State Champ Radio Country
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Last week, Garth Brooks took the stage at Billboard Country Live, where he had a wide-ranging discussion with Billboard’s executive editor, West Coast and Nashville, Melinda Newman.
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“I know this sounds corny,” the country superstar said of his upcoming Friends In Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk in Nashville. “I want it to be the Chick-fil-A of honky-tonks … I want it to be a place you feel safe in, I want it to be a place where you feel like there are manners and people like one another. And yes, we’re going to serve every brand of beer. We just are. It’s not our decision to make. Our thing is this, if you [are let] into this house, love one another. If you’re an a–hole, there are plenty of other places on lower Broadway.”
Brooks’ comments come following Kid Rock, Ted Nugent and Travis Tritt all calling for a boycott of Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch products following their partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney.
After Billboard Country Live, a number of public figures had thoughts on Brooks’ opinion, including Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz. “I’m sure glad we have Garth Brooks to tell us who is and isn’t an a–hole,” he tweeted on Saturday (June 10). “Question, tho: Does it make someone an asshole if they cheat on their spouse, write a song about it with their paramour, and then publish the duet with THAT VERY paramour? Or does that make for a good person, righteous in their moral preening?”
He posted an accompanying photo of Brooks’ wife Trisha Yearwood’s 1997 track, “In Another’s Eyes,” implying that the country star cheated on his ex-wife Sandy Mahl — whom he divorced from in 2001 — with Yearwood. Billboard has reached out to Brooks’ reps for more information.
I’m sure glad we have Garth Brooks to tell us who is and isn’t an asshole. Question, tho: Does it make someone an asshole if they cheat on their spouse, write a song about it with their paramour, and then publish the duet with THAT VERY paramour? Or does that make for a good… https://t.co/Qjs5JGS5Oa pic.twitter.com/ELMoUCBCiL— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) June 10, 2023
While not as aggressive as Gaetz, country singer John Rich also weighed in about the topic to Fox News Digital. “Garth Brooks has always been the guy that that said, ‘everybody come to my show,’” he said. “It’s something that we love about Garth. You know, he makes his music for everybody. And that really is what music is about. You’re making your music for everybody. Beer’s for everybody, too.”
Rich continued, “If Garth is serving Bud Light in his bar, that’s fine. Garth can do that. Garth might find out not many people are going to order it and at the end of the day, you have to put things in your establishment that people are going to purchase if you’re going to run a successful business. So, he might find that out.”
He concluded that Brooks “probably sees the pain and division that’s going on in the country and wants to try to help that.”
Women lead the way on Billboard‘s roundup of the best new country music this week, including tracks from Carrie Underwood, Gabby Barrett, and a collab between Lainey Wilson and Lauren Alaina.
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Carrie Underwood, “Take Me Out”
“Sometimes love gets covered up in life,” Underwood sings on her latest track, carrying on with the ’80s-infused synth-pop jams that filled her 2022 album Denim & Rhinestones. On this swirling, atmospheric track, she yearns for a night focused on heart connections rather than daily routines. Underwood is known for her ceiling-scraping, dynamic vocals, but here, she again demonstrates her superb vocal dexterity, lending her voice more to sultry purrs than rafter-rocking belts.
“Take Me Out” is included on the upcoming deluxe version of Denim & Rhinestones, out Sept. 22.
Lainey Wilson with Lauren Alaina, “Thicc as Thieves”
Lauren Alaina welcomes recent ACM Awards victor Lainey Wilson to join her on this body-affirming, friendship-cementing track.
“We’re thicker than our accents, thicker than our hair/ Thicker than the Georgia and Louisiana air,” they sing on this certified banger of a track, while nodding to recent deluge of attention they have each received online recently for their backsides. Alaina and Wilson have fun with the whole situation, even throwing in a line from Luke Bryan’s 2011 hit “Country Girl (Shake It For Me),” but the ferocity in their intertwined voices reclaim the booty-shaking command as their own. Full-throttle, empowering and hilarious, this track feels like a summer smash.
Gabby Barrett, “Glory Days”
Dreamy, sleek and groove-soaked, Gabby Barrett’s new release looks to extend the country radio chart-topping success of her previous work, including “The Good Ones” and “I Hope.” Barrett wrote the track with Emily Weisband, Seth Mosley and James McNair. Here, she finds the sacred in the mundane, spilling with gratitude for simple, family-focused moments — watching children playing in the backyard and catching fireflies, or enjoying a quiet morning moment with a good cup of coffee. As usual, her supple voice sings the fire out of this.
Kaylin Roberson, “Fish to Fry”
“The only thing blue is the water,” Roberson sings on this breezy track, making it clear that a fizzled relationship equals more time to spend at the lake — rather than wallowing in heartbreak. Roberson wrote this laid-back, summer-ready gem with Clara Park and Chase McDaniel.
Lewis Brice feat. Lee Brice, “Product Of”
Lewis Brice teams with his brother and fellow singer-songwriter for this Father’s Day-appropriate track, paying homage to their parents’ tender love story. This marks the first collaboration between the musically talented siblings, and their trenchant harmonies elevate the detailed story song. “Product Of” is the title track to Lewis Brice’s upcoming full-length project, out July 28.
When Catie Offerman performed for programmers during Country Radio Seminar on March 14, she provided the Ryman Auditorium audience a mystery worth unwrapping.
Offerman announced her first radio single would be “I Just Killed a Man,” then launched into a slowly unfolding storyline full of dark imagery and phrases: Cops, chalk outlines, a getaway car and a guy begging for mercy in the driveway. The story was spellbinding; Offerman delivered it with a clear, inviting tone; and it was easy to ponder even as she performed it: “Really? Her first radio single is going to be a murder ballad?”
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But after two full verses and two choruses, the bridge shook up the plot: “Just because it ain’t a crime/Don’t mean I won’t be doing time.” More pondering: “How can a murder not be a crime? Oh, it’s not a murder. This song is awesome!”
That’s generally the way people react to “I Just Killed a Man,” though not everybody needs two minutes or so to figure out that the song isn’t quite what the title implies. “I say the name of it, all the women think it’s about killing their ex-boyfriend — I think they get all giddy about it for a second,” Offerman says. “It ain’t about murder, but I’ve never heard heartbreak talked about this way before.”
Circumstances lined up nicely for “I Just Killed a Man,” a title that emerged before the final day of a songwriting camp in Nashville last August that had a handful of composers focused specifically on material for Offerman. At the end of the day’s work on Aug. 9, two of the writers — Ryan Beaver (“Party Mode”) and Joe Clemmons (“Rose Needs a Jack”) — hung out at Beaver’s place to brainstorm for the next day. They flipped on the TV, and the Netflix menu fortuitously promoted a series that debuted that same day: I Just Killed My Dad. A couple of word changes and “I Just Killed a Man” led them down a creative road that compares a breakup to a murder.
“We just started throwing lines back and forth, not co-writing, but just nonchalant,” recalls Clemmons. “You know — ‘They won’t lock me up for this one’ – playing with the metaphor.”
Beaver called his neighbor — songwriter Jessie Jo Dillon (“Memory Lane,” “Break Up in the End”), who was also part of the Offerman camp – and clued her in. And when they arrived the next morning, it wasn’t long before they shared the concept with Offerman and songwriter Benjy Davis (“Made for You”). Clemmons broke into a progression on guitar with and came up with a signature instrumental lick at the same time, and everyone pitched in.
“Catie started singing the chorus melody,” Beaver remembers. “It was such a collaborative effort. Benjy was such a great editor and writer that day; Joe was great. I mean, it’s really rare to feel that way because you sort of feel like you need a leader, or somebody has a better vision, and then the others are helping fulfill that. But not that day. This was a day where everybody was firing.”
“It was one of those days,” adds Dillon, “where you feel like you’re almost getting it from somewhere else.”
They wrote it in 6/8, an alternative to the typical 4/4 time signature. While it’s not the usual framework, it has undergirded such stalwart titles as Keith Urban’s “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey” and Jason Aldean’s “You Make It Easy.”
“I Just Killed a Man” “reminds me of [Little Big Town’s] ‘Girl Crush’ in a way,” Offerman says, citing another 6/8 predecessor. “The subject matter, you’re kind of like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’ And then you just can’t help but being soaked up in the feeling of the tune.”
The metaphor in “I Just Killed a Man” works in great part because songs typically treat the person who ended a relationship as a villain. But verse two cast both people in the breakup as victims of the situation. Still, it’s easy to picture the stanza as a confession in an interrogation room. “Jessie pretty much wrote the whole second verse by herself,” says Clemmons. “Obviously we’re all helping and everything, but she had that line, ‘Tonight it’s just whiskey and guilt on the rocks.’ And that is such a Jessie Jo Dillon line. I’m pretty sure she spit that whole thing out.”
As fluid as the writing session was, “I Just Killed a Man” ended up running long. Davis was key in trimming the excess. “At some point, we were messing with some kind of pre-chorus, and I remember really liking what it said,” Dillon notes. “But it was one of those things that I think happens in songs sometimes where you kind of have to — no pun intended — kill off your favorite character, because it just felt so good to go into the chorus as quick as we did.”
Beaver and Clemmons wasted no time working up a demo that night at Beaver’s home. The recording laid out a strong map for the final product, kept musically lean. “I’m in a two-bedroom, two-bath, little condo, and one of the rooms is just set up for music gear and recording,” says Beaver. “Joe and I kept it really simple. I was like, ‘Man, this just needs to be about this story. It needs to be about this vocal.’ ”
That made it a difficult piece to get right when Offerman and producer Dann Huff (Kane Brown, Brantley Gilbert) cut it at Nashville’s Blackbird Studios. Two electric guitars played the instrumental signature lick in unison an octave apart, but even as they tried to minimize distractions from the melody and plot, the track was still too busy. “This kind of song, you can screw it up just because it’s a whisper,” Huff says. “There’s no grandstanding.”
They later went through a couple rounds of cuts in the production, muting instruments to give space for the story to fully resonate. Offerman recorded her final vocal at Huff’s home studio, singing it several days in a row among a batch of songs. Each day, she became a little more relaxed with the process and a little more in touch with the piece’s emotional subtleties.
“Some singers try to over-emote, overtell a story, overact,” says Huff. “In this one, I vaguely remember us speaking about the fact that there needs to be an air of desperation, a quiet desperation. Not overly dramatic — that spoils the story. It’s just that ache and the resolve to the emotional part of the lyric.”
Offerman and her creative associates were all pleasantly surprised when MCA Nashville chose the 6/8 ballad with murderous allusions as her first radio single, releasing it via PlayMPE on May 8. Based on the reaction she received at the Country Radio Seminar show, she’s bound at the very least to grab programmers’ attention.
“When you send them a text, or a message in their inbox, that says ‘I Just Killed a Man,’ you know at least they’re going to listen,” she reasons. “That is a cool thing about this title. I think it intrigues people, and I think it makes them want to listen because what other song have you ever heard called, ‘I Just Killed a Man’?”
Country singer Bailey Zimmerman plays a game of Never Have I Ever at the Billboard Country Live event.
Bailey Zimmerman:What’s up, y’all? I’m Bailey Zimmerman, and this is Never Have I Ever.
Producer:Never have I ever lied to get out of a speeding ticket.
Bailey Zimmerman:I have, my first one. And it didn’t go good. I got a bigger ticket for lying.
Producer:Never have I ever made a fake social media account.
Bailey Zimmerman:Never. I’ve made a private one, but not a fake one.
Producer:Never have I ever dumped someone over text.
Bailey Zimmerman:I def have. I definitely have dumped somebody over text. And if it was you, I’m so sorry.
Producer:Never have I ever forgotten lyrics on stage.
Bailey Zimmerman:I have, almost every night. I get so into the music that I get so into just seeing people just cry and scream and I’m having so much fun that I sometimes forget what I’m singing. But it’s fine. It’s a good time.
Producer:Never have I ever dated two people at one time.
Bailey Zimmerman:Never. I’ve never done that — and I will never do that. That sounds awful. Could you imagine trying to keep, oh my gosh, that’d be awful. I don’t do that.
Producer:Never have I ever seen a ghost.
Bailey Zimmerman:I want to say I have never seen a ghost, but man, that makes me so scared because what if I do see one now because I said I haven’t?
Producer:Never have I ever overdrafted my bank account.
Bailey Zimmerman:Oh, I’m sure I have. I’m sure I have. My bank was just so small town that they never told me about it. They just let it kind of slide, but I’m sure I’ve been over before. Oh yeah. Everybody has! Who hasn’t been red in the bank account? Of course!
Watch Bailey Zimmerman play Never Have I Ever in the video above!
CMA Fest 2023 came to a close Sunday night (June 11) at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, celebrating its milestone 50th anniversary with a stacked lineup of some of country music’s brightest stars across multiple decades, demonstrating the enduring impact of the genre on generations of fans. The lineup featured one of the best-selling groups in […]
Jimmie Allen has been dropped by his record label BBR Music Group, the company confirmed to Billboard, just hours after a second woman sued the singer for sexual assault.
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“BBR Music Group has dissolved its relationship with Jimmie Allen, he is no longer an active artist on its roster,” said the label in a brief statement sent to Billboard. Variety first broke the news of BBR’s move and the second lawsuit Friday (June 9).
BBR Music Group had earlier placed Allen on suspension after he was previously accused of repeated rape and sexual harassment by a “Jane Doe” who had worked as a day-to-day manager at the singer’s former management company, Wide Open Music. In the wake of that May 11 allegation, Allen was also placed on suspension by his booking agency, UTA, and his then-management company, The Familie; while his public relations company, Full Coverage Communications, stopped working with him altogether. He was additionally dropped from the performer lineup at CMA Fest.
Allen has strongly denied the allegations from the first lawsuit, calling them “false” and vowing to “mount a vigorous defense” and “take all other legal action necessary to protect my reputation.”
In the suit filed Friday, an unnamed woman accused Allen of battery, assault and invasion of privacy. She claimed that after meeting Allen on a flight, she agreed to meet him in Las Vegas in July 2022. Among other claims, she alleged that while having sex with Allen in his Las Vegas hotel room, he ejaculated inside her without her consent and secretly filmed the encounter.
The woman further claims that, after being unable to fully delete the video from the sleeping Allen’s phone, she left with it and booked a new flight back to her home in Sacramento, where she reported the incident and turned the phone over to the local police department. The Sacramento police subsequently reported it to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, though Billboard‘s request for any public records linked to the report, submitted to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police through an online portal, was not immediately fulfilled.
The attorney who filed both cases, Elizabeth A. Fegan, said in a statement to Billboard that the new claims represented a “distinct pattern of behavior” by Allen and said she had “heard from others who share similar experiences.”
Allen’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment on the second lawsuit. UTA and The Familie did not immediately respond to request for comment on whether their status with Allen had changed following the new charges.
Allen’s career had been on an upward trajectory since his first single for BBR, “Best Shot,” hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in 2018. He scored two subsequent No. 1s with “Make Me Want To” and “Freedom Was A Highway” (with Brad Paisley), while “Down Home” reached No. 2. BBR was working Allen’s newest single, “Be Alright,” to country radio last month when the first lawsuit was filed, but stopped working it after the label suspended Allen. It reached No. 57 before quickly falling off the chart.
Luke Combs sends his 17th consecutive career-opening single to the top 10 of Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, as his crossover hit “Fast Car” keeps on driving, rising from No. 11 to No. 6 on the June 17-dated list.
In the week ending June 8, the song surged by 27% to 22.6 million audience impressions, according to Luminate, good for Greatest Gainer honors for the third time in four weeks.
“Fast Car” – originally a No. 6 Billboard Hot 100 hit for Tracy Chapman, who wrote the song, in 1988 – concurrently bullets at Nos. 15, 18 and 25 on Adult Contemporary, Adult Pop Airplay and Pop Airplay, respectively.
The cover follows Combs’ “Going, Going, Gone,” which led Country Airplay for two weeks in March, becoming 15th No. 1. His debut entry, “Hurricane” dominated for two weeks starting in May 2017.
Combs has a second solo single climbing Country Airplay, as “Love You Anyway” lifts 15-13 (14.2 million, up 7%). Plus, he’s featured on Riley Green’s “Different ‘Round Here” (Big Machine Label Group), which rises 45-42 (2 million, up 13%).
Combs’ “Fast Car” is the first Country Airplay top 10 remake of a Hot 100 top 10 since Reba McEntire’s “Because of You” with Kelly Clarkson reached No. 2 in September 2007. It updated Clarkson’s original, which hit No. 7 on the Hot 100 in November 2005.
Before that, two such covers hit Country Airplay in 1999: Alabama’s “God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You” featuring *NSYNC hit No. 3, after *NSYNC’s original reached No. 8 on the Hot 100 that year, and Mark Chesnutt’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” led for two weeks after Aerosmith’s original topped the Hot 100 for four frames in 1998.
Top-Shelf ‘Whiskey’
Justin Moore and Priscilla Block’s “You, Me, and Whiskey” also hits the Country Airplay top 10, ascending 12-10 (17.1 million, up 13%). It’s Moore’s 14th top 10 and first since “With a Woman You Love” became his 10th No. 1 last September.
Block achieves her first top 10, after her debut single — “Just About Over You” — reached No. 14 in December 2021 and “My Bar” hit No. 26 last September.
Additional reporting by Gary Trust.
“It feels so good to be at the 50th anniversary of CMA Fest!” “Buy Dirt” hitmaker Jordan Davis told the crowd Thursday (June 8) at Nissan Stadium. It was a sentiment that was repeated through the evening, as CMA Fest commemorated a milestone — five decades as one of country music’s premier connection points between […]
The most glaring elements of Lainey Wilson’s new single, “Watermelon Moonshine,” are its thematic similarity to Deana Carter’s 1996 classic “Strawberry Wine” and a lonesome slide guitar.
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But one of the track’s most daring aspects is so subtle that most listeners are unlikely to even think about it. The melody in the chorus is surprisingly similar to the one in the verses, which is a distinct departure from the way most modern songs are constructed. Consumers’ attention spans, it’s widely believed, are short, and writers and producers are generally sensitive to changing the tone of songs every few bars to keep listeners on board.
Wilson had that issue in mind even as “Watermelon Moonshine” came together.
“When we were working on that chorus, I remember thinking, ‘OK, this sounds really, really similar to the verses,’ because I try to make sure that my verses and my chorus sound completely different from each other,” she says. “We decided to go up, you know, melodically on certain words and down on certain words. We kind of massaged it to where it was just different enough. But it really just kind of felt like a lullaby, and I didn’t want to mess with that too much.”
The base melodies for those two sections originated with songwriter Josh Kear (“Need You Now,” “Most People Are Good”) building on the title “Watermelon Moonshine,” which he came up with in a simple brainstorming exercise.
“One morning, I made two lists — months before we wrote this song — ‘Things I love,’ ‘Things I strongly dislike.’ Not a fan of the ‘hate’ word,” he notes. “Then I looked at the lists and tried to combine my likes and dislikes into titles. My least favorite food of all time is watermelon and my least favorite alcohol is moonshine … I think I turned those lists into a handful of titles, but ‘Watermelon Moonshine’ is the only one I ever resonated with enough to try writing it.”
Kear was scheduled for an appointment on Jan. 12, 2022, with Wilson and Jordan M. Schmidt (“wait in the truck,” “God’s Country”). But he was under the weather and the COVID-19 omicron variant was raging, so to play it safe for his co-writers, he worked through Zoom. That morning, he dialed up the “Watermelon Moonshine” title and proceeded to write most of the first verse and chorus, waxing nostalgic about a first sexual experience. The top line’s persistence was decidedly not an issue.
“I find the melody somewhat hypnotic,” he says. “If anything, I felt like the melodic consistency allowed me to stay lost in the story without getting distracted.” Wilson and Schmidt immediately recognized that “Watermelon Moonshine” had a similar plot and title to “Strawberry Wine,” though Kear didn’t quite figure it out until later in the day.
“By then, I was so in love with the song as it was, I wasn’t really worried about it,” he says. “I felt like what we were creating was worthy in its own right. I also figure the world can probably handle a loss-of-innocence song involving alcohol once every 25 years or so.”
Wilson and Schmidt, working at Schmidt’s studio, helped guide the second verse, in which the woman recalls having her initial experience with both alcohol and sex at the same time. That, of course, spurred Wilson’s memories of her first taste of liquor. “I remember being 17 years old, and taking a few sips of whatever it was that we were trying to hide from everybody, and that I wanted to be drunk,” recalls Wilson. “I wanted to feel like I was drunk, so in my mind, I was like, ‘I think I’m a little tipsy,’ when the truth is, I probably got more tipsy off mouthwash.”
Written in the key of C, the bridge transitions into a B-flat chord — a departure from the natural key signature — and as a result, that section almost feels like a modulation to a new key, though it quickly returns to more standard triads. “This is one of my favorite bridges,” Schmidt says. “I do feel like our contributions altogether for that bridge took the song to a new level and kind of broke the monotony of it a little bit, and kind of makes the listener have to engage again, if they were becoming disengaged at all.”
Schmidt produced a demo that relies on finger-picked guitar, using reverb on Wilson’s voice in the chorus to demonstrate the song’s dreamy nostalgia. Producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Brothers Osborne) reworked it in the studio with Charlie Worsham strumming guitar to create a pulse at a slightly faster speed. Rob McNelley drew out the slide guitar for a long, aching sweep.
“I remember everybody just kind of feeling extremely laid-back, like a melancholy feeling,” says Wilson. “It did seem like everybody in the room was reflecting as they were playing. I know I definitely was.”
After the fifth or sixth take with the band — which included bassist Joel King, guitarist Aslan Freeman and drummer Brad Pemberton — it felt like that bridge section needed even more separation from the rest of the song. Joyce left space in the track for an additional guitar segment, filled later with a descending passage that keeps the melancholy while injecting a new creative thought. Additionally, it breaks up a sentence: The last line of the bridge is a lead-in to the third chorus, and by dropping the guitar into the middle of that thought, the new material leaves the listener in bittersweet suspense.
“It did take me a second when I heard the master to switch gears in my head; like, ‘Oh, this is how Jay envisioned it,’ ” Schmidt says. “Now I’ve gotten used to it and I love it. He’s one of those producers where he’ll never take it in the way you think it should go. He’ll take it the way he thinks it should go. And I appreciated that about him. I don’t know him — I’ve never even met the guy — but I feel like I know him through his productions.”
Wilson sang all through the process — on the demo, on every take during the tracking session and in vocal overdubs at a later date — finding small nuances to exploit as she progressed, though the final version doesn’t sound much different than her performance on the demo. “I literally did maybe three passes,” she recalls of her overdub appointment, “because I still wanted it to feel real and raw, and not completely overdone.”
Stoney Creek released “Watermelon Moonshine” to country radio via PlayMPE on May 9, as a follow-up to “Heart Like a Truck,” which peaked at No. 2 on Country Airplay. Two days later, Wilson won four Academy of Country Music Awards, including album of the year, for Bell Bottom Country. “Watermelon,” the project’s sophomore single, moves No. 55-47 on the Country Airplay chart dated June 10.
Should there be cause for a No. 1 party, watermelon moonshine is certain to be on the drink menu.“Better be there,” she says, promising a buzz: “I will give you a glass of mouthwash.”
Jana Kramer will soon welcome her third child and her first with fiancé Allan Russell. Kramer said via social media, “We’ve been keeping another secret from you guys…but I’m pregnant!!!! Beyond blessed and grateful for this baby to be a part of our story.” Kramer also told People, “I didn’t think it would ever happen […]
