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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.”
Rising singer-songwriter Megan Moroney earns a host of honors on Billboard’s charts dated May 20.
The Savannah, Ga., native’s first full-length, Lucky, arrives at No. 10 on Top Country Albums. The 13-song set, released May 5, earned 18,000 equivalent album units through May 11, according to Luminate. The set marks the first top 10 debut for a woman’s first title on the chart since Gabby Barrett’s debut LP, Goldmine, arrived at No. 4 in July 2020. (Moroney previously released the six-song EP Pistol Made of Roses, in July 2022.)
Moroney, a graduate of the University of Georgia, concurrently claims her first top 10 on Billboard’s streaming-, airplay- and sales-based Hot Country Songs chart, as her rookie entry, the new set’s lead single “Tennessee Orange,” bounds 15-10. The song holds at its No. 10 high on Country Airplay, up 5% to 18.5 million audience impressions. It also drew 9.7 million official streams (up 56%) and sold 2,000 downloads (up 11%) in the United States in the May 5-11 tracking week.
“Orange” marks the first freshman entry by a female artist to reach the Hot Country Songs top 10 since Lainey Wilson’s “Things a Man Oughta Know” hit No. 3 in September 2021. The latter also became her first of two Country Airplay leaders to-date.
Additionally, Moroney tops Billboard’s Emerging Artists survey for the first time. (The chart ranks the most popular developing artists of the week, using the same formula as the all-encompassing Billboard Artist 100, which measures artist activity across multiple Billboard charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200.)
Moroney is the fifth solo country female artist to rule Emerging Artists, after Barrett, Carly Pearce, Ingrid Andress and Lainey Wilson.
Moroney co-authored “Tennessee Orange” with David Fanning, Paul Jenkins and Ben Williams. She recently told Billboard of songwriters that she idolizes, including John Prine, “I think their songwriting carried their careers. That influence came from my dad.”
Moroney is currently opening shows on Brooks & Dunn’s Reboot Tour 2023, before launching her 22-city headlining The Lucky Tour this fall.
Luke Bryan and Peyton Manning are set to co-host the 2023 CMA Awards, which will air live on ABC from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Nov. 8. The country star and the former football great also fronted last year’s show.
Bryan and Manning are just the fourth hosting team to repeat as CMA Awards hosts. Mac Davis and Barbara Mandrell co-hosted three years running, 1980-82. Brooks & Dunn also co-hosted three years in a row, 2004-06. Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood fronted the show 11 years in a row, 2008-18.
Before teaming up with Manning, Bryan was the solo host of the 2021 show.
While Bryan and Manning are a great pairing, they are not quite in the same league as the hard-to-top pair of country legends that co-hosted the recent ACM Awards: Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton.
The CMA Awards, which likes to call itself “Country Music’s Biggest Night” (and has trademarked that phrase), will air live Wednesday, Nov. 8, at 8 p.m. ET.
The CMA Awards have aired on ABC since 2006. The show has aired on all three legacy networks. It aired on NBC from 1968-71 and on CBS from 1972-2005.
Luke Combs, Cody Johnson and Lainey Wilson each won two awards at last year’s CMA Awards. Combs took entertainer of the year for the second year in a row and album of the year for the second time in three years. Johnson took single of the year and music video of the year, both for “Til You Can’t.” Wilson took female vocalist of the year and new artist of the year.
Viewership for the 56th annual CMA Awards grew to three-year highs in 2022, with 9.7 million total viewers and a 1.79 rating among adults 18-49, after seven days of viewing across linear and digital platforms. The show was the No. 1 most social TV program that evening and the No. 1 most social entertainment program season-to-date. The event earned 3.7 million total social interactions (+71% above 2021) and 5.3M video views (+119% over 2021). (All figures provided by the CMA; Source: Talkwalker SCR)
The first CMA Awards Banquet and Show was held in 1967. The following year, the CMA Awards was broadcast for the first time – making it the longest running annual music awards program on network television. The Grammys first aired as a live telecast in 1971. The ACM Awards first aired in 1972. The American Music Awards debuted in 1974.
ABC is also the network home of CMA’s two other television properties, CMA Fest and CMA Country Christmas.
Dolly Parton gets a little political on her new song “World on Fire,” the first release from her upcoming debut rock album Rockstar (out Nov. 17). Parton wrote the song herself, and in an interview with NBC’s Today, the singer-songwriter discusses the song’s lyrics — particularly, a few lines that take aim at “greedy politicians, […]
BBR Music Group hosted a brunch at the 2023 ACM Awards under sunny skies at the Briarstone Country Club in Frisco, Texas. Held the morning of the ACM Awards on May 11 for more than 200 people and sponsored by Heineken and Billboard, the event was presided over by BMG Nashville president Jon Loba, who […]
When it comes to music, Ed Sheeran knows how to do just about anything, from selling out stadiums around the world to writing an endless string of hit songs for himself and his friends. But when it comes to chugging beers, the “Bad Habits” singer definitely had a steep learning curve when his “Life Goes On” singing partner Luke Combs recently gave him a life lesson in the quintessential American art of suds-based party tricks.
In a beery bromance Instagram video posted on Monday (May 15), Combs taught Sheeran how to shotgun a beer. “Alright, for context, Luke is… what is it, shooting?” Sheeran asks in the clip as the pair stand on a patio at sunset holding cans of Miller Lite. “Shotgunning,” Combs politely corrects his English friend.
With holes punched into their respective cans, Sheeran proudly announces, “Luke is teaching me how to shotgun a beer.” Bryan then provides a basic tutorial, explaining, “You wanna be mindful of where your top is. Cuz once that opens beer is coming out of that if it’s pointing at the ground. So you want this pointing at the sky.” Combs then offers to go first as Sheeran wonders if they should just try it in tandem.
“I think we go together, right,” Sheeran suggests. And then, after a quick countdown, they raise their cans, pop the tops and chug-a-lug, with Combs guzzling his can in just a few seconds. Sheeran — who famously has his own fully stocked pub at home — meanwhile, gamely tries to down the whole beer before tossing it to the ground with a noticeable thud that indicates he may have left some in the tank.
“That’s really impressive,” Sheeran says as Combs and the crew burst out laughing. In another show of transcontinental good cheer, Combs later commented on the clip, writing, “Cheers, mate! (Did I do that right? Haha.)”)
Though it was their first tandem pop and shoot, the stunt was not the pair’s first rodeo. Combs and Sheeran performed Ed’s “Life Goes On” together at the 2023 ACM Awards last week and in 2021 Combs invited Sheeran to join him on stage at the Country 2 Country Festival for a run through Ed’s “Dive.”
Watch the gun show below.
On May 16, 1998, Faith Hill’s “This Kiss” began a three-week reign on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. It became her fifth of nine leaders on the list, among 24 top 10s. The song was penned by Beth Nielsen Chapman, Robin Lerner and Annie Roboff. Hill co-produced it with Byron Gallimore. “This Kiss” was released as […]
Maren Morris is not ready to make nice. The country star took another swipe at her ultra-conservative nemesis, Tucker Carlson, on Saturday night during the 2023 GLAAD Media Awards, where she drew loud cheers from the room packed with LGBTQ rights supporters while accepting the Excellence in Media Award.
“Maybe I felt a little badass taking Tucker Carlson’s calling me a lunatic for standing up to transphobia, turning it into a T-shirt and raising $150,000 for LGBTQ+ charities,” Morris said while accepting the award that recognizes allies who have “made a significant difference in promoting acceptance of LGBTQ people” in their work. “That made me feel a little cool, but I don’t want to gloat. I would never insult the recently unemployed.”
According to The Huffington Post, the swipe at the former Fox News prime time host known for his xenophobic and homophobic rants inspired the crowd to erupt in applause. Carlson was unceremoniously fired, reportedly with little warning, last month in the wake of the conservative network’s $787 million loss in the Dominion Voting lawsuit.
“The crowds at my shows are a sea of diversity, from race, identity to age,” Morris added in her GLAAD acceptance speech. “It is a loving, safe space for my band, crew, venue staff and most notably, my fans. This community stood up for me and made me feel safe when I felt alone and I’ll never be able to repay them, but I hope I get to spend the rest of my life and career settling up.”
Morris’ ding of Carlson was a reference to the host dubbing her a “lunatic” and a “fake country music person” last year when “The Bones” singer was in the midst of a public spat with Jason Aldean’s wife, Brittany Aldean, after the latter posted comments deemed offensive to the transgender community. “I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. I love this girly life,” Brittany Aldean wrote in a makeup video. Morris initially reacted to Carlson’s firing in late April by posting an Instagram Story in which she wrote “Happy Monday, MotherTucker.”
Morris decided to turn Carlson’s haterade into sweet tea last fall by selling t-shirts with Tucker’s “lunatic” insult that raised more than $150K for Trans Life and GLAAD’s Transgender Media Program. Morris wasn’t done after that, either, going on to join the loud chorus of stars denouncing Tennessee’s anti-drag legislation during a performance at March’s Love Rising benefit concert for LGBTQ causes in Nashville.
Check out a portion of Morris’ speech below.
