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Could a Britney Spears and Jay-Z collaboration be on the way? Well, not exactly — but the “Circus” singer is trying to make it happen. In the caption of an Instagram post on Monday (Oct. 9), Spears proposed a cover of Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” featuring a new rap verse from Jay-Z. “So many people have […]
This week welcomes new country albums from Darius Rucker and Reba McEntire, as well as a new duet from Noah Kahan and Kacey Musgraves, and new music from Kelleigh Bannen, Harper O’Neill and bluegrassers Russell Moore and IIIrd Tyme Out.
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Reba McEntire, “Seven Minutes in Heaven”
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Country Music Hall of Famer McEntire returns with this new track, from her acoustic album Not That Fancy. Like the rest of the album, “Seven Minutes in Heaven” places the focus on McEntire, who still possesses one of the most distinctive voices in country music. Though she’s known for her vocal power and ability to wrap a single word with a multi-syllable trill, here McEntire tenderly bares her emotions, imagining how she would spend “seven minutes in heaven” — not catching up with music cornerstones such as Johnny Cash or Elvis Presley, or even posing questions to a higher power — but rather, spending time with a loved one who has passed on.
The album, which was released on Oct. 6, serves as a companion project to her lifestyle book Not that Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating and Dusting Off Your Boots.
Darius Rucker, “Never Been Over”
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In 2008, Rucker released “It Won’t Be Like This For Long,” as a couple welcomes a young child and looks at how fleeting the years ahead will be. “Never Been Over,” from his new album Carolyn’s Boy (named after Rucker’s late mother), flips the perspective, looking back on a couple’s love nearly two decades later, chronicling years of emotional zeniths and low points, a duration spent raising kids and building a life together one day at a time.
“We’ve been holdin’ onto love so long/ That we don’t know how to run,” he sings expertly on this track — written by Rucker with Lee Thomas Miller and Brothers Osborne’s John Osborne, and bolstered by discreet, serene pedal steel and mandolin.
Noah Kahan & Kacey Musgraves, “She Calls Me Back”
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Kahan and Musgraves each separately paired up with Zach Bryan on songs from his previous projects –now they are teaming up together on a refreshed version of “She Calls Me Back,” originally from his 2022 hit album Stick Season. Kahan’s ragged vocal contrasts with this immensely danceable groove, as he’s wrought with tension over his lingering obsession with an estranged lover.
With her 2018 song “High Horse,” Musgraves proved her hypnotic voice paired with a dancefloor-ready beat made for a heady mix. Here, there’s a similar feel, as Musgraves’ kaleidoscopic voice cooly floats above the propulsive rhythm. The back half of the song is interwoven with new lyrics, with Musgraves responding to his pondering with a nonchalant, forthright answer: “I’m running out of tears to cry/ They’re gone before they hit my cheeks/ Maybe it’s the air out here, or maybe something’s changed in me.” Their voices intermingle wondrously.
Kelleigh Bannen, “I Know Better Now”
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Bannen is well-known for her “Today’s Country” show on Apple Music, but she’s been creating music for well over a decade. “I Know Better Now” marks her first new music in nearly four years, with Logan Wall being the sole writer on the song. “I Know Better Now” is rife with wisdom gained from years of hopes, dreams, and crushing disappointments, as she sings of growing up and learning that “life’s a string of things you gotta let go.” She holds fast to the soul-lifting aspects of music and deep breaths, and notes that “You lean a lot harder onto faith when your luck runs out.”
Piano, strings and Bannen’s voice are each rich and distinct, with the song’s uncluttered production highlighting the elegant interplay between the group of instruments.
Harper O’Neill, “Dark Bar Daisy”
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“I’ve always bloomed a little later/ Closer to closing time,” Texas native O’Neill sings, offering an ode to midnight barflys. The track is led by her wisened vocal, which expertly bends notes and imbues the lyrics with the husky realism of someone who has lived, loved, lost and seen a few things. Sultry, horn-driven production, courtesy of Jake Gear, further elevates the song. O’Neill wrote “Dive Bar Daisy” with frequent collaborator Meg McRee (they also wrote O’Neill’s breakthrough 2022 song “Somebody”). Here, they craft what feels like a sparkling homage to fellow Texan Miranda Lambert’s fan-favorite “Dark Bars.” The song serves as the title track to her new project Dark Bar Daisy, released Oct. 6, which also houses previous releases like “Guilty” and “Somebody.”
Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out, “Heading East to West Virginia”
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This seven-time International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) vocal group of the year winning ensemble returns with its first new music since 2015’s It’s About Tyme, with a pair of new tracks, including this sprightly love song. The band is as sharp as ever, while three-time IBMA male vocalist winner Moore’s octave-leaping voice remains nimble and crystalline.
Banjo player Keith McKinnon, fiddler Nathan Aldridge, bass player Kevin McKinnon and mandolin player Wayne Benson capture the heart-quickening anticipation of reuniting with a lover, as Moore sings of making the trek from Texas to West Virginia, braving stormy weather as soon as he gets the call for reuniting with his lover.
Colbie Caillat, “Meant for Me”
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Nearly two decades after breaking through with her 2007 debut single “Bubbly,” this California native (and now longtime Nashville resident) makes her official foray into country music. In this song from Caillat’s debut country solo album, Along the Way, she ponders the edifying moments from both love and loss–acknowledging that some relationships are meant to be temporary. “Meant For Me” was written by Caillat with AJ Pruis and Liz Rose and here, her voice is richer, more mature, but still with her signature, even-tempered rendering. Throughout the album, Caillat delves into appreciating the positives brought by a long-term relationship, even as it dissolves, gleaning lessons from the memories, the ache, the understanding and the moving forward.
John Morgan, “Remember Us”
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Morgan has already established his bonafides in the songwriting realm, thanks to more than a dozen songs recorded by Jason Aldean — including the Carrie Underwood duet, “If I Didn’t Love You.” On the title track to his new EP, Morgan sings from a wistful, bittersweet position, recognizing that an ample amount of whiskey has unlocked his willingness to work through the more halcyon moments shared with an ex-lover. Sonically, the track hews close to Aldean’s polished country-rock sound, though Morgan’s vocal brings a patina that leans toward tender more than swagger.
Shania Twain may be an indisputable country queen, but what she really wants to do is rock. The “Giddy Up!” singer lived out her ultimate rock and roll fantasy on Saturday (Oct. 7) when she hopped up on stage with the Foo Fighters at the Austin City Limits Festival to help the band rip through […]
Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Oct. 14), rising 3-1, notching a 16th nonconsecutive and total week atop the list. It earned 74,500 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 5 (up 2%), according to Luminate.
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One Thing at a Time continues to have the most weeks at No. 1 among all albums since Adele’s 21 logged 24 nonconsecutive weeks atop the list in 2011-12.
One Thing at a Time debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated March 18 and spent it first 12 weeks atop the list. It stepped aside for two weeks, and then returned for another three weeks in a row at No. 1 (June 24-July 8-dated charts). Now in its 31st week on the chart, the album has yet to depart the top four.
Also in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200, Ed Sheeran collects his seventh top 10-charting effort — all of which have reached the top five — as his latest release Autumn Variations debuts at No. 4. It’s his second top five debut of 2023, following – (Subtract) in May.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Oct. 14, 2023-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Oct. 10. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of One Thing at a Time’s 74,500 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Oct. 5, SEA units comprise 71,500 (equaling 97.56 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 36 songs), album sales comprise 2,000, and TEA units comprise 1,000.
One Thing at a Time’s 74,500-unit sum is the smallest total for a No. 1 album in nearly a year-and-a-half, since Pusha T’s It’s Almost Dry debuted atop the chart dated May 7, 2022, with 55,000 units.
Rod Wave’s Nostalgia falls to No. 2 in its third week on the chart (71,000 equivalent album units; down 20%), after spending its first two weeks atop the list. Olivia Rodrigo’s chart-topping Guts dips 2-3 with 67,000 (down 23%).
Sheeran logs his seventh top 10 charting album on the Billboard 200 — all of which have debuted in the top five — as his new studio set Autumn Variations bows at No. 4 with nearly 62,000 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, album sales comprise 46,500 (making it the top-selling album of the week), SEA units comprise 15,000 (equaling 18.78 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 14 songs) and TEA units comprise 500.
Autumn Variations was announced on Aug. 24, a little over a month before the album was released on Sept. 29. The album’s arrival comes only five months after Sheeran last bowed on the chart, when his previous studio effort, – (Subtract), launched at No. 2 on the May 20-dated tally.
Four former No. 1s follow Sheeran on the new Billboard 200, as Zach Bryan’s self-titled release is a non-mover at No. 5 (59,000 equivalent album units; down 11%), SZA’s SOS is stationary at No. 6 (48,000; down 3%), Travis Scott’s Utopia is steady at No. 7 (46,000; up 4%) and Taylor Swift’s Midnights rises 10-8 (43,000; up 2%).
Rounding out the top 10 of the Billboard 200 is Doja Cat’s Scarlet, falling 2-9 in its second week (41,000 equivalent album units; down 42%), and Peso Pluma’s Génesis, dipping 9-10 (41,000; down 5%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Tim McGraw adds his milestone 60th top 10 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, as “Standing Room Only” pushes from No. 11 to No. 10 on the list dated Oct. 14. In the tracking week ending Oct. 5, the single gained by 4% to 18.7 million impressions, according to Luminate. The song was written by Tommy […]
The Core Entertainment, known for its work with artists including Billboard’s 2023 country rookie of the year winner Bailey Zimmerman, as well as Nickelback and Nate Smith, has launched a new producers management division, with a focus on guiding the careers of emerging writer/producers.
Founded by The Core Entertainment’s Kevin “Chief” Zaruk and Simon Tikhman, the new producer management division will be led by Tim Crane.
The new venture launches with Zimmerman’s producer Austin Shawn, as well as writer-producer Marty James and Josh Ross’s producer Matt Geroux.
Shawn, a writer/producer/mixer/engineer who worked on Zimmerman’s Religiously: The Album, has spent 11 weeks atop Billboard’s Hot Country Producers chart, for his work on Zimmerman’s three No. 1 Country Airplay singles “Fall in Love,” “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Religiously.” His credits also include Chase Matthew’s breakthrough song “County Line.”
Geroux produced Ross’s single “Trouble,” which topped the Canadian Country Radio Chart, and debuted at No. 43 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart earlier this year. Another Geroux-produced song from Ross, “On a Different Night,” was nominated for single of the year at the 2023 Canadian Country Music Awards.
Meanwhile, James is credited as a co-writer on the Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee (feat. Justin Bieber) song “Despacito,” which spent 16 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2017. James also co-wrote Zimmerman’s “Religiously,” with other credits including songs from Enrique Iglesias, Wiz Khalifa and Christina Aguilera.
“The idea behind creating this division is to work with the most talented writers and producers that are not afraid to push the boundaries of music,” the company’s co-founders/CEOs Tikhman and Zaruk said in a joint statement. “With Austin, Marty and Matt, they have all shown exactly that. They challenge artists to be the best they can be, while maintaining their visions and the integrity of the songs. The goal here is to work with producers around the globe that touch every genre of music and continue to disrupt the industry with their unique artistry.” The Core Entertainment launched in 2019 as an artist management company in partnership with Live Nation, with a roster including Zimmerman, Nickelback, Smith, Ross, Dillon James and Valley. In July, Zaruk and Tikhman launched The Core Records, via a separate partnership with Universal Music Group; The Core’s producer management division operates as a third standalone team.
Singer-songwriter Oliver Anthony, known for his breakthrough Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping hit “Rich Men North of Richmond,” is playing one more show before the end of the year, and he’s making it a hometown celebration.
In an Oct. 4 social media post, Anthony noted that he will close out his run of concerts for 2023 with a show at Longwood University’s new Joan Perry Brock Center in Farmville, Va., on Oct. 28. Tickets for the show will go on sale Oct. 6 beginning at 10 a.m. ET, and tickets will be $25 each.
He also teased that since the show falls just days prior to Halloween, it may involve a few surprises.
“This one’s going to be close to Halloween, and we may or may not have gotten a gorilla suit. I’ll leave it at that,” he wrote on Instagram, adding a laughing emoji. “If you want to bring a costume, no one is going to stop you.”
The singer-songwriter also noted another reason for the reasonably early final show of the year: His wife is expecting a baby boy in November. “I had to squeeze in one more show before baby boy comes,” shared Anthony, who currently has two kids. “There’s no place like home.”
The concert news comes as Oliver Anthony recently aligned with United Talent Agency for booking representation. Among UTA’s clients are Jamey Johnson, Parmalee and Megan Moroney.
“I am pleased to announce that I hired two gentlemen in Nashville this week to help me with creating the 2024 tour,” he said on social media. “We’re going to be all over the U.S., and even doing some international travel. There’s no way I can pull that off by myself. Curt [Motley] and Jeffrey [Hasson] at UTA do all the legwork to make the performances happen safely and professionally.”
In August, the singer-songwriter’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” spent two weeks atop the Hot 100, while several of his other songs, such as “Ain’t Gotta Dollar” and “I’ve Got to Get Sober,” quickly populated the Hot Country Songs chart.
See his concert announcement below:
The CMT Music Awards are headed back to the Lone Star State. The 2024 CMT Music Awards will return to the Moody Center in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, April 7, 2024, airing on CBS Television Network, and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+ with Showtime. The awards show will air from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET.
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“We couldn’t be more excited to bring the CMT Music Awards on CBS back to Austin in 2024! From the electrifying, sold-out Moody Center crowd to fans packing the streets for our outdoor Congress stage, and Bevo himself walking the Red Carpet, our Texas-sized welcome proved to be one of our biggest and most unforgettable shows yet,” CMT Music Awards executive producers Margaret Comeaux, John Hamlin and Leslie Fram said in a statement. “We’re thankful to our incredible partners at Moody and the City of Austin and thrilled to bring CMT’s signature blend of world premieres, genre-blending surprises and once-in-a-lifetime collaborations back this April!”
Jeff Nickler, sr. vp, Oak View Group, added, “Oak View Group and Moody Center are honored to welcome CMT, CBS and Paramount back to Austin. We look forward to building upon the success of last year’s record-breaking event and to hosting another sold-out audience for Country Music’s biggest party.”
Jelly Roll was the big winner in 2023, taking home CMT Music Awards trophies for male video of the year (“Son of a Sinner”), breakthrough male video of the year (“Son of a Sinner”), and CMT digital-first performance of the year (“Son of a Sinner”).
Meanwhile, artists including Jelly Roll, Kelsea Ballerini, Wynonna Judd and Ashley McBryde provided some of the 2023 awards show’s most talked about moments. Performers and nominees for the 2024 CMT Music Awards will be revealed at a later date.
In 2022, the CMT Music Awards shifted from its longtime home on CMT to CBS, and in 2023, the CMT Music Awards earned its biggest audience yet. The 2023 show was the first to be held at the Moody Center.
First loves are always the strongest, and Darius Rucker knows the feeling first hand. The country star spoke with People about the backstory of his song “Sara” — in which he sings fondly of his fifth-grade girlfriend — and how pal Ed Sheeran helped him write the song that is set to appear on Rucker’s […]
Even before the reigning CMA vocal group of the year country quintet Old Dominion had inked its label deal with Sony Music Nashville in 2015, the group’s songwriting prowess and well-honed onstage showmanship had attracted the attention of country superstar Kenny Chesney.
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Seated at Nashville’s Morris Higham Management, who manages both acts, Old Dominion lead vocalist/guitarist Matthew Ramsey recalls the first of the band’s career-elevating, stadium concert-opening stints for Chesney, not long after signing their label deal.
“San Francisco 49ers Stadium,” Ramsey says. “I remember I had my AC 15, playing a stadium stage with this little barely working, crappy amp that I had pretty much moved to Nashville with. We played the show and someone told our tour manager, ‘You need to get your crew to get your gear off the stage a little faster.’ And he’s like, ‘What crew? We don’t have anybody.’ And from that moment they were like, ‘We got you.’ The generosity of his whole team is incredible. And it became the beginning of this.”
‘This’ is more than a decade in which Old Dominion’s members have established themselves as hit writers behind hit songs for Chesney, Craig Morgan, Chris Young and other artists, but also as purveyors of their own hits, including their debut single “Break Up With Him,” the dreamy, romantic “One Man Band” and the liquor-fueled, post-breakup kiss-off “On a Boat that Day.” They’ve earned seven Billboard Country Airplay No. 1 hits, won five CMA vocal group of the year honors (they are the reigning winners in the category and up for the same honor this year) and six ACM group of the year statues, while also scoring a Grammy nomination and two Top Country Albums chart-toppers.
With the group’s new album, Memory Lane, out Friday (Oct. 6), band members Ramsey, Brad Tursi, Trevor Rosen, Geoff Sprung and Whit Sellers aim to add to their chart-topping status.
Along the way, Old Dominion has also painstakingly built a reputation as one of country music’s leading live acts. They’ve now joined Chesney’s tours five times — more than any other artist — and have long progressed from filling clubs to selling out arenas, including on the fall leg of their headlining No Bad Vibes 2023 tour, which includes stops at Grand Rapids, Michigan’s Van Andel Arena, Boston’s TD Garden, Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena and Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
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Just weeks into the tour, the onstage spontaneity hammered out from years of road-dogging and playing gigs ranging from clubs to stadiums is readily apparent.
The band recently shared footage and photos of heart-tugging audience interactions from the tour on social media. During one show, Old Dominion aided in an audience member’s baby gender reveal, and later welcomed a woman who had been battling cancer to join them onstage to sing a song from their fan-favorite album Meow Mix. During another show, the group welcomed a young boy onstage to sing with the band.
“At the time, we didn’t realize his full story,” Ramsey says. “We found out later that he had some hearing impairment problems that he had overcome, and it was pretty cool to have him onstage. The same night as the gender reveal, was the night that the woman who was battling cancer just wanted to sing ‘Meow Mix’ with us, so we’re meowing and crying at the same time.”
“No matter what venue we are playing, we try to make it as intimate as possible,” says bassist/vocalist Sprung. “We just try to be authentically us, and when we see moments like that that show us our music is affecting somebody, it’s pretty great.”
Their approach to making albums has progressed, too. While their early albums were crafted piecemeal, slotting in recording sessions between tour dates, they took a different approach with their 2022 project Time, Tequila and Therapy, decamping to Asheville, North Carolina and steeping themselves in writing and recording.
They brought that same mindset into Memory Lane, including spending four days in Key West to focus on writing (which resulted in two of the album’s songs, “Ain’t Got a Worry” and “Easier Said With Rum”).“We don’t have to feel like we have to make it sound like a radio hit,” Tursi says. “We can explore a lot of different things if we want to throw a steel guitar and we chase the song wherever it takes us and there’s just no worry about where it ends up.”
That ethos rings true on their new album. Sonically, Memory Lane ranges from the remorseful “Both Sides of the Bed,” to the vivid swirl of lyrics on “Different About You,” such as “Don’t nobody want to be the yellow Starburst/Everybody reaching for the cherry first.”
“I have a good friend who works with inner-city, underprivileged kids and she became attached to this one young girl, [who] was dating a guy who wasn’t abusing her or anything, but she wasn’t getting the love and affirmation she needed. And she had said, ‘I don’t want to be your yellow Starburst.’ I knew exactly what she meant, and I wrote it down. Sometimes a whole song just hinges on one line.”
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Another album track, the free-spirited “Some Horses,” marks the first song Old Dominion has ever recorded that they didn’t have a hand in writing (the song comes courtesy of two of the band’s longtime musical collaborators, Matt Jenkins and writer-producer Shane McAnally). But the group has been familiar with the song for more than a decade.
“They wrote it back when we were just trying to all struggle and be successful songwriters, playing writer’s rounds and things,” Ramsey says. “It was written in third person, but one day, I was talking with Trevor about songs we loved and that song came up. Then I was at home the morning before we went into the studio to work on the album and I started playing the song and just changed it to first person, because I identified with it so much more. We talked to Shane and texted Matt and said, ‘Do you mind if we change the song a bit?’ They said ‘yes’ and we gave it a shot.”
Old Dominion has been judicious with its collaborations on record, featuring soul icon Gladys Knight on Time, Tequila & Therapy, and fellow country music group Little Big Town on the Happy Endings album. With Memory Lane, it enlists “Tennessee Orange” hitmaker and Sony labelmate Megan Moroney for “Can’t Break Up Now.” The tart ballad, the group’s new single, debuted at No. 54 on the Country Airplay chart. It follows the album’s first single, the title track, which peaked at No. 4 on Country Airplay.
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“We had that song for probably three years now,” says Ramsey, who wrote “Can’t Break Up Now” with Rosen, Tofer Brown and Emily Weisband. “We talked about what kind of partner we would want in that — there was a million ideas and we never could quite land on one that we agreed on really. Then Megan shows up with ‘Tennessee Orange.’ She’s such a unique voice and so confident in who she is at this early stage in her career. It just seemed like the right fit. Luckily, she was interested in recording it.”
Elsewhere, Blake Shelton joins on “Ain’t Got a Worry.” “He’s been telling us that we’re his favorite band for years and years and years,” says lead guitarist/vocalist Tursi with a sly grin. “He finally was like, ‘You guys, let’s do a song together’ — so we sent him a few things and he liked that one. We happened to be in the same studio at Ocean Way [in Nashville], recording some other songs, so we hopped over and he sang the vocal.”
With the release of Memory Lane, the band is ready to introduce new songs into their live shows, bolstering their already deep catalog of hits with a new batch to further expand the ties between artist and audience.
“It’s like how Jimmy Buffett built his world and Kenny built his world,” says Ramsey. “We’re trying to build a whole culture when fans come to our shows.”
