the auction the first — and only — time he used Twitter, and he called Ethridge’s daughter, Necia Ethridge, with the news on Nov. 19. She was able to purchase it privately, sealing the deal on her father’s birthday, Feb. 10, and she flew to London to pick it up on March 15. A documentary of the suit’s journey is in production.
Ethridge’s granddaughter, Emma Atkinson, performed “She,” a song that he co-wrote with Parsons, during the ceremony, along with Wilco’s Patrick Sansone and three members of Brothers Osborne’s band. Sansone covered “Hot Burrito #1.”
The “Western Edge” exhibit — which also includes artifacts related to The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and The Desert Rose Band — will remain open until May 2025.
Country music embraces a new form of modern love as David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” brings the late British rocker his first shot at a potential songwriting credit on a country hit.
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RCA Nashville released a new Chris Young track, “Young Love and Saturday Nights,” to digital service providers on Sept. 21. The song is an interpolation, built on the chorus melody and iconic, burning guitar riff of Bowie’s proto-punk “Rebel Rebel,” originally issued on the 1974 Diamond Dogs album that RCA distributed in the United States.
It’s easy to be skeptical of the country revision before hearing it — the raw original track was part of Bowie’s androgynous/theatrical period and is now being repurposed as a small-town Southern anthem at a time when many conservatives line up against challenges to gender conformity. But the adaption faithfully re-creates the original’s garage-band drum sound and distorted guitar riff, matching up well with the new version’s working-class lyrics.
“What they were after was the riffs,” suggests Dreamcatcher Management partner Jim Mazza, who signed Bowie to EMI when he headed the label’s global operations in 1983, launching the partnership with the album Let’s Dance.
And Mazza believes Bowie would have been happy with the new recording’s treatment of his classic.
“The British rockers have such a respect for American art — for country music in particular,” says Mazza, who has no affiliation with the new recording. “It wasn’t just The Rolling Stones. It wasn’t just The Beatles. It was Queen, and it was Bowie, and it was Kate Bush, serious British recording artists. I think David would have been like, ‘Oh my God, can you believe this? A serious country artist, Chris Young, is recording one of my songs. I’m really excited about this.’ ”
Though Bowie’s name has never appeared in a co-writing credit on a top 20 country single, he has subtly influenced the genre in the past. “Let’s Dance” was partial inspiration for a section in the album version of Brothers Osborne’s “Shoot Me Straight”; producer Jay Joyce (Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson) patterned the drum sound on Gary Allan’s “It Ain’t the Whiskey” after the tone on “Five Years,” the opening cut on Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust; Aaron Watson gave a shoutout to “Rebel Rebel” in “Outta Style”; and Eric Church mimicked the pitch-shifting vocal descent in Bowie’s “Fame” on his own “Creepin’.”
“It was weird,” Church said at the time. “There are some people out there, especially in the country genre, that didn’t understand what that [gimmick] was, but that’s exactly what it was.”
The Bowie interpolation might be very well-timed. Classic rock consumption is on the rise; country music recently had the top two songs on the Billboard Hot 100 — including Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” — and interpolations of Jo Dee Messina’s “Heads Carolina, Tails California” and Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” have led to recent successes for Cole Swindell and Jake Owen, respectively.
“The avant garde nature of a Bowie song is something that’s pretty adventuresome for [country],” suggests Mazza, “and I think it’s a really healthy idea in today’s world where there are no boundaries anymore.”
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After topping out at No. 3 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart with his RCA Nashville debut, “Wild as Her,” Corey Kent’s follow-up has an even wilder image embedded in its second verse, in which the singer notes that he “broke 100 on two wheels.”
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It’s not just a story. Pressed on that detail, Kent points to a motorcycle he used to own, a muscular Indian Scout Bobber that looked as if it was built for speed. He felt obliged to find out just how fast it could go.
“That was a really fun bike,” Kent recalls. “You get a new bike, you got to test the parameters of it and get comfortable with it. And so it definitely happened in Texas. You can find a nice stretch of road and really get after it.”
Kent’s triple-digit thrill ride is just one of numerous daredevil acts — from roller coasters to love — that make their way into “Something’s Gonna Kill Me,” a song that emphasizes his passion for life on the edge.
The topic arrived during an October 2022 creative retreat in the Dallas area, where Kent and three songwriting buddies -— Lydia Vaughan (“If I Didn’t Love You”), Austin Goodloe and Joybeth Taylor — knocked out six songs. “We got an Airbnb, this pink house,” muses Goodloe. “We’re just like, ‘Well, this is awesome. We’re in Barbie Dreamland here.’ ”
At one point, Kent got to his feet and expounded on his penchant for risky adventures, lamenting how often others insist he needs to live more carefully. “My response to that was always, ‘Get busy living or get busy dying,’ ” he notes. “There are things in life that have big risk. But if they add to your enjoyment, then maybe it’s worth it. You got to figure out what works for you.”
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His co-writers honed in on that sentiment, and as they explored other ways of saying it, Kent philosophized further about life: “Something’s gonna kill me at some point, so I might as well enjoy it.” The first part of that clicked as a title — Vaughan insisted they write it down — and they listed a handful of potentially addictive pursuits that can place body, life or soul in peril, including the highway, whiskey, smoking and songwriting. “I would live in a cardboard box before I quit writing songs,” says Vaughan.
They attacked the chorus first, and as it reached the “Something’s gonna kill me” hook, they realized that phrase served better as the chorus’ setup, forcing them to find another last line that would rhyme with “One day I’m gonna die.” Initially, it became a breakup song; thus, what killed the singer “might as well be this heart of mine.” But they shifted into a philosophical motif and freestyled other options –— for a few minutes, they laughingly subbed in “Something’s gonna kill me/ Might as well be pizza pie” — before they finally landed on “If something’s gonna kill me/ Might as well be what makes me feel alive.”
Once the chorus was done (or almost done; they would come back to it later), they focused on the opening verse, launching with a recollection of a California sunset. That doesn’t directly describe any risk-taking, though it still fits the song’s general attitude. “That line kind of implies some sort of free-spiritedness,” Vaughan says. “None of us are from California, so it implies the travel, implies the exploring and then it also, to me, implied kind of an all-nighter — like, ‘Hey, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. I’ve got things to do.’ ”
The rest of the two verses matched dangerous events to an adventurous, galloping guitar, and the energy in the room mirrored the spirit they were trying to portray. “We’re just standing up and screaming at the top of our lungs — I’m sure the neighbors from the Airbnb thought we were crazy,” says Goodloe. “It’s the most adrenaline that I’ve felt while writing a song. Usually, you’re sitting down with an acoustic guitar and everyone’s kind of being quiet. And we were standing up, running around the living room of this pink house, just screaming, ‘If something’s gonna kill me.’ ”
Before it was over, they inserted a rising melody into the pre-chorus at the end of verse one, then finished the chorus by stretching the final syllable of the stanza’s last word, “alive,” into five upward-moving notes. The pre-chorus and tag gave the chorus a subtle, and unintended, symmetry.
“It just popped out, and it is nice that there’s a theme of ascending notes,” Goodloe says. “I feel like the whole song, if you saw it on a graph, it’s just climbing the whole time — like melodically, lyrically, the energy. It’s cool that there is an anchor on each side of the chorus. They’re related.”
Goodloe finished the demo back in Nashville, working with the same level of adrenaline during that part of the process, and the song got an extra dose of it once Kent took “Something’s Gonna Kill Me” into a session with producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Lainey Wilson).
Guitarists Charlie Worsham and Rob McNelley turned the galloping foundation into a more elaborate opening pattern, contrasted with descending electric guitar chords. Joyce dropped in a number of unusual, spiky sounds over the track’s four-on-the-floor drumbeat and lobbed a whistling explosion that led into an instrumental break. The guitar solo took a gnarly, upward tack before everything dropped out, leaving Kent’s vocal fully exposed to launch the final chorus. That move wasn’t planned; Joyce signaled it to the players as the solo transpired, and the rest of the team followed his lead perfectly.
After the cut, Kent asked the engineer if they could get a playback of his vocal, but Joyce intervened.“Jay literally ran halfway across the room, waving his arms like, ‘No, no, no, don’t do it,’ ” recalls Kent. “He goes, ‘If you can’t hear it in the track, if it doesn’t bother you as you’re listening to it as a whole, there’s no reason to pick it out and pick it apart.’ He goes, ‘Stop overthinking. We’re human, we’re imperfect. It’s meant to be that way.’ It was one of the best lessons I’ve ever had.”
Worsham added harmonies, and the entire production made “Something’s Gonna Kill Me” an edgy musical statement. “The final cut was a little riskier and outside the box [than the demo], which is what that song needed,” Kent says.
It definitely connected with the audience. Outside of the established “Wild As Her,” “Kill Me” is the most streamed track from Kent’s Blacktop album on Spotify, garnering three times as many plays as any other non-single from the package. It was an easy choice for the next single, released by RCA Nashville to country radio July 5 via PlayMPE. The dangerous theme solidifies his brand, and the sound is just different enough to separate him from the pack. That’s a risk/reward scenario Kent can embrace.
“Nobody great,” he says, “ever sounded like anybody else.”
Colter Wall hits No. 1 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart (dated July 29), thanks to the arrival of his fourth studio album, Little Songs.
The set, released July 14 via La Honda/RCA Records, debuts at No. 4 on Americana/Folk Albums, No. 17 on Top Country Albums and No. 75 on the Billboard 200 with 12,000 equivalent album units earned in its opening week, according to Luminate. It also starts at No. 8 on Vinyl Albums (5,000 sold on vinyl) and No. 9 on Top Album Sales (8,000 in total album sales).
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Little Songs is Wall’s third, and highest-charting, album to hit the Billboard 200, following 2018’s Songs of the Plains (No. 180 peak) and 2020’s Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs (No. 103).
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Wall is the fourth country act to top the Emerging Artists chart this year, following Jelly Roll (who led for nine weeks in 2023, among 28 total weeks on top), Nate Smith (one week in May) and Megan Moroney (four weeks in May-June).
Rounding out the top five on Emerging Artists, NewJeans dip 1-2, C418 jumps 8-3, Kaliii falls 2-4 and Coco Jones rises 7-5.
Just outside the Emerging Artists top five, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real re-enter at No. 9, ranking on the chart for the first time since 2021, thanks to the band’s new album, Sticks and Stones. The set, released July 14 on 6ACE/Thirty Tigers, debuts at No. 37 on Top Album Sales with 3,000 copies sold.
The top debut on the Emerging Artists chart this week belongs to JT, at No. 24. The former City Girls member bows thanks to her new solo single “No Bars,” released via Quality Control/Motown/Capitol Records. The track debuts at No. 38 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.
City Girls spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on the Emerging Artists chart in 2019-20. That’s the fourth-longest reign since the list launched in 2017, after Jelly Roll (28 weeks), NLE Choppa (24) and Lauv (14).
The Emerging Artists chart ranks the most popular developing artists of the week, using the same formula as the all-encompassing Billboard Artist 100, which measures artist activity across multiple Billboard charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200. (The Artist 100 lists the most popular acts, overall, each week.) However, the Emerging Artists chart excludes acts that have notched a top 25 entry on either the Hot 100 or Billboard 200, as well as artists that have achieved two or more top 10s on Billboard’s “Hot” song genre charts and/or consumption-based “Top” album genre rankings.
Jason Aldean’s controversial “Try That in a Small Town” music video was seemingly edited to remove imagery of a Black Lives Matter protest after the clip received backlash, with critics claiming that the video contained racist pro-gun, pro-lynching messaging.
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According to The Washington Post, the video is not now six se conds shorter than when it was originally shared on July 14. There is no longer a clip from Fox 5 Atlanta depicting violent interactions during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.
Billboard has reached out to Aldean’s team for more information.
Last week, the country singer responded to recent claims that “Try That in a Small Town” is a “modern lynching song.” The song challenges those who “pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store” or “cuss out a cop” to, as the title suggests, try those actions in a small town and “see how far ya make it down the road.” The song’s video features footage of an American flag burning, protesters having confrontations with police, looters breaking a display case and thieves robbing a convenience store.
“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,” Jason wrote in his statement. “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.”
He later addressed the controversy during his Ohio concert on Friday (July 21). “It’s been a long week and I’ve seen a lot of stuff suggesting I’m this, suggesting I’m that,” Aldean told the crowd in a fan-captured video. “I feel like everybody’s entitled to their opinion. You can think something all you want to, it doesn’t mean it’s true.”
He added, “What I am is a proud American. I’m proud to be from here. I love our country. I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bulls— started happening to us. I love my country, I love my family, and I will do anything to protect that, I can tell you that right now.”
CMT has since pulled the video from its rotation after running it for three days, while Aldean’s wife, Brittany Aldean, came to his defense. On the other hand, stars like Sheryl Crow and Margo Price have spoken out against Jason Aldean’s choice to perform and release the song.
When the nominations for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards are announced on Nov. 10, two country hits could be in the running for record of the year for the first time since Jimmy Carter was President.
Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” and Luke Combs’ remake of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” both have a very good chance of making the finals. Wallen’s song has logged 23 weeks atop Hot Country Singles. “Fast Car” has logged 12 weeks at No. 2. (Both songs dropped one rung this week, to Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, with the re-entry in the top spot of Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.”)
Combs’ hit probably has a better chance of being nominated than Wallen’s does. Combs has received six Grammy nominations over the years (though he has yet to win). And Chapman’s original version was nominated for record and song of the year. Wallen has yet to be nominated for a Grammy, so there’s no evidence yet that Grammy voters are ready to forgive and forget the 2021 incident where he was videotaped using a racial pejorative.
If both hits are nominated, this would be the first time in 46 years that two or more country hits have competed in this marquee category. (We define a country hit as a song that made the top 20 on Hot Country Songs.) In 1977, three top five country hits vied for record of the year – Crystal Gayle’s elegant torch ballad “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” (which topped the country chart for four weeks), Linda Ronstadt’s exquisite pop/country version of Roy Orbison’s 1963 pop hit “Blue Bayou” (which reached No. 2) and Debby Boone’s megahit rendition of the Oscar-winning ballad “You Light Up My Life” (which reached No. 4).
In three earlier years, two or more country hits competed for record of the year. In 1967, Glen Campbell’s sublime reading of Jimmy Webb’s “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” (a No. 2 country hit) vied with Bobbie Gentry’s enigmatic pop/country crossover smash “Ode to Billie Joe” (a No. 17 country hit).
The following year, for the first and so far only time in Grammy history, three No. 1 country hits competed for record of the year. They were Jeannie C. Riley’s reading of Tom T. Hall’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” Bobby Goldsboro’s tearjerker ballad “Honey” and Campbell’s version of another Webb classic, “Wichita Lineman.” The Riley and Goldsboro hits each topped the country chart for three weeks; Campbell’s smash headed it for two.
In 1975, Campbell’s sleek version of Larry Weiss’ “Rhinestone Cowboy” and Eagles’ “Lyin’ Eyes” competed for the prize. “Rhinestone Cowboy” topped the country chart for three weeks. “Lyin’ Eyes” reached No. 8 on the country chart.
In 1979, two record of the year nominees had charted on Hot Country Songs, but only one of them was a home-run country hit. That’s Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” which topped the country chart for three weeks on its way to becoming his signature song. The other is a pop smash – Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” – that was covered by Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius, one of the top country duos of the era. Both versions entered Hot Country Singles – as the chart was then called – on Nov. 25, 1978. But whereas the version by Brown and Cornelius made the top 10, the version by Barbra & Neil stalled at No. 70. (It had star-power to burn, but you can practically hear country programmers saying “It just isn’t country.”)
In recent years, it has been hard for even one country hit to wind up with a Grammy nod for record of the year. The last five country hits to be nominated in that marquee category (again defining a country hit as a song that reached the top 20 on Hot Country Songs) were Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road” (No. 19 in 2019), Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together) (No. 1 for 10 weeks in 2012), Lady A’s “Need You Now” (No. 1 for five weeks in 2010), Swift’s “You Belong With Me” (No. 1 for two weeks in 2009) and Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” (No. 1 for one week in 1998).
The Recording Academy expanded the number of nominees in each of the Big Four categories (including record of the year) from five to eight in 2018. They expanded it again to 10 in 2021, but have announced that they are dropping it back down to eight for the nominations that will be announced on Nov. 10.