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After walking away from the 2023 CMT Awards with three trophies and the most awards of the night, the rap-country music star Jelly Roll is now giving up an inside look into his life with a raw and emotional documentary.
Jelly Roll: Save Me is a new ABC News documentary that will provide an in-depth look at how the “Son of a Sinner” singer went from struggling with addiction and his mental health to country stardom. You’ll be able to catch his life story when it premieres Tuesday (May 30) on Hulu right before his new album Whitsitt Chapel drops on Friday.
The documentary announcement described the film as a highlight reel leading up to his hometown show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. Before then, it’ll be showing us his life before including his incarcerations as an adolescent and adult, becoming a breakout star in 2022 and how the singer grapples with his sudden rise to fame. In the midst of it all, we’ll get a peek at how he balances philanthropic work at a juvenile delinquent center (the same one he was in and out of as a adolescent) where he shares his story and attempts to help at-risk youth.
How to Watch Jelly Roll: Save Me
The country star’s documentary is considered a Hulu Original, which means it’s exclusive to the streamer and you won’t find it anywhere else. If you’re already a subscriber, then you can watch it for free for no additional charge.
For anyone looking for the best streaming platforms, Hulu is one of the most popular options due to its wallet-friendly pricing and library of shows and movies.
Hulu $Starting at $7.99/month after 30 days
Hulu offers different pricing plans that you can customize based on your needs. Currently, eligible subscribers can get 30 days free on Hulu’s standard, ad-supported package which is $7.99/month (or $79.99/year) to stream thousands of episodes of TV and movies in the Hulu library like Only Murders in the Building, The Beautiful Things, The Kardashians, How I Met Your Father, Dollface, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Handmaid’s Tale, Dopesick and other Hulu originals; along with most new episodes from network TV and cable shows the day after they air.
Hulu’s ad-free plan is $14.99/month ($139.99/year) for everything in the cheaper package but you also get to download programs and stream them offline. There’s a bundle plan with Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ for $13.99/month. You can even customize your channels by adding premium options like Starz for an additional cost.
And if you enjoy watching live television, Hulu + Live TV ($69.99/month) lets you access over 75 live channels in addition to the Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ streaming libraries. Hulu lets users create up to six profiles under one account. Stream from up to two different screens at once from any device including a smart TV or laptop.
Check below to watch the trailer for Jelly Roll: Save Me premiering Tuesday (May 30) on Hulu.
One of the tenets of life on planet Earth is that no one knows how much time they have here — although society generally expects that most people should probably live somewhere between, say, 55 to 90 years. It’s tragic when kids don’t make it to double digits, but amazing when people reach triple digits. Perspectives about all that change as age accrues.
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Thus, when Kimberly Perry wrote “If I Die Young” for The Band Perry around age 25, she masterfully delved into a touchy, fragile topic with a character who imagines her own premature death and the devastating effect “the sharp knife of a short life” might have on her mother.
Perry was not necessarily anticipating that outcome for herself, though a lot went into that song that she didn’t fully understand until she decided to write a sequel last year. She even went to therapy to gain more insight into the emotional genesis of the piece, which brought her song of the year honors from the Country Music Association in 2011.
“Psychologically, there was a bit of hedging of my bets with my dreams,” she explains. “I had such huge ideals, and dreams at that moment for a family, and for all the things that I did not see present in my life. I was quite a daydreamer, and I think for whatever reason, death — and a young death — almost felt more romantic than those dreams not coming true.”
The message of “If I Die Young” was enhanced by the deft marriage of an artfully mysterious storyline and a melancholy musical foundation, and its singalong chorus became a point of reference for an entire generation. When AMR Songs acquired select pieces from Perry’s songwriting catalog, CEO/partner Tamara Conniff queried her about the origins of “If I Die Young” over coffee, then casually asked if Perry had ever considered writing a follow-up about its protagonist, assuming the premature death never came.
“It was like this lightning-bolt moment for me,” remembers Perry. “But it was equally terrifying, so I procrastinated for a solid four months before even beginning to think about what that might look like.”
She also decided not to address it alone, knowing she could not be subjective about messing with a modern standard. Perry was writing fairly regularly with Jimmy Robbins (“The Bones,” “Half of my Hometown”) and Nicolle Galyon (“Tequila,” “Automatic”), and she had several conversations with Robbins about a sequel. It was the last songwriting idea they addressed before she was to record Aug. 27-28, 2022. Galyon didn’t know anything about it until they dropped the idea on her during the writing session at Robbins’ studio.
“I think had I had more time to think about it, I would have been pretty intimidated by the concept,” Galyon says. “But I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s go.’ It honestly just kind of felt like another day of writing a song.”They had some obvious parameters. For starters, “If I Die Young Pt. 2” needed to retain most of the original’s iconic chorus. The melody remains the same, and the only line they changed in that section was the finale: “Well, I’ve had just enough time” became “Now I know there’s no such thing as enough time.”
And where the original opens with that chorus, they needed to start “Pt. 2” with a verse, which would give the singer an opportunity to reframe the current moment and cast the chorus as a song from the past. They did that with the last line of the pre-chorus: “I’m changing my tune since I said …”
And Perry literally changed her tune. She altered the melody in the verses, introduced a new chord progression in the bridge and took on the viewpoint of a woman no longer thinking about how her own death would affect everyone else, instead contemplating how her mother’s passing would affect her. Her own real-life changes informed their approach. “She had just gotten married, and so everything was very forward-thinking,” recalls Galyon. “It just kind of breathed new life into how to write that narrative.”
The new opening verse reflected the wedding — she eloped with husband Johnny Costello, driving to Las Vegas from Los Angeles in a black convertible, Perry thrusting her hands in the air in jubilation for much of the trip. In verse two, the singer grapples with issues that accompany aging: She increasingly resembles her mother, thinks about her mom’s passing and takes note of the casket in the first iteration of “If I Die Young.”
“If it was somebody else, the word ‘casket’ would have maybe thrown me off.” Galyon says, “But what has connected for Kimberly in the past, commercially, has been those kinds of blunt and quirky adjectives and words. There’s something about that that works for her that doesn’t work for other people.”
The new version retains the same final words — “So put on your best, boys/ And I’ll wear my pearls” — but the clothing is celebratory instead of funereal.
“Instead of ending with a period, it’s ending with an ellipsis or an exclamation point,” says Robbins.Robbins produced the demo, then worked with Perry to assemble an appropriate band for the final session, centered on guitarist Bryan Sutton, who played on the first “If I Die Young.” They recorded it at Backstage in a higher key than the original and at a quicker pace, reflecting the singalong status the song has attained in concert. Drummer Evan Hutchings played in a way that emphasized key moments in the melody, and Jenee Fleenor came in later to overdub fiddle.
“It’s just wild how much space it takes up and how much the track is carried by fiddle,” Robbins says. “It kind of shifted everything for us.”
While writing the sequel presented a challenge, singing it did not. “This was a piece of cake for me,” says Perry. “My body, and my muscles, my voice knows this song so well that I just walked out of the vocal booth, maybe in a half hour, like, ‘Guys, I think we killed this.’ I like my original version, but my voice has matured and changed so much since then, too. So it was really a cool opportunity to get to document my growth in that way as well.”
Perry had several options for a first single with RECORDS Nashville, but ultimately the team settled on “If I Die Young Pt. 2,” since it helped tell the story of her transition from lead singer of The Band Perry to solo artist. Her brothers, Neil and Reid Perry, reportedly gave their approval to her revision, and RECORDS released “Pt. 2” to country radio on May 4 via PlayMPE. In its third charted week, it ranks at No. 52 on the Country Airplay list dated June 3.
She says she’s already feeling a reconnection with the country audience: “I’m finding that people, while they love the original version, they really are coming with me on the journey of ‘Hey, I’m so glad we have this version. Like, this is healing all the things for me and healing my inner child.’ ”
Tommy Prine continues etching his own legacy as a singer-songwriter in his latest outing, while Melonie Cannon and Cody Jinks pay tribute to the late Vern Gosdin, and Hannah Dasher offers a gospel-flavored song of grace. Meanwhile, ERNEST and 49 Winchester team for a deliciously bluesy cover of a Willie Nelson classic.
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Tommy Prine, “Cash Carter Hill”
A few nights spent at the Carter Family home offered creative rebirth for Prine; this song originated as a poem he wrote after hiking up a hill behind the home — a poem he later turned into song. “Paint not the picture of another man’s steps,” he sings, as Prine’s new song encapsulates his journey in crafting his own artistic perspective and sound apart from his own famous father’s — the late singer-songwriter John Prine. The track steadily builds from stark acoustics to a full-bodied, gleeful blend of rhythms and electric guitar, led by elegant lyricism. “Cash Carter Hill” will appear on Prine’s debut album, This Far South, out June 23 via Thirty Tigers.
Melonie Cannon and Cody Jinks, “Set ‘Em Up Joe”
On her new album, Cannon pays homage to one of her mentors, the late Vern Gosdin–and she welcomes a slew of collaborators to join in, including Willie Nelson, Vince Gill and Alison Krauss.
Cody Jinks joins on a version of Gosdin’s “Set ‘Em Up Joe,” which served as the second single from Gosdin’s 1988 classic project Chiseled in Stone (and became a No. 1 hit on Billboard‘s Country Songs chart). Cannon’s voice is warm, endearing and nuanced, and pairs nicely with Jinks’s grizzled vocal rendering on this enduring hit that itself pays tribute to another country music luminary, the late Ernest Tubb.
Over the course of her career, Cannon has provided harmonies on recordings by George Jones, Reba McEntire and others, and has vocalized on demo sessions for writers including Dean Dillon and Hank Cochran; this album follows her previous solo outings, a self-titled 2004 project and 2008’s And The Wheels Turn.
Hot Country Knights With Darla McFarland (a.k.a. Dierks Bentley and Lainey Wilson), “Herassmeant”
Mullets, flannel, and aviator glasses are back as Dierks Bentley’s wise-tracking “’90s country group” side project Hot Country Knights returns, fronted by “Doug Douglason” (a.k.a. Bentley). They team up with “’90s country star,” Darla McFarland (a.k.a. recent ACM Awards victor Lainey Wilson) for a hilarious track that simultaneously nods to the current social climate, with lyrics including “I backed up my dump truck, packed all my junk up,” that signal to Wilson’s recent social media viral moments that have focused on Wilson’s physical assets in recent months. The track is one of a pair of new songs from Hot Country Knights, alongside the intentionally Garth Brooks-esque “Midknight Rodeo.”
Hannah Dasher, “Ugly Houses”
As an artist, Dasher is known for her megawatt personality and for crafting zesty tracks. But here, Dasher teams with Robert Arthur to craft this ballad filled with gospel underpinnings, as she sings about finding a faith that involves embracing imperfection and eccentricities. “Well I ain’t no fancy castle/ Got too much junk inside,” she sings, pledging that if a higher power will take a chance on a fixer-upper, she’ll take down the for sale sign. “Ugly Houses” is part of Dasher’s upcoming album The Other D**n Half, out Aug. 4.
Grace Tyler, “Sound of You Gone”
This pensive piano ballad finds Tyler in the depths of grief, desperately seeking ways to bring back a loved one as she catalogs the myriad of little ways that absence is acutely felt — from a leaky faucet that’s not yet fixed to a phone that now is silent. By the song’s bridge, she’s conjuring up any bargain to bring her loved one home. Tyler wrote this stately, atmospheric track with Emily Kroll, Jesse Labelle and Liz Hengber and it intently captures the emotional hallmarks of loss — a timely message for this recent Memorial Day weekend. A superbly resonant outing.
ERNEST and 49 Winchester, “Night Life”
“Flower Shops” hitmaker ERNEST teams with soaring group 49 Winchester for this Spotify Singles release, a cover of the 1960 Willie Nelson hit “Night Life,” which has been covered by everyone from Ray Price and George Jones to Aretha Franklin and B.B. King. This iteration is soaked in tinkling, jazzy piano and tumbling with bluesy guitar melodies and swaggering vocals, as they ponder the road they chose on the key line, “The night life ain’t no good life/ But it’s my life.” The song wraps as they swap ad libs about drinking and doobies on this sterling showcase of freewheeling, homage-paying musicality.
Matt Castillo, “Corazon” (Video)
Castillo’s song “Corazon” is at No. 2 on this week’s Texas Regional Radio Report, and the south Texas native just released an accompanying video clip for the track. Housed on his 2022 project The River Continues, “Corazon” is a dancefloor-ready track, bolstered by surging guitars and flashes of accordion. The lighthearted music belies lyrics that depicting a guy who knows his relationship is ending, but his heart refuses to accept the relationship has fizzled. The music video highlights not only Castillo’s energetic live show, but the growth of his audience as he continues carrying a torch for more traditional-minded country music.
Brian Kelley, “See You Next Summer”
Kelley continues the beach vibes on his latest release. This time around, he offers an extra shot of twang, rippling over lyrics about a summer romance as hot as the beach sand under a blazing sun — and the inevitable moment as two lovers wrestle with clinging to the last few moments of their summer love. Written by David Garcia, Michael Hardy (HARDY) and Hillary Lindsey, this track seems ready-made for both country radio and the coming hazy, laid-back weeks.
When Lainey Wilson played Nashville’s weekly Song Suffragettes show for the first time in December 2014, the experience was enlightening.
She had moved to Nashville over three years prior, just in time to watch country music shift into the bro-country age, when guys singing about beer parties and bonfires in rural fields made it even more difficult for women to find a place on country radio. Song Suffragettes, a songwriter round specifically for female writer-artists, helped Wilson find a sense of community in a heartbreak town.
“For me, it made me feel like I wasn’t alone in Nashville, and it made me feel like there’s an army of women who all want the same thing,” she recalls. “It’s important for us to hold hands and run to the finish line together. That’s what it’s about. It’s about lifting each other up and encouraging each other and telling each other the truth.”
The truth is times are still tough for women in music now that bro country is no longer the genre’s hot trend. Song Suffragettes, however, is in expansion mode as it celebrates its 10th year as a focused Music City talent showcase. The show launched a monthly London edition in November and will also open a monthly New York version on June 13 at City Winery.
“There has been very little movement in the artistic progress of women in this genre,” says Suffragettes president/founder Todd Cassetty. “But you just keep getting up and fighting the fight. I’m always looking for other avenues to expand or to provide opportunities. It’s like, can we just grow this so that there are more opportunities [for women], even if the industry is not going to provide them itself?”
It’s not like the opportunities are undeserved. Nashville is a magnet for musical talent, and the latest installment — May 22 at The Listening Room, which recently added a second Suffragettes show every Monday night — demonstrated the depth of quality. Six women conveyed their artistic individuality when they performed, with most playing three songs apiece. Grace Tyler led with a knife-like tone on “Jesus in a Bar,” Ash Ruder consistently served up original songs with craftsman-like vulnerability — particularly her smart treatment of hand-me-down traits, “Blue Genes” — and first-timer Audra McLaughlin impressed even her fellow performers with her Trisha Yearwood-like power.
To date, the show has featured over 400 women from among 3,000 applicants. Cassetty says 34 Suffragettes alumna have received recording contracts — including Carly Pearce, Megan Moroney, Kelsea Ballerini and pop artist GAYLE — while over 60 have secured publishing deals. Those numbers demonstrate the Suffragettes’ value as a launching pad for women.
“It was one of the first things that I did when I came to town,” Tenille Arts notes. “It kind of opened up some doors for me to be able to play. It was really awesome.”
Cassetty’s motivations for starting the Suffragettes are personal. Growing up with ’90s country, he was drawn to the viewpoints expressed by country’s female acts, including Patty Loveless, The Chicks and Martina McBride, and through his production company, HiFi Fusion, he has worked with the likes of Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire. Additionally, he has two daughters and wishes country had a larger swath of feminine role models.
“I don’t feel like they get the same country music female perspective that they would have had and that I enjoyed from the ’90s,” he says. “That’s always been a point of frustration — to see it evolve from songs with real substance to too many beers and trucks.”
Nashville’s music business has taken the issue seriously. CMT celebrates female acts through its Next Women of Country program, and songwriter Nicolle Galyon (“Thought You Should Know,” “Beers on Me”) established the female-focused Songs & Daughters label in partnership with Big Loud. Galyon actually signed the first writer to her publishing company, Tiera Kennedy, after checking out her performance at Song Suffragettes.
But some old tropes — including the suggestion that female fans don’t want to hear female artists — continue to dog the discussion, even though women were at least as prevalent as men in the Suffragettes audience.
“That’s what the Song Suffragettes are still are trying to prove, is that women want to hear women,” says Arts. “I know that they do. I see it at concerts. I see it in my fans. I see it everywhere. We love it. I mean, men can’t talk about the things that women want to hear about.”
But radio stations still give women short shrift. A new study of 29 country stations by Jan Diehm, of The Pudding, and Dr. Jada Watson, found that women were played back-to-back a mere 0.5% of the time.
“I naively thought that if we could curate the best and brightest female singer-songwriters in Nashville that that would bring enough awareness to the level of talent that we have in this town that is female and call the labels, radio and streamers to all embrace more women and do better at the disparity that exists,” Cassetty says.
That leaves an underappreciated talent pool available for other avenues. It’s why Cassetty has established the satellite Suffragettes shows in London and New York, and why he has been in talks to possibly bring the show to cable. There’s a steady current of accomplished songwriters with strong voices ready for a marketplace that simply doesn’t know they exist. And it can be argued that Suffragettes has enabled some of those women to become even stronger at their craft by simply experiencing their competition.
“Song Suffragettes has been a really good metric for girls to get up and go, ‘OK, where do I fit in all of this? How do I see my artistry or my writing sensibilities fitting within all my peers?’ ” Galyon says. “Getting up onstage and playing a round is a really good way to learn.”
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In 2011, an 11-year-old girl delivered a rendition of the national anthem in Dallas that was so bad, her family received death threats.
That’s correct — death threats over a poor vocal performance, for a kid and her family.
That kid is now 21-year-old Harper Grace, who has used her traumatic experience as fuel for her creative fire, signing to Curb Records and going on a national anthem redemption tour in which she sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” for a series of sports events. Grace addresses the humiliation from her anthem performance, and her bounce-back, in a new track: the appropriately titled “Oh Say Can You See,” released to digital service providers on May 19.
“It’s like an autobiography of what I went through as a kid, as well as a story to my younger self and encouragement to the listener,” Grace says.
In a perfect world, the national anthem has positive immediate effects for the people who sing it. LeAnn Rimes and The Chicks nurtured their careers with multiple anthem performances at Texas Rangers baseball games, Gabby Barrett earned whoops and hollers from programmers at the 2020 Country Radio Seminar, and Chris Stapleton — after initially being treated with skepticism by some anti-country consumers — delivered one of the best-ever versions of the “Banner” at this year’s Super Bowl.
But the anthem has brought its share of pain. Luke Bryan was derided for writing the lyrics on his hand when he sang it at a Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Lauren Alaina had to stop for five seconds and regain her composure when she sang at a Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day game. And The Eli Young Band’s Mike Eli was castigated on Twitter as unpatriotic when technical difficulties intervened at an Arrowhead Stadium performance of the anthem in 2010 and he had to start over again.
“I got a lot of heat for it,” he remembered in 2011. “But I got through it and lived to sing another day, and another anthem.”
Some artists routinely skip opportunities to do the “Banner,” but others — such as The Oak Ridge Boys, Joe Nichols and Darius Rucker — seem to relish it, in part because it allows them to attend sports events with VIP accommodations. But the anthem can bring a heavy amount of pressure, and it’s easy to overthink it since the crowd gets quiet and focuses on the performance, which carries a lot of personal significance to people as they stand with their hands over their hearts.
“That’s the most nervous I get for any song I sing,” says Scotty McCreery. “I don’t get too nervous for a lot of things, but you want to pay your country respect and do the song justice. We’re thinking words, we’re thinking melody and all sorts of stuff as a singer.”
Grace’s experience was horrific. She performed at a Dallas soccer game, but despite her tender age, she didn’t get any kind of a rehearsal. No one warned her about the excessive echo at a ballpark; no one told her the audience had its own distracting, noise-making ritual; and she started too low, struggling throughout the performance with pitch. She hesitated frequently, which just drew the experience out longer. The game aired nationally on TV, and she went viral with videos that dogged her for the worst anthem of all time. It was brutal at school.
“I was shoved in lockers; kids threw deodorant sticks and hair spray cans at me,” she recounts. “I would get prank calls with them singing the anthem on the phone, knives with fake blood in our personal mailbox at home, and death threats and people telling me and my family how they were going to rape and murder me. My face was plastered on Belgium and China newspapers with languages I couldn’t even read.”
Despite all the negativity, she was determined to use her nightmare as a motivation to conquer her fears, and she fought back gradually, developing her vocal craft and competing on the pressure-filled American Idol before moving to Nashville and securing her recording contract. “Oh Say Can You See” documents her emotional journey and serves as encouragement to anyone fighting to earn respect.
Leading up to the song’s release, she performed the anthem in a number of locales — including San Diego, Nashville and St. Louis — and watched some of her fears melt away.
“It made me realize that I’m stronger from the whole experience,” Grace says, “but it’s constantly making me learn more bravery and courage as I face the thing that scares me the most, which is the anthem.”
As if “The Star-Spangled Banner” was not already challenging, the song can be treated as a competition piece. Nichols recalls singing “God Bless America” at an all-star game when Idina Menzel did a highly produced version of the anthem. He was singing “America” a cappella, and he caught flak for the spare approach, though he maintains that simple is the best way to go.
“It’s terrifying, but the way I look at the anthem and ‘God Bless America,’ I don’t like a lot of ‘me’ moments,” he says. “To me, that kind of distracts from the song a little bit, and it makes it about you — you know, ‘Check me out, how I can just sing every note possible in a 1-minute, 15-second song.’ It feels like it takes a little bit of the spirit out of it.”
BRELAND, Track45 and Brittany Spencer have all delivered their own versions of the anthem this year, and there will be several performances during CMA Fest in June. The “Banner” is connected to the nation’s history, and every American has their own history with the song. Grace hopes to overcome hers.
“I’m still constantly facing the giant,” she says, “and trying to slay it every single day that I open my mouth to sing the song that represents America.”
Joy McKean, the Australian singer, songwriter and country music scene builder who, along with her husband, the late Slim Dusty, formed one of this nation’s great creative partnerships, died Thursday (May 25) following a battle with cancer. She was 93.
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“Joy passed away peacefully last night with family by her side,” reads a message from her family, issued Friday (May 26).
A trailblazer in the country scene, McKean enjoyed a career spanning more than 70 years, and composed some of the genre’s most celebrated songs, from “The Biggest Disappointment” to “Ringer from the Top End,” “Walk a Country Mile,” “Indian Pacific” and “Lights on the Hill,” an award-winning hit for her husband Slim Dusty, whom she married in 1951. Many others have covered the song, including Keith Urban.
Lauded as the “grand lady” of Australian country, McKean made cut her teeth in the 1940s and ‘50s, working alongside her sister Heather — as the McKean Sisters.
Joy McKean in the 1950s. Courtesy Kirkpatrick Family
Courtesy Kirkpatrick Family
After teaming up with Dusty, Australian country music had its golden couple. McKean wrote many of Dusty’s iconic songs, managed him for half a century, and the pair toured relentlessly in regional and remote Australia, at a time when the perceived role of women was that of home-maker.
With McKean as his support, muse and collaborator, Dusty released more than 100 albums and sold over eight million copies. Dusty died in 2003, aged 76.
McKean’s trophy collection is almost as impressive as her songbook. She’s a two-time inductee into the Australasian Country Music Roll of Renown and winner of the Industry Achiever Award, bestowed on her by the Country Music Association of Australia, which she co-founded back in 1992. She’s a winner of seven Golden Guitar awards, including the very first statue, won at the inaugural Tamworth Country Music Awards back in 1973.
In 1991, McKean was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for “service to the entertainment industry,” and, 30 years later, in 2021, was the recipient of the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music, one of the music industry’s highest honors. She said of the salute, “after what has been a lifetime of working in the music industry, and loving just about every minute of it, I find it fascinating to reflect on the changes that have taken place.” On the night, the award was presented by her children Anne and David Kirkpatrick.
Joy is survived by her two children, four grandchildren, and six great grandchilden. “She will be remembered as a pioneer in Australian music,” reads the statement from her family.
Australia’s music community is paying tribute to the country music legend.
“Where do I start about this beautiful woman, your songs will always be the melodies that makes my heart sing,” writes homegrown country star Troy Cassar-Daley. “Your emails always like a hand written note of encouragement and love.” He adds, “thank you for being the best yard stick a man can ask for.”
Joy McKean,Where do I start about this beautiful woman, your songs will always be the Melodies that makes my heart sing,Your emails always like a hand written note of encouragement and love.♥️ to Anne & David & kids thank you for being the best yard stick a man can ask for xx pic.twitter.com/AEQOKml8YN— Troy Cassar-Daley (@troycassardaley) May 26, 2023
“Vale Joy McKean OAM, the ‘Grand Lady of Country Music’, who has passed away at age 93,” reads a post from APRA AMCOS. “We extend our condolences to Joy’s family, friends and many fans. She will be greatly missed.”
Vale Joy McKean OAM, the ‘Grand Lady of Country Music’, who has passed away at age 93. We extend our condolences to Joy’s family, friends and many fans. She will be greatly missed.https://t.co/gQ7adMCdeU— APRA AMCOS (@APRAAMCOS) May 26, 2023
ARIA Award-winning country artist Fanny Lumsden writes, “What an icon. Someone I didn’t even realize I was following in the path of until quite recently. (I know, shameful). But will I will draw strength from as I continue to play halls throughout regional aus, sharing stories, running a business & a family. Thank you Joy.”
Joy McKean. What an icon. Someone I didn’t even realise I was following in the path of until quite recently. (I know, shameful). But will I will draw strength from as I continue to play halls throughout regional aus, sharing stories, running a business & a family. Thank you Joy— Fanny Lumsden (@Fannylumsden) May 26, 2023
As Blake Shelton winds down his 23-season role as a coach on The Voice, he’s far from finished with TV and other content initiatives. Shelton has teamed with showrunner Lee Metzger to form the new production company Lucky Horseshoe Productions, following the success of their collaboration on the TV series Barmageddon. With the production company, […]
UMG Nashville (UMGN) has named Chelsea Blythe executive vp of A&R. The executive has relocated to Nashville from Los Angeles. Blythe most recently served as senior vp of A&R at Def Jam, leading A&R efforts for Armani White, Anella Herim and 26AR. Blythe launched her music industry career as an A&R intern at Interscope Records […]
In April 1972, the Country Music Association held its inaugural “Fan Fair” at Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium, welcoming 5,000 fans and featuring artists including Loretta Lynn, Roy Acuff, Tom. T. Hall, and Ernest Tubb.
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In the five decades since, the festival — which was rebranded CMA Fest in 2018 — has evolved into the four-day festival that regularly draws 80,000 fans to downtown Nashville. On June 8-11, CMA Fest will celebrate its 50th anniversary, featuring performances from artists including Tim McGraw, Luke Bryan, Luke Combs, Lainey Wilson, Miranda Lambert, Eric Church, HARDY, Cody Johnson and Hailey Whitters.
That growth and evolution — which included relocations to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds in 1982 and to downtown Nashville in 2001 — will be highlighted in the 75-minute documentary CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair, which will debut on Hulu on Wednesday, July 5.
CMA Fest: 50 Years of Fan Fair marks CMA’s first feature film. CMA’s CEO Sarah Trahern and senior vp, marketing, content & communications strategy Kelly Striewski serve as executive producers on the film.
The festival’s journey is shown through one-on-one interviews with artists including Keith Urban, Wynonna Judd, Jeannie Seely, Lorrie Morgan, Dolly Parton, Frankie Staton, Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire.
“CMA Fest has taken several shapes throughout its storied history,” Trahern said via a statement. “As we step into our 50th year, our hope with this film is to underscore the one thing that has remained with the festival—its heart. We are thrilled to share the evolution and magic of this incredible event with the Hulu audience.”
“What better way to tell the story of CMA Fest than through the eyes of the artists, our industry and the fans,” Striewski added. “This film highlights the truly unique connection that exists within CMA Fest and how this festival has continued to grow the Country community throughout its 50 years. We couldn’t be happier to have this story debut on Hulu.”
“We have a long and valued partnership with CMA and are excited to expand on that by adding this extraordinary film to the Hulu slate,” said Rob Mills, executive vp, unscripted and alternative entertainment, Walt Disney Television. “We can’t wait to share this with music lovers everywhere, who will be treated to a behind-the-scenes look at the heart of CMA Fest and its many contributions to the country music community.”
CMA Fest’s history will also be feted with other exhibitions, including the photography exhibition “In the Hands of the Fans: Fifty Years of CMA Fest,” which opens June 6 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Additionally, on June 10, the Hall of Fame will feature a screening of the 1997 documentary Fan Fair Phenomenon, which aired on The Nashville Network. The screening will take place at 2:30 p.m. on June 10 in the museum’s Ford Theater and is included with the cost of museum admission, though Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum members can view the documentary for free.
A new study solidifies the belief that country radio has long been reluctant to play songs from women in general — and almost never plays two women artists back-to-back.
The study, by Jan Diehm of The Pudding and Dr. Jada Watson, is titled They Won’t Play a Lady-O on Country Radio: Examining Back-to-Back Plays by Gender, Race and Sexual Orientation. It pulls from the daily logs of 29 country radio stations in large market areas, analyzing 24-hour programming in each month of 2022 to see how often listeners of those stations could expect to hear back-to-back songs by women, artists of color and LGBTQ+ artists. Among the country radio stations included in the study were KKGO (Los Angeles), WUSN (Chicago), KKBQ and KILT (Houston), WKDF (Nashville) and WMZQ (Washington, DC).
The study found that at these stations, songs from women country artists were played back-to-back an average of 0.5% of the time. In data that is consistent with SongData’s findings regarding daypart programming, the majority of these back-to-back plays (46.1%) occurred in overnights (between midnight and 6 a.m.), while 19% were played during evening hours (between 7 p.m. and midnight) — time periods with lower listenership. In the intro to the study, an anecdotal sample is given, noting that if one had tuned into a particular (unnamed) station at 8:35 a.m. on Jan. 7, 2022, it would have taken over nine hours before hearing two consecutive songs from female artists.
“If you listen to this station non-stop from midnight to 11:59 p.m. today, you’d likely only hear three back-to-back songs by women, compared to 245 from men,” the report states.
“We’ve heard for many years that songs by women should not be programmed back-to-back — as we say in the study, it’s been part of industry rhetoric since at least the 1960s and was even written into programming manuals,” Watson tells Billboard via email. “But it’s one of those issues that is spoken about anecdotally and now we have this study to show not just that it’s true, but just how bleak it is for women, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists at radio.”
The new report builds upon Watson’s earlier work, including her March 2021 study, Redlining in Country Music: Representation in the Country Music Industry (2000-2020), and an updated version released earlier this year.
“As a listener, it’s pretty easy to pick up on the bias in country radio when you can spend 20 minutes in your car and go without hearing a single song by a woman, let alone back-to-back songs by women,” Diehm tells Billboard via email. “So, I was expecting the worst, but it was so much worse than that. My hometown station is San Antonio (KCYY-FM), the station we used in the intro of the piece — [and] you know it’s bad when you start to think of a station that plays women back-to-back at 0.99% as one of the ‘better’ stations.”
Diehm added that while compiling the study, she and Watson brought in statistics professor Sara Stoudt, who ran 1,000 “coin-flip” simulations for each of the stations represented. “Even when accounting for the already low rate of plays for women, 17 of the 29 stations played fewer women’s songs back-to-back than you would expect them to if the plays were left up to chance,” she continues. “Not that I needed convincing, but it proved even further that these were absolutely programming decisions and not something that stations could talk themselves out of. That one-two punch of qualitative stories and quantitative data might just help move the needle.”
Moreover, the majority of songs from women that are played back-to-back are not current singles. “Gold catalog” songs (songs that are several years old) make up 36.2% of the back-to-back songs played by women, while recurrents (songs that have reached their peak on the station’s playlist but are still part of the station’s programming) account for 43.7%. Meanwhile, current singles from women artists accounted for just 20.1% of the small percentage of back-to-back airplay for songs performed by women.
The impact of current music from women being absent from country radio creates a harmful spiral that impacts other areas of women artists’ careers. It leads to fewer women signing to record labels, fewer women earning performance opportunities on major tours, festivals and awards ceremony slots and fewer women receiving awards nominations, the study asserts.
“It creates a culture where women are competing only against other women for an already teeny tiny amount of slots,” Diehm says. “Playing only ‘gold songs’ by women artists also means that you’re freezing them in time, not allowing them to grow or evolve, because heaven forbid we let a woman gain or hold power.”
Songs by women of color and LGBTQ+ artists were played even less on country radio — earning less than 1% of airplay last year. Songs by female artists overall earned 11% of last year’s airplay, with 10.97% of that low percentage of airplay going to white women and only 0.03% to Black and biracial women. The study further notes that only six solo Black women and one group of Black women have ranked on country radio charts since 1958. Meanwhile, LGBTQIA+ artists received just 0.13% of airplay in 2022.
“The bar for entry is high for new women, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists. And then we’re left with this practice in which radio supports one woman at a time — and that duration for which white women are supported is becoming shorter,” Watson says. She adds that from roughly 2005 to 2014, Carrie Underwood, Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift received “sustained” support from radio and were responsible for a whopping 83% of the No. 1 songs by women during that period — and 55% of No. 1 songs by women over the last two decades in total.
While the above women artists still receive airplay (and Swift has transitioned to pop), Watson notes that since 2015, newer women artists like Kelsea Ballerini, Maren Morris, Carly Pearce and Lainey Wilson have received only “short periods of support,” adding that “the industry only lets one succeed at a time…This is a culture that limits space for white women and then tosses out their music once it’s peaked on the charts. They don’t even open the door to BIPOC women and LGBTQ+ artists.”
The report also offers historical insight, showing how female representation on country radio (specifically cataloged by Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart) rose from 6.5% in 1958 to a peak of 33.1% in 1999 (a time when the chart was based only on radio airplay). But in the decades that followed, charting songs by women artists plummeted to a low of 11.4% in 2015 (the same year that radio consultant Keith Hill made his now-infamous comments that compared female artists to the “tomatoes” in a male-dominated “salad”). The study notes that over the past seven years, the percentage of charting songs by female artists has averaged just 15%.
Though the Hot Country Songs chart now incorporates data beyond just radio airplay, the study shows that the numbers from the early 2000s correlate to Mediabase airplay data, which was used to calculate back-to-back rates of airplay in the study.
Going forward, Watson plans to continue studying the country radio format but is also interested in “thinking more broadly about the distribution ecosystem and exploring user engagement with Spotify’s recommender system.” She has also embarked on studying the Triple A format, which she notes has “a much different strategy for programming and is a format that has been a major launching pad for new artists of all genres.”
“Country music may be the closest to my heart,” Watson adds, “but examining representation in radio programming and charts of other formats is really important for understanding how these genre systems developed over time and work together within the larger industry ecosystem. Country isn’t the only format with these forms of inequity.”
Billboard has reached out for comment to a number of radio chains with country stations and will update the story as they respond.