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Women offer a slew of top-shelf new music this week, from new EPs from Ella Langley, Jordyn Shellhart and Caroline Jones, to freshly-released new tracks from Morgan Wade and Wendy Moten. Also in the mix are Kyle Nix and the 38’s, Texas troubadour William Beckmann and newcomer Josh Kiser.
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Morgan Wade, “Psychopath”
The “Wilder Days” singer-songwriter follows her breakthrough album with this tale of infatuation between two kindred spirits who find comfort in each other’s eccentricities. “Your dreams are your parents’ fears/ But can I steal you away from here?” she sings, on a succinct, heart-reeling line. She also blurs the swaggering spirit of pop-punk, acoustic country sensibilities and top 40 verve. Though Wade possesses enviable vocal power, here she relies on her gritty lower range to intimate effect. A solo write from Wade, “Psychopath” is the title track to Wade’s upcoming album, out Aug. 25.
Ella Langley, Excuse the Mess EP
Langley brings a heavy dose of hard-driving rock, alongside tender balladry and intimate songwriting, to this project’s compact eight tracks. “You make me wanna drink ’til I’m sick of it,” she sings, depicting a relentless emotional war on the searing “Make Me Wanna Smoke.” She offers slowed-down, moody modern country on the title track, warning a potential suitor that if he gets too close, her heart’s as messy as her home; she later circles back to the premise of being content with imperfection on the softly acoustic album closer “Don’t We All.” Meanwhile, “Could’ve Been Her” finds Langley musing about her ex-lover’s new flame, and contemplating all the ways she would have to compromise herself in order to stay in the relationship (“If I’d just hung around, didn’t know my worth/ I could’ve been her”). Overall, this album offers an all-around solid look into the specificity of Langley’s artistry.
Jordyn Shellhart, Primrose EP
A former Billboard Country Rookie of the Month, Shellhart releases her Warner Music Nashville EP Primrose this week as a testament to her sterling talents as both vocalist and songwriter. Over the course of a dozen songs, she sings of the struggle to live up to the influence of her musical idol on “Joni,” excavates the emotional origins of an argument with a lover on “Who Are You Mad At,” predicts the tide-turning future of a reckless lover on “Maybe Someday You’ll Have a Daughter,” and concludes with the intensely personal and unique perspective of “Near-Death Experience,” a solo write from Shellhart. This project is chock-full of top-shelf songwriting, with Shellhart paired with co-writers including Allen Shamblin, Cameron Jaymes and Barry Dean. A collection that offers immense career promise.
Caroline Jones feat. Vince Gill, “By Way of Sorrow”
Jones’ airy, choral vocal lends a shimmering acoustic take on this song from bluegrass group Cry, Cry, Cry’s self-titled 1998 album. Jones’ rendering veers less bright and joyous than the original, instead capturing a calm prescient mood, the cusp of sorrow shifting to joy. Meanwhile, Country Music Hall of Fame member Gill’s aching harmonies further uplift the track, as do sweetly delivered fiddle and mandolin. Jones, who serves as the first and only female member of Zac Brown Band, includes this track on her newly-released EP, Superpower.
Wendy Moten, “Don’t Give Up”
Moten has been a formidable vocal thread in country music’s live music scene for years, having performed with Faith Hill, Tim McGraw and Vince Gill; her genre-fluid talents have also added depth and nuance to a cross-section of collaborations and continents, as she’s performed with Julio Iglesias and John Oates, but also earned a top 10 hit in the U.K. with “Come in Out of the Rain.” She brought her singular vocal talents to runner-up status on The Voice. But here, she offers a more intimate collaboration, on a song Moten wrote with David Santos more than a decade ago. Moten throws a soul celebration and spills with joy and grit on a song crafted as a purveyor of determination and solidarity.
Kyle Nix and the 38’s, “Play Nice”
Turnpike Troubadours fiddle player Kyle Nix previously branched out with his own solo album in 2020, and continues his varied artistic expression with another supergroup of sorts, Kyle Nix and the 38’s. The group is made of Nix’s Troubadours bandmate, drummer Gabe Pearson, along with guitarist Adam Duran, guitarist-singer Ken Pomeroy, multi-instrumentalist Kevin Foster, and former American Aquarium bassist Bill Corbin. Nix and company recently released “Play Nice” and “Another Bad Dream,” both flashes of their upcoming album, After the Flood, Vol. 1, out July 28. The former track is a scorching, bluesy enticement, with a heavy bassline, distorted guitar, and coolly gritty vocals, that dissects a strained relationship.
William Beckmann, “Tennessee Drinkin’”
This Del Rio, Texas, native recently scored a local hit with “Damn This Heart of Mine,” and follows with this song of memories and longing undimmed by distance. Written by Beckmann with Jeremy Spillman and Randy Montana, this song is compelled by basslines and fiddle as smooth as Beckmann’s Texas-polished voice.
Josh Kiser, “How I Get High”
This Tennessee native conjures a seductive country-soul track that adds to music’s romance-as-dependency canon. Here, a soaring melody adeptly plays to Kiser’s vocal strengths as a fervent vocalist, his grainy instrument breaking in all the right places. This track, which Kiser wrote with Kat Higgins and Phil Barton, melds his soulful swagger with a bed of polished rhythms and bluesy guitar.
Lainey Wilson and Jelly Roll reprised their recent performance of the latter’s “Save Me” at the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards, bringing their soulful duet to the stage of the season 21 American Idol finale on Sunday (May 21). Jelly Roll began the song solo, standing center stage under dim lights, before being joined […]
As three talented American Idol finalists — Georgia native Megan Danielle, Mississippi native Colin Stough and Hawaii’s Iam Tongi — gear up for the three-hour season 21 finale Sunday on ABC, they will be mentored by one of country music’s leading artists: two-time CMA entertainer of the year Keith Urban.
Nearly seven years after serving as an American Idol judge from 2012-16 (seasons 12-15 on Fox, before the show moved to ABC), Urban will return to the Idol franchise as a guest mentor and will also perform his 2022 top five Country Airplay hit “Wild Hearts.”
“I had a great time as a judge and being on the show. Every season was a blast for me, so to come back and get to mentor and perform as well feels fantastic,” Urban tells Billboard.
Urban spoke with Billboard about the keys to mentoring rising artists, some unique upcoming collaborations he’s been working on, and when fans might expect a new album.
What stands out to you about each of the contestants?
I was telling [Idol host] Ryan Seacrest the other day that I think these top three are such great choices because they’re so individual and that’s what you hope for: that there’s strong individual artistry. For me to get to work with them one-on-one is going to be fun for me.
I think song choice has been key. Certainly, Iam has been making great song choices along the way. I am looking forward to working with him, particularly. I think what I am gonna try and do is find things that really play to their strengths. It’s such an interesting balancing act, with songs that you love but maybe they don’t play to your strengths, so trying to find something that’s going to really have them shine will be key for me.
During the finale, each of the three finalists will be performing one of your songs. How does that impact how you will approach mentoring them on these performances?
I love somebody doing their own interpretation of a song. I would be making sure that they don’t do a straight cover unless [that] version brings out the best in them. You just don’t want to be a cover singer. You want to show that you’re an artist with your own artistry. I’m gonna be interested to see what songs they choose. I think they’ve each chosen two or three songs of mine and we’ll narrow that down to the one that they’ll do.
Are there moments from early in your career that you look back on as you are mentoring artists?
I think a big part of growing as an artist is knowing what advice to take but also knowing what advice to completely discard, no matter who is saying it to you. Your path and creative expression may be something so incredibly unique that it just breaks every rule. So I’m a big believer in looking for the strength of an artist — the passion, hunger, curiosity and dedication to it. And at the end of the day, you have to believe in yourself and the journey that you are on. It’s the only thing that will navigate you through all of the shine blockers and the naysayers out there.
You have been in the studio quite a bit lately. Can you give an update?
I was in there a chunk of last year, recording tons of songs, and then I sort of narrowed it down to just a handful, which meant I had to get back to the drawing board and build a whole bunch of new ones — that’s what this year has been more about. I thought I would put an album out at the beginning of the year, but I wrote a few songs and they pointed toward a different balance of an album. I kept writing and recording and I think I’m probably doing the other half of the album. … I’ve got crazy ideas for certain things, and finding people to help me with that in the studio has been a lot of fun. And most of it’s been done here in Nashville and it’s just been great.
Is there anyone new that you’ve been collaborating with that you are excited about?
I’ve got one person that’s committed to singing on a track with me, an artist that I love here in town. I’m so looking forward to getting into the studio with her. And I’ve got another song with a wild idea to feature somebody who’s not a singer, so we’ll see what happens. They are an actor; it’s not my wife. It’s just a long-shot idea I’ve got, but if it happens, it will be crazy fun.
Could we see a new album release later this year?
I so wish it could be out this year, but I think more likely it’s gonna be early next year, but I’ll definitely have at least another new single out in the next few months and hopefully another song or two before the end of the year.
Maren Morris put her Bravoholic card on proud display Friday (May 19) by coming up with a hilarious song inspired by the Vanderpump Rules Scandoval.
In case you don’t know about the scandal that’s rocked the Bravoverse for the past few months, here’s a crash course: Back in February, OG cast member Tom Sandoval was caught cheating on Ariana Madix, his partner of nine years, with one of her best friends, Raquel Leviss. Except it wasn’t just cheating — it was a full-blown seven-month affair that took place under everyone’s noses, all while cameras were rolling throughout the Bravo hit’s tenth season.
By the time the Scandoval exploded into national news, filming had long since wrapped on the former SURvers’ lives, prompting Bravo to add an extra episode to the season to document the radioactive fallout. Naturally, there was a plethora of red-hot questions to be answered, including how long Tom Schwartz — Tom Sandoval’s longtime bestie and business partner — knew about the affair with Leviss, and whether he was covering up for his pal by making out with Raquel for a storyline. (Yes, it’s a complicated web the SURvers weave …)
When pressed for answers by his estranged wife Katie Maloney on the Wednesday (May 17) season finale, Schwartz deflected with a bizarre tangent about, among other things, man-eating crocodiles, to which Maloney unsympathetically deadpanned, “You sound like a country song.”
Morris seemed to agree, and decided to put Schwartz’s stream of consciousness to music in a truly inspired TikTok video. “My health, my wealth, my family/ There’s f–kin’ man-eating Nile crocodiles in Florida now,” she sings over peppy acoustic guitar, quoting Schwartz word for word using a clip of the scene. (“Theres a song for everything,” she captioned the hysterical ditty, also writing, “He’s a poet” in the comments.)
Maloney certainly appreciated Morris’ musical acumen, hopping into the comments on TikTok to write, “I’m deceased” with a series of skull and laughing emojis. “But you SNAPPED,” the singer replied, punctuating her thought with a funny crocodile emoji.
The ladies of Vanderpump Rules are also capitalizing on the Scandoval with their own music. Earlier this week, Madix and her co-stars Lala Kent and Scheana Shay starred in a new ad spot for Uber One that used an amusing remix of the latter’s 2013 dance-pop single “Good as Gold.”
Watch Morris lampoon Schwartz’s concerns over man-eating Florida crocodiles in song below.
There’s a reason that Garth Brooks won entertainer of the year a record-setting seven times from the CMA Awards. It’s because he simply has few peers when it comes to live performance.
Brooks proved that again Thursday night (May 18) at the opening night of his Garth Brooks/Plus ONE residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The 2 1/2-hour performance spanned 33 songs and combined the best of his previous one-man show at The Wynn — which ended in 2014 after running for five years — and the full-band, three-year stadium tour that he completed last year that drew more than three million people.
Brooks started off solo backing himself on acoustic guitar, under the guise of saying he needed to sound check how the room sounded full of people. He opened with Bob Seger‘s “Against the Wind,” which he sang partially a cappella. While it’s understandable to focus on his overall talents as an engaging entertainer and his almost supernatural ability to connect with his audience, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that his voice is a tremendously supple and powerful one, which he proved over-and-over throughout the night. He followed with “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” from Keith Whitley, one of his other musical heroes, and his own 1995 hit, “She’s Every Woman,” before bringing on his 11-piece band for a muscular, full-bodied “Rodeo.”
For the rest of the evening, he nimbly toggled back and forth between solo and band performances in what seemed to be a spontaneous set list. While his band was in fine form throughout, they especially shone on a particularly menacing “The Thunder Rolls.” His permanent Plus One, wife Trisha Yearwood, also joined him for four songs, showing off her peerless vocals throughout, but especially on “Shallow.”
Unlike the Wynn show where he narrated a version of his life from the perspective of his youth with a sense of awe of the musical marks his early influences had left on him, this time when he referenced George Strait, James Taylor and Seger, it was as often as a peer. That includes a moving segment where he recounted how stunning it was for him to hear his holy trio sing his own songs back to him when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. It also proved a clever device to perform three of his biggest hits: “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old),” “The River” and “That Summer.”
Audience members had to lock up their phones upon entry, which meant no photos, no video, and, certainly, no recording. The simple move kept everyone in the moment, but also allowed Brooks to debut a stunning new song, a dark ballad about finding pleasure in the pain, without worrying it would show up online within minutes.
But the moments of darkness were few (and included a stripped-down, emotional version of “Wolves” from 1990’s No Fences) because, as Brooks has said for decades, there is no one having more fun at his shows than him. His exuberance at being back on stage, embraced by adoring fans who gave him a long standing ovation simply for walking out before he sang a note, was palpable at every turn. Brooks joked earlier in the day that tonight would be the worst of the 27 shows in his 2023 residency; on Friday morning (May 19), he added an additional 18 shows for 2024 that go on sale later this month. If that is the case, fans attending upcoming concerts have got plenty to look forward to as opening night will be hard to beat.
See below for the full setlist from the residency’s opening night.
“Against The Wind”
Less than five hours before Garth Brooks kicks off his new Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace on Thursday night (May 18), he swears he doesn’t know what his first song will be.
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But the superstar loves flying without a net. “It’s exciting, right?” he says, talking to Billboard in the afternoon before Garth Brooks/Plus ONE opens. “But still, you’re not in this business as long as I‘ve been without having some kind of sense about you. So the net is the people that come see us. They’ve got me. They want to see me fly without a net because they’ve got me if I fall, but I think they like it as much as I do.”
And, he adds, making it up as he goes along is a chance to learn something new about himself as a performer more than 30 years in. “I don’t want to go to a gig, check the boxes and say good night. I want to come off the stage knowing something about me that I didn’t know when I came out there,” he says.
The run comes nine years after his five-year residency at Wynn’s Encore Theater concluded in 2014. Like that show, Garth Brooks/Plus ONE is largely a one-man show, but the Plus ONE gives him latitude to bring different guests up every night. His band will be seated in the audience, so when the mood strikes, he can bring them up to do a full-throated, muscular version of a song like “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” rather than a stripped-down acoustic set. Or his wife Trisha Yearwood could join, as could other entertainers. But as he also explained, the music is the ultimate Plus ONE that has been with him his whole life.
As much as he plans to hit the stage without a plan, Brooks does know that there are songs that people are coming to hear, and “99% of those are going to be Garth Brooks songs,” he says. So, unlike the Wynn show, which relied heavily on songs by artists like James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Bob Seger, who influenced him, it sounds like this show will still include vital covers since Brooks is a veritable human jukebox, but that more of the songs will come from his own voluminous catalog.
Attendees must lock up their phones and no videoing or taping is allowed during the show. Brooks says that gives him the freedom to perform previously unreleased material or songs that he is still in the process of writing. In fact, he vowed to play something brand-new the first evening. “It’s a laboratory,” he says.
He landed at Caesars after having serious discussions with a number of Las Vegas venues and a long courtship. “[Caesars executives] traveled to Nashville. We talked over dinners. We didn’t talk about business, we talked about children, talked about stuff like that. They made it sound very much that they were very interested in phone calls, texts,” he says. “They were going through some other stuff with some of their other entertainers, and when you would talk about that, their immediate response was, ‘We’re focused on you. This is a goal for us.’ It made you feel very wanted. And to be honest with you, it wasn’t an inexpensive deal for them. So they have gone above and beyond, which is very sweet, but it’s like Steve Wynn said: ‘Now all the pressure is on you.’ Now it’s up to you to get out there and hopefully make them feel it was worth it.”
Brooks has always been sensitive to ticket pricing, with his tickets to his non-Vegas shows rarely exceeding $100. But the tickets for this run go as high as $2,500 face value for the front row and are $10,000 for a pair on the secondary market. With no seat more than 145 feet from stage, the lowest ticket price in the 4,100-seat venue is $99 and tickets average out around $350. Brooks says he will continue his long tradition of “stubbing,” where crew members move fans from the farthest seats to a closer location for free.
“What I love about these guys, too, was we said, ‘Hey, look, it shouldn’t just be for the rich to enjoy. Let us still do our stub thing that we do.’ And they have allowed us to do that,” he says. “You understand that for them to make their money back, things have to happen in certain ways. But at the same time, we get to keep our same traditions as well. And my promise to everybody else, too, is if this is too expensive, I get it. We’ll do a dive bar somewhere for free. Or we’ll go play somewhere and hopefully get the ticket prices more around your thing.”
With the 2023 run of 27 shows already sold out, Brooks announced 18 new Colosseum dates for 2024 earlier Thursday. Fans who signed up through Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program for 2023 and were locked out will get first dibs on 2024 tickets. The new Verified Fan on sale date is May 31.
Jimmie Allen took to social media on Thursday (May 18) to issue a public apology to his estranged wife, Alexis Gale, and his family amid serious allegations against the country star. “I wan to publicly apologize to my wife Alexis for humiliating her with my affair. I’m embarrassed that my choices have brought shame on […]
Garth Brooks stopped by The Kelly Clarkson Show on Thursday (May 18) to spill the tea on the time he found himself in the showers with none other than Steven Tyler. The country legend regaled host Kelly Clarkson with the story, which happened back in 2008 when he and the Aerosmith frontman performed with Billy […]
Country trio Chapel Hart — sisters Danica and Devynn Hart and their cousin Trea Swindle — have spent so much time on the road lately that they jokingly say they have added a new member to their family act: their tour bus. They’ve affectionately named it “Ruby.”
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“Fans will come to our shows and our meet-and-greet lines and show us photos of themselves standing in front of Ruby,” lead singer Danica tells Billboard. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do when it’s time for us to upgrade from this bus. I don’t know if our fans will allow that. We might have to tell them Ruby’s getting a makeover,” she jokes.
“Or we’ll have to be like, ‘This is Ruby’s Fam Damily, this is her son,’” adds Devynn, nodding to the act’s upcoming album track of the same name.
The New Orleans-based, Mississippi-born trio’s third studio album, Glory Days, out May 19, blends tightly-woven, family harmonies with straight-from-the-heart lyrics. “It’s not a dressed up, painted up perception of anything that we’re going through — it just is what it is,” Trea says. “Like in our song ‘Fam Damily,’ everybody’s got family members they don’t want to talk about.”
Glory Days brings fans deeper into the trio’s story and Southern roots, with songs such as “Home Is Where the Hart Is,” which namechecks several of their childhood friends, as well as a favorite Poplarville, Miss. restaurant Ward’s, known for its chili cheeseburgers and root beer.
“It’s a Mississippi thing right now, but we’re trying to make this a global situation,” Trea adds of their aim.
Chapel Hart’s new album follows its 2019 debut Out the Mud and 2021’s The Girls Are Back in Town. That same year, they were named to CMT’s Next Women of Country class.
Their breakthrough came in July 2022, when Chapel Hart performed on America’s Got Talent, offering their original song, “You Can Have Him Jolene,” an answer to Dolly Parton’s 1973 classic, “Jolene.” The electrifying rendition landed the trio a spot in the AGT finals. After the performance, accolades rolled in from not only Parton herself, but Tanya Tucker and Darius Rucker, the latter of whom invited Chapel Hart to record “Ol’ Church Hymn” with him on his upcoming album.
But that wasn’t all. Loretta Lynn also offered praise — and laid down a challenge for the trio.
“I love it, ladies,” Lynn wrote on Twitter. “Now I’m wondering what you might be able to do with one of my songs!”
The trio took the charge seriously, penning Glory Days’ “Welcome to Fist City,” an homage to and an extension of Lynn’s 1968 song “Fist City.” Less than three months following Chapel Hart’s AGT performance, Lynn died at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, at the age of 90. Though Lynn never got to hear “Welcome to Fist City,” Chapel Hart wanted to pay homage to Lynn’s legacy.
With “Fist City,” “Loretta was like, ‘Girl, I’m gonna grab you by the hair of your head. Don’t play with me.’ We thought, ‘Okay, how are we going to flip this?’ So we decided to extend the story,” Danica says. “It’s great because some of Loretta’s fans are showing up to shows or saying things like, ‘She would be so proud.’ It’s hard to not be emotional when you read things like that because you’re introducing a new generation to her music who probably had not heard it.”
In the short while since that breakthrough AGT performance, the trio has kept momentum, making its Grand Ole Opry debut last year and in April performing on the CMT Music Awards.
As the sole writers on approximately half of the new album, Devynn, Trea and Danica were less concerned with cramming the set with radio-friendly hits and more focused on creating a cohesive album that brings fans deeper into their journey.
“After performing a completely original song [on America’s Got Talent] and being received like that — not just nationally, but globally — it let us know that our writing is enough,” says Devynn. “Our experiences are translating with other people.”
Taking influence from the unvarnished, story-centric writing styles of Parton and Lynn, the trio began writing Glory Days with one audience in mind: their fans.
“Even with The Girls Are Back in Town, it was authentically Chapel Hart, but we were also like, ‘Do we think this sound would be good for radio?’ We were really trying to fit in,” says Danica. “But with this record, we just want to tell our stories, tell our experiences. We want to let the wall down and let them in a bit more.”
On “Perfect For Me,” written with Leslie Satcher, they pay homage to a lover who may not be flashy, but is hardworking and dependable. “If You Ain’t Wearing Boots” — the result of an “eight-hour write” between the trio and Steve O’Brien — takes listeners to Pop Hill, a towering hill in their hometown where they’ve often slowed things down and taken in life while watching the sun set.
“We went through like, 50 concepts before we landed on this song,” says Danica. “It paints a picture of how we were raised. It is one of our favorites on the album — it’s like the difference in how you can cook a meal in 20 minutes and it’d be good, but it’s those Sunday dinners that grandma started on Saturday night. That’s the kind of difference this is.”
In addition to the trio’s whirlwind album release schedule, they continue adding new performance dates, including CMA Fest in Nashville, Alabama’s June Jam in Fort Payne, Ala., and Nashville’s Concert for Love and Acceptance. To date, Chapel Hart’s catalog has tallied 9.6 million on-demand official U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
“Everything feels like a pinch-me moment,” Devin says. “Every time we start processing something amazing that has happened in our career, something else incredible will happen. We’re just super blessed and honored for all the doors that have been opened and it’s awesome to be in the conversation.”
One of the obvious differences between Europe and the United States is the age of their historic sculptures. The Greeks and the Romans, who reigned long before the States were even a consideration, left an array of ancient statues of leaders and mythical gods. Many of those figures, of course, are damaged — with missing arms, severed fingers or rubbed-out noses — but they endure nonetheless.
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In that context, the opening words of Luke Combs’ single “Love You Anyway” — “If your kiss turned me to stone/I’d be a statue standing tall in ancient Rome” — provide a sense of the relationship the song portrays: significant, remembered but broken.
“I just loved the way that that sounded,” Combs says. “It just adds this unique color, to me, that doesn’t necessarily have any particular meaning behind it. But a statue in ancient Rome feels cooler to me than a statue that exists today.”
While a sculpted image documents a historical figure for as long as it stands, “Love You Anyway” documents a moment in Combs’ relationship with his wife, Nicole Hocking. He played Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., on Valentine’s Day 2020. She wasn’t feeling well, so when he dedicated “Beautiful Crazy” to her, he acknowledged onstage that she may or may not be in the audience, then tagged the intro: “Love you anyway.”
Songwriter Dan Isbell (“The Kind of Love We Make,” “Fires Don’t Start Themselves”) was moved by that remark, and he logged it as a potential song title to explore in his next co-writing appointment with Combs. Isbell reached out to fellow writer Ray Fulcher (“When It Rains It Pours,” “Even Though I’m Leaving”), who responded positively, and the two actually texted later about it as they took separate flights to Key West, Fla., where they co-wrote at Combs’ house on Feb. 25.
After writing one or two songs earlier in the day, they launched into “Love You Anyway” late at night on Combs’ back patio, with a distant view of the ocean, while Hocking slept. The artful Roman statue verbiage gave them a starting point, and Combs and Fulcher developed a follow-up concept for the opening verse of a woman’s touch shattering him into pieces.
Through that point, the song worked like an Alan Jackson ballad: simple, lyrically driven, conversationally paced. But in the two lines before the chorus, the chords moved more quickly and the melody embraced a new arc, preparing the listener for the next section.
“My favorite part of the song is that pre-chorus where it does that kind of scaling,” says Fulcher. “I’ve always thought of that melody as more of like a pop kind of melody, but it’s also haunting in a way. Those pre-choruses, in order to be right, they really need to set up what’s coming next.”
That pre-chorus led to a more dramatically pitched chorus, in which the singer hails the woman as a grounding force in his life, a “compass needle” that provided guidance. And as it concludes, he tells her that if he had known she would break his heart, he would “love you anyway.” The compass was Fulcher’s idea, and he and Combs had to defend it.
“I actually fought that line a little bit,” Isbell admits. “I was just like, ‘Compass needle?’ Like I didn’t understand what it was -— they literally had to explain it to my redneck ass what that even meant. As a redneck, we didn’t use compasses. You just turn right by the damn tree. I didn’t really know.”
“The thing about the compass is there’s nothing you can do to change where north and south, east and west are,” says Fulcher. “It just is what it is. And that’s the character of this song. It’s like, he’s got no choice in the matter. That’s what’s powerful about it.”
When they finished the song, Combs sang a guitar/vocal version and posted it to his Instagram account that same night.
“It didn’t really get the response I thought it was going to get,” Combs says. “A couple years later, I think we put it on TikTok or something, people were freaking out over it. It’s interesting. That’s probably the first song of mine that I’ve seen work like that.”
Combs recorded a version of “Love You Anyway” with co-producers Jonathan Singleton and Chip Matthews at Nashville’s Backstage during sessions for the Growin’ Up album, but the results were — like the Instagram response — underwhelming.
“It just didn’t sink in like we hoped, and we had so much other material we were working on,” recalls Matthews. “I remember being at Luke’s house one day to talk vocals, and he’s like, ‘Man, I don’t know, we just didn’t hook it. It’s not feeling right.’”
Though it didn’t make Growin’ Up, Matthews didn’t want to let it go. While it was a heartbreak song, he sensed that it said something personal about Combs’ relationship, and he thought it needed to find its place. Matthews ultimately decided that if they slowed it down and stripped back the instrumentation, it would put more attention on the song’s ethereal images, and Singleton agreed.
Matthews reworked the existing track at a slower pace, muting some of the instruments to simulate a more spacious arrangement, and Combs gave the treatment a thumbs-up. They recut it at Matthews’ studio in the summer of 2022, with fiddler Stuart Duncan taking a prominent place in the production.
“The fiddle is the thing, to me, that takes the track over the top,” Combs says.
He worked painstakingly on the vocal. Once or twice, he showed up at Matthews’ studio, only to decide his voice wasn’t operating with the tone and character he wanted. When they finally found a day when the conditions were right, Matthews and Singleton tried several microphones before they landed on one that most closely captured the personal nature of “Love You Anyway.”
“We definitely were going for where you feel like you’re literally standing 3 feet away from him, so that you can hear all of the harmonic crunch and grit and air, and all the little interesting characteristics to his voice,” says Matthews. “Then by not building up a track that takes up all that space, it leaves all that stuff out there to be heard, and I think all that lends itself to the emotion being being conveyed.”
The new version made it onto Combs’ Gettin’ Old album, and it resonated with the audience, renewing an idea that succeeded once before. Trisha Yearwood hit No. 4 on Hot Country Songs in 2001 with the similarly titled “I Would’ve Loved You Anyway,” which likewise celebrated a relationship’s strength even after it had fizzled out. The musical treatment was different — bigger, and more dramatic — and it didn’t have ethereal references to compass needles and Roman statues either. Neither Combs nor Isbell were familiar with the Yearwood single; Fulcher forgot about it until he heard her recording days after they wrote their take on the concept.
Combs recently held a fan contest and let his followers choose the new single; “Love You Anyway” narrowly beat out “5 Leaf Clover” by about 2%. River House/Columbia Nashville officially released it to country radio on April 15 via PlayMPE, and it climbs to No. 18 on the Country Airplay list dated May 20 in its seventh week on the chart, all because Isbell recognized a title in Combs’ onstage conversation.
“That’s the beauty of when your co-writers are also your friends,” Combs says. “They’re always taking notes.”