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Carin León has released his own version of Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black,” available exclusively on Apple Music as part of the Nashville SC official playlist.
In the tribute song — which celebrates the launch of MLS Season Pass and the Nashville Soccer Club kit honoring the life and legacy of Cash — León delivers a soulful rendition of the country folk song originally released in 1971. It starts with León’s crispy, raspy vocals backed by warm guitar riffs and later transforms into a country fusion with Regional Mexican elements.
“Johnny Cash is an icon within country and American folk music, although his music continues to have a strong influence within music across all genres today,” the artist born Óscar Armando Díaz de León Huez said in a press statement. “It’s very important for me to be a part of this very meaningful project and we’re doing things with all of the respect that a figure as important as Mr. Johnny Cash deserves.”
Released over 50 years ago, “Man in Black” — which was a nickname given to Cash for the way he dressed — is a protest song he penned against how poor people were treated by wealthy politicians. “I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down/ Living in the hopeless, hungry side of town/ I wear it for the prisoner who is long paid for his crime/ But is there because he’s a victim of the times,” he chants in the lyrics.
“This song is a very personal thing, but it’s the way I feel about a lot of things,” Cash expressed when he performed the song for the first time.
Honoring his legacy, the “Man in Black” kit was inspired by The Backline Supporters Collective (the club’s fans) and created in collaboration with the Johnny Cash Estate, Sandbox Succession, and Wasserman Music. The kit will debut on February 25 on MLS Season Pass via the Apple TV app.
Listen to Carin León’s cover of “Man in Black” here.
Carin Leon
Courtesy of Apple Music
Two music legends united in Austin on Thursday (Feb. 16), when Bruce Springsteen brought his tour to the city’s Moody Center.
Before Springsteen and the E Street Band launched into their 27-song set, Country Music Hall of Famer George Strait, clad in his signature jeans and cowboy hat, made an unexpected appearance as he strolled on stage to welcome Springsteen to Austin. The two superstars hugged, and The Boss stepped back as Strait made his introduction.
“Austin, Texas, it’s my honor tonight to introduce to you a band that really needs no introduction, right?” Strait said, eliciting applause from the crowd. “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band!”
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As the attendees cheered, Strait and Springsteen embraced again. The country star then waved to the crowd and exited the stage. He did not perform during his appearance, though he does have history with the Moody Center, having helped open the venue with his show on April 30, 2022, alongside Willie Nelson and the Randy Rogers Band.
Springsteen has been selling out venues across the country on his current tour, and recently added 18 new cities to the trek, including stops in Chicago, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Toronto and San Francisco. The tour launched Feb. 1 with a show in Tampa, Fla., which marked Springsteen and the E Street Band’s first North American show in seven years.
Meanwhile, though Strait is known for being a torchbearer of traditional country music, with 44 No. 1 hits on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart, in addition to 17 total CMA Awards wins to his credit (including three CMA entertainer of the year trophies), the lifelong Texan is also known for tipping his hat to rock classics. He’s previously covered Tom Petty’s “You Wreck Me” (included on Petty’s 1994 album Wildflowers) in concert.
Watch Strait’s introduction below:
Bailey Zimmerman has stormed Billboard‘s country charts of late with his own songs, including “Rock and a Hard Place” and “Fall in Love,” but on Friday (Feb. 17), he paid tribute to the Man in Black, covering Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.”
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The release is an Apple Music exclusive, in conjunction with the launch of MLS Season Pass and the new “Man in Black” Nashville Soccer Club kit honoring the life and music of the late Country Music Hall of Fame member.
“The real reason I chose Cash’s ‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down’ is because I’m such a believer, like I know he was,” Zimmerman told Apple Music. “Stoked for everyone to hear this version and maybe see Nashville SC use it next season!”
“God’s Gonna Cut You Down” was included on the 2006 posthumous Cash release American V: A Hundred Highways, the fifth entry in Cash’s American series. His version was inspired by a folk song, “God Almighty’s Gonna Cut You Down,” which was originally recorded by the Golden Gate Quartet in 1946 and released by group The Jubalaires a year later.
Given that Cash’s version of the song and video were released three years after the music legend’s death in 2003, Cash’s video is a black-and-white piece of visual art that includes a string of celebrities such as Sheryl Crow, Whoopi Goldberg, Travis Barker, Bono, Johnny Depp, Flea, Billy Gibbons, Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, Brian Wilson, Owen Wilson and more.
Listen to Zimmerman’s version on Apple Music, and Cash’s version below:
More than two decades into a career that has cemented Matthew West as one of Christian music’s most prolific singer-songwriters, with a dozen No. 1 Billboard Christian Airplay hits to his credit as an artist-writer, in addition to writing numerous songs for other artists, he is still finding new ways of challenging his artistry.
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On Friday (Feb. 17), West will see the release of his first double album, the 22-track My Story Your Glory, via Provident Label Group. The album is divided into two portions—the first half brings continuity to West’s longstanding talent for spinning fans’ personal stories into intricately detailed, faith-building story songs, such as his 17-week Christian Airplay chart-topper from 2013, “Hello, My Name Is.” The second portion breaks new ground for West, who for the first time releases a collection of worship songs.
“I’ve always wanted to pave new roads and I’ve always felt limited somewhat creatively when it comes to putting out an album every couple of years that only has like 11 songs on it,” West tells Billboard, seated in a music venue just prior to an album preview event in downtown Nashville. “I looked around the industry in Christian music and I said, ‘I’ve never seen a Christian artist put out more than the standard number of songs on an album.’ I don’t think I even told the label how many songs I was working on. When I turned it in, I think literally my contract is for 11 [songs] and I handed them 22.”
West also took inspiration from the massive albums country artists have been releasing, including Morgan Wallen’s 30-track Dangerous: The Double Album, and Eric Church’s triple album Heart & Soul.
“I’ve gotten to know Eric a little bit over the past few years—our wives are good friends—and I was talking to him while he was creating Heart & Soul,” West says. “I loved how these guys wanted to create a statement bigger than chasing a hit single. At this stage of my career, I want to be about that, too.”
His song “My Story Your Glory” is at No. 11 on the Christian Airplay chart, following his five-week chart-topper “Me On Your Mind.” “You Changed My Name,” feels like an extension to “Hello, My Name Is.”
“In Christian music, there is this fine line between two types of songs—songs literally about worshiping God,” he says. “Then there are songs about life, but through a faith perspective. For most of my creative career, my songs have been in the latter category–writing about grief, but bringing in the hope of heaven. Telling the story of trying to be perfect, but truth be told, we rarely measure up [in ‘Truth Be Told’]. When it came to this album, I was relearning how to worship in my own life, and that impacted making the worship songs here.”
In writing for the worship portion of the album, West studied hymns both classic and modern, such as Matt Mahr’s “Lord I Need You” and Phil Wickham’s “This Is Amazing Grace.” He also turned to respected worship music writers including David Leonard, who appears on “Maker,” and Bethel Music’s Jenn Johnson, who is on “I Trust Jesus.”
“I was very intentional about sitting down with writers that I have respected how they approach the craft of writing,” West says. “I was finishing writing ‘I Trust Jesus’ with Jason Ingram and I knew I wanted a female voice on it. He mentioned Jenn and she loved the song and thankfully wanted to be on it.”
The collaborative and worship aspects of the project are both essential and timely, given the proliferation of worship-centered music from groups such as Maverick City Music and Elevation Worship rising on the charts. West says more worship collaborations could be on the way as a result of My Story Your Glory.
“I think more songs will come in that direction,” West says. “I was reaching out to people like Brandon Lake and Phil Wickham and we had talked about doing something together but never landed on something. I feel like there are still exciting things on some of these voice memos I have from artists and writers I respect.”
Another key message on the album comes on “Greatest Hits,” a collaboration with country artist Granger Smith that finds them focusing on deriving the greatest sense of accomplishment from family and relationships rather than career accolades. The connection came via a songwriting session between West and Spirit Music Group Nashville chief creative officer Frank Rogers, with whom West had previously written “The Waiter,” a song on Scotty McCreery’s Same Truck album.
“Frank knew Granger. I followed Granger’s story and started listening to his podcast where he is speaking into people’s lives. I had never met him but I just had a respect for him. When I was thinking about the theme of the song, it was important for me to find another artist who I knew it would resonate with—someone who had kiddos of their own and had a grip on not chasing celebrity. It has a bit of a country lean to it and I thought about pitching it, but part of the freedom of the way people listen to music these days and the freedom of a double album is the boundary is off on your own artistry. There are some songs that sound country singer-songwriter, and that’s part of what I am.”
The Smith collaboration is a timely and natural progression as country-Christian cross-pollinations continue with increasing frequency. West previously teamed with Carly Pearce for a rendition of West’s Christian Airplay chart-topper “Truth Be Told,” while Chris Tomlin teamed with Florida Georgia Line in 2020 for a project that included such country collaborators as Lady A, Thomas Rhett and Brett Young. Dolly Parton won two consecutive Grammy wins in the best contemporary Christian music performance/song category with her collaborations with CCM artists For King & Country and Zach Williams. Lady A’s Hillary Scott also won a Grammy for her CCM song “Thy Will,” and she recently teamed with CCM artist Anne Wilson on “Mamas,” a song from Wilson’s debut album. Carrie Underwood, who previously sang background vocals on “Something Greater,” featured on West’s All In album, released her own collection of classic hymns with My Savior, including a collaboration with CeCe Winans.
“I feel like boundaries are dissipating in a really neat way,” West says. “I’m excited to write more country music that has a faith message. Even artists I work with like Anne Wilson, she’s unapologetically country in her style and unapologetically Christian in her message. I see a lot of country artists saying they want to be bold in their faith. To me, some of the strongest Christian messages—‘Three Wooden Crosses,’ ‘Something in the Water,’ ‘Live Like You Were Dying’–these songs point you toward hope.”
Before he was a five-time Grammy-nominated artist, West launched his career in Nashville’s writing rooms, penning songs for other artists. He’s since become as in-demand as a co-writer as an artist, contributing to recent hits for Wilson (the Grammy-nominated “My Jesus”), and Tasha Layton (“Look What You’ve Done”). Last year, Nashville Songwriters’ Association International named West its songwriter-artist of the year, making him the first predominantly Christian artist to win the award in more than two decades, and joining past winners such as Luke Combs, Taylor Swift and Luke Bryan.
Through co-writing and his company Story House Collective, West has continued championing younger artists such as Wilson, who signed with Story House for management last year.
“Several years ago, I brought my management in-house,” West says of Story House’s origins. “I was reading Billboard and seeing artists like Beyonce and Taylor Swift kind of foregoing the traditional management model and just surrounding themselves with great people. So with Story House, I wanted to bring my operation—music, touring, books—under one roof. Then, when the time was right, we would have the systems and vision in place to champion other artists.”
That long-term vision was truncated when he began writing with Wilson, who swiftly became one of CCM’s most-talked about new artists thanks to her breakthrough hit “My Jesus”—but who was also looking for a new management home as she geared up for her debut album launch.
“I hated to see her without representation during a crucial time. She was opening some shows for me and we were co-writing, so our Story House team helped her with the album launch while she went and had meetings with other managers. She took three months while our team helped with the album launch, and after taking meetings, she said she wanted Story House Collective to continue managing her. So at that point, Story House Collective became a growing startup.”
For West, Story House Collective is a natural evolution in a career that has seen him progress from songwriter to writer-artist to businessman.
“People also kind of looked at me sideways because I’m an artist myself and people want to put you in a category. It’s hard to see you as a manager, but I dealt with the same thing years ago when people saw me only as a songwriter. I’ve learned to be comfortable with other people’s discomfort about my career. I just keep my head down and try to do great work.”
Nashville is Music City, where on any given evening music pours from venues ranging from the massive Nissan Stadium and the nearly 20,000-seat Bridgestone Arena, to relatively smaller venues such as the Ryman Auditorium and Station Inn.
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But on Wednesday evening (Feb. 15), the 90-person capacity venue The Bluebird Café, long considered a mecca for singer-songwriters, had one of the hottest tickets in town—a rare full concert from three-time Grammy winner Trisha Yearwood, which sold out moments after tickets went on sale.
Over the past several years, Yearwood has joined her husband and fellow artist Garth Brooks on his world tour, and added to her growing business ventures which now includes cookbooks, pet products, home goods and cocktail mixers. But at the Bluebird Café, it’s all about the music. Yearwood told the audience it was likely her first solo concert at the intimate venue since she signed her first record deal with MCA Records as an aspiring artist in 1990.
“I’ve performed here a bunch of other times with other people, and it’s always such a joy to be here,” she told the crowd, which was a sturdy mix of die-hard fans and music industry execs. “It’s not like I’ve just been sitting at home writing cookbooks. I’ve been singing, but most of the time, I’m a shiny quarter—Garth goes out and does his show and when he’s losing them, he brings me out,” she said in jest, drawing laughs from the audience. “That is where my fitness is as a singer, so did I mention I’m scared s—less?” she said, holding up a glass of amber liquid. “This is alcohol.”
She needn’t have worried—the room was filled with love for Yearwood and her music.
Earlier in the evening, Yearwood held a private event celebrating her new signature cocktail mix “Cheers in a Cup” at the grand opening of Williams Sonoma in Nashville. The event also raised funds for Dottie’s Yard, Yearwood’s charity endeavor which assists animal rescue efforts. She surprised music fans by announcing a show at the Bluebird and was soliciting fan requests for the setlist. The show promptly sold out.
Several of her most well-known radio hits made the list including “Walkaway Joe,” “Wrong Side of Memphis” her 1994 chart-topper “XXX’s and OOO’s” and “The Song Remembers When,” but the bulk of the evening was dedicated a range of album cuts and other promotional singles. She offered “The Matador,” from her 2019 album Every Girl, the bluesy Tia Sillers/Craig Wiseman-penned track “Sweet Love,” (from 2005’s Jasper County), “Victim of the Game” (from her 1991 eponymous debut), as well as “Little Hercules” and “A Lover is Forever” (both from 1996’s Everybody Knows).
The attentiveness and enthusiasm of the intimate crowd, paired with Yearwood’s innately conversational performance style, made the concert feel like an evening with a close friend (who happens to be a phenomenal vocalist).
Yearwood has always shown respect for songwriters, selecting the choicest of compositions over the years to pair with her pristine voice. Throughout the evening, she peppered her comments with nods to many of the songwriters behind many of her hits, among them Matraca Berg, Hugh Prestwood and Gretchen Peters.
“I know I’m standing here because I’ve been lucky enough to know some really amazing songwriters who have trusted me with their children, and I hope their trust is well-placed.”
Yearwood recalled receiving a copy of the Bobbie Cryner-written song “Real Live Woman” in her mailbox, immediately loving the title and relishing that the rest of the song was as good as its title. Her rendering of the song was replete with agency, as Yearwood noted to the audience her favorite lyric: “I no longer justify reasons for the way that I behave/ I offer no apologies for the things that I believe and say” (though she coyly added, “Well, sometimes I apologize”).
Among those in attendance was Yearwood’s longtime producer Garth Fundis.
“The reason I wanted to sing was I love music,” Yearwood said. “Music moved me. Garth Fundis and I have always sat down, whether it was with a cassette tape or a DAT or someone singing on a guitar and our whole rule of thumb was that we wouldn’t record anything that we didn’t both love.” She later told Fundis, “Thank you for finding all these great songs with me.”
Prior to performing “XXXs and OOO’s (An American Girl),” she said the song was originally recorded as the themesong for the pilot of a two-hour movie that Yearwood called “kind of a precursor to Nashville.’
“Another artist was supposed to do the song and she couldn’t do it, so I got an 11th-hour call, of like, ‘This is a Matraca Berg and Alice Randall song, could you sing it? And the track is cut by the way, so can you sing it in the key that it is in and it’s for a TV movie so it doesn’t really have a form.’ We recorded it for the movie, but the movie didn’t get picked up and was never made. But we liked the song, so we took it in to MCA and everybody loved the song—the only problem was we didn’t have an album, so the whole Thinkin’ About You album got made around this song. Anybody new who comes into the band when we play it live is like ‘Why do the chords change in the last chorus?’ I’m like, ‘Because it wasn’t a chorus, we just kind of made it work over the chords that are there.’”
She nodded to her love for the music of Linda Ronstadt by performing stellar, powerful renditions of “You’re No Good” and then “Try Me Again,” which earned Yearwood a standing ovation.
In performing a stripped-down version of Frank Sinatra’s 1958 hit “Come Fly With Me,” she also nodded to her 2019 tribute album Let’s Be Frank, which she recorded with a 55-piece orchestra at the Capitol Records building in Los Angeles, using Sinatra’s original microphone. She also hinted that there could be more Sinatra music ahead, in the form of her own upcoming concerts with a symphony orchestra.
“October,” she said quickly, with a sly grin.
She also discussed something she learned from a recent Kennedy Center Honors event she attended with Brooks. “He was singing to honor Gladys Knight, and we got to go to a dinner the night before. One of the recipients got up and talked about how—she was nervous—she talked about how when she is getting ready to do something big, she calls on all her angels. She prays and talks to God, but she also calls on the people in her life that have gone on. So I did that tonight because I was so incredibly nervous. I’m wearing my mom’s ring and I believe that she’s with me.”
Yearwood also gestured to a load-bearing post that was on one side of the room, and positioned in front of a sign bearing the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey brand logo.
“From where I’m standing, and where that post is, all I can see is Jack, and that’s my dad’s name,” Yearwood said. “It’s all love out here and I feel it. I can’t thank you all enough. As long as I’ve been doing this—and I’m a pretty confident person, but getting up in front of a lot of people and singing, especially when you haven’t done it in a long time, is kind of scary. I felt all of your love tonight…it’s been a really special night.”
She concluded with the evening’s most-requested song, delivering a stunning rendition of Gretchen Peters’ “On a Bus to St. Cloud.”
“This is fun. I may have to do this again,” Yearwood said near the conclusion of the evening, nodding to Bluebird Café COO/GM Erika Wollam-Nichols in the audience.
Indeed, given the warm reception from the audience and how fast tickets to the last-minute event sold out, the notion of repeat shows, or even a Bluebird Café residency from Yearwood, feels both logical and immensely desired.
Trisha Yearwood celebrates her new signature cocktail mix “Cheers in A Cup” at the Grand Opening of Williams Sonoma in Nashville.
Acacia Evans
After winning the CMA Awards’ song of the year honors for his chart-topping hit “Buy Dirt,” and following that with the Country Airplay No. 1 hit “What My World Spins Around,” Jordan Davis admits reality has exceeded his expectations.
“I feel like I’m playing with house money. I moved to town to be a songwriter and all I wanted to do is write songs,” says Davis, whose MCA Nashville album Bluebird Days comes out Friday (Feb. 17). “I think about those early goals, and I think about where I’m at now, and I’m just like, ‘God is crazy. He’s good. I’m super, super blessed.’”
Bluebird Days is an impressive 17-track set that includes 15 songs co-written by Davis that run the gamut from the spirited opening track, “Damn Good Time,” to the poignant homage to his grandfather, “Fishing Spot,” to the title track, a haunting examination of his family’s journey from happy times to the ache of his parents’ divorce.
Bluebird Days is the Shreveport, Louisiana native’s second full length album, following 2018’s Home State, which spawned the Country Airplay No. 1s “Singles You Up,” “Slow Dance in a Parking Lot” and “Take it From Me.” Davis also released two EPs prior to Bluebird Days, including a 2020 self-titled set and a May 2021 release that included “Buy Dirt.” “Barring the two Covid years, I definitely think that we would have made a [full] record around the first EP,” he tells Billboard. “Not touring and being at home more took a little while to get used to, so my writing schedule got thrown off — not to mention shifted in what I was writing about.”
The deeper, more personal themes he tackles on Bluebird Days were a result of the downtime during the pandemic combined with the success of “Buy Dirt,” a multi-platinum duet with Luke Bryan that celebrated the things that truly matter in life and is included on Bluebird Days. “When you are touring, it’s hard not to stay in the touring mindset as you are writing a song,” he says. “You start writing a song for a spot in the set and not necessarily just writing a song. With the space and with the time off, it allowed me to just truly sit down and write an honest real song. Without that time off, I don’t think we would have written a lot of these songs that are on this album.”
In listening to Bluebird Days, Davis thinks people will recognize “that we’re all pretty human.” Much of the album is written with frequent collaborators such as his producer Paul DiGiovanni, Josh Jenkins, Davis’ brother Jacob and Matt Jenkins (the latter three penned “Buy Dirt” with Davis).
“With us saying that we wanted to be honest with this album, there was no one foot in and kind of easing into this,” he explains. “It’s like, ‘All right man, if we’re going to be honest, you’ve just got to be honest,’ whether it’d be talking about my temper on ‘Short Fuse’ or talking about the way I view money on ‘Money Isn’t Real,’ how fast my kids are growing and the guilt I feel being gone half the year… that’s all real stuff, and I know I’m not the only person in the world that’s going through that.”
In light of the recent accolades and success at radio, Davis admits he was a little apprehensive about his second full length effort, including picking “What My World Spins Around” as the follow-up to “Buy Dirt.” “The space between ‘Buy Dirt’ and ‘What My World Spins Around’ going to radio was the most nerveracking — and when ‘What My World Spins Around’ had the impact the way it did and ended up being a big song in its own right, I think that took a lot of the pressure off,” he says. “I was able to see I don’t have to redo ‘Buy Dirt’ again — I just have to be honest and up front and real in the writing.”
To follow up “What My World Spins Around,” Davis says they almost went with another single before deciding to release “Next Thing You Know,” which Davis wrote with Greylan James, Chase McGill and Josh Osborne. “After a week of playing it live, I walked off stage one night and told my manager that I’m an idiot if I don’t give this song a chance at radio,” Davis says. “I don’t know if I’ve had a song that’s impacted the way this song has, even ‘Buy Dirt.’ It’s truly pretty special to watch. And it doesn’t have a chorus, which is kind of weird. It’s a totally linear story of life, but it doesn’t matter if you’re 70, 50, 40 or 20 — you have a part in this song, and I truly feel like that’s why so many people are gravitating to it.”
Even the songs he didn’t write speak for him, including “Money Isn’t Real,” penned by Jake Mitchell, Jameson Rodgers, Josh Thompson, Sarah Turner. “I was trying to write this song called ‘When the Money Runs Out,’ about, ‘Who you are going to be, what are people going to say about you, when the money runs out?’ And I couldn’t get it right,” Davis says. “Jameson sent over ‘Money Isn’t Real,’ and I remember being like, ‘Holy smokes! I’ve been trying to write this song for three years and you just sent me this song I’ve been trying to write.’”
Danielle Bradbery joins Davis on “Midnight Crisis.” “The first time I heard her sing, I was captivated, and she’s just the sweetest person in the world,” he says. “I truly think she’s on the verge of being one of the most powerful females in country music. I knew Danielle would crush it, and she was the only one we sent it to.”
Growing up in Louisiana, Davis was heavily influenced by the local sounds and acts coming through town. “The special thing about Shreveport was it truly was a melting pot,” he says. “There were places where you could go listen to traditional country. There were places that were doing writer’s rounds and clubs that would have rock bands. At 10-years-old, I was going to [defunct renowned Louisiana club] Western Sky because my Uncle Stan [Paul Davis] was playing there with his band. Texas country [acts] Robert Earl Keen and Pat Green would come play the casinos, and we’d go see them, and then jazz bands out of New Orleans would come up and me and my buddies would go see them. It was such a diverse musical city and I just pulled pieces from all that. I was lucky to grow up there.”
Initially, Davis didn’t see himself on stage. Growing up, his brother Jacob was always the performer of the two siblings, following in the steps of their uncle, a local legend. “He was playing all over Louisiana and I was just carrying his equipment in and out of venues,” Davis recalls. “So when I moved to town, he was working on getting a record deal and I was trying to get a publishing deal.”
But Davis got discouraged when he saw his contemporaries landing publishing contracts that eluded him. Then a friend told him that songwriters who were also artists were much more attractive to publishing companies, and those were the writers who were getting signed. “I was like, ‘All right, well, I want to be an artist too,’” he says. “I didn’t want to bartend anymore. I wanted to just write songs.”
These days, he’s grateful to be doing writing and singing and spending time on the road playing his songs. He’s out with Thomas Rhett through February before heading to Europe to play the C2C festivals in March in London, Dublin and Glasgow. In the summer, Davis will tour with Dierks Bentley, and he’s planning a potential headlining tour for the fall.
On early ’70s cuts like “Wild Horses” and “Dead Flowers,” The Rolling Stones showed their affinity for American country music. Now, some of top country artists are returning the love — with the 14-track set Stoned Cold Country, out March 17 on BMG.
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Featuring Eric Church, Brothers Osborne, Little Big Town, Zac Brown Band, Brooks & Dunn and Ashley McBride, among others, the set is an often-raucous salute to what many consider the world’s greatest rock band on the group’s 60th anniversary. Lainey Wilson’s slow-burning “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” drops tomorrow (Feb. 17), following last month’s release of Elvie Shane’s ominous “Sympathy for the Devil.”
The concept for the album was born over “three bottles of white wine at Angelini [Osteria] in Los Angeles,” says BMG CEO Hartwig Masuch, as his dining companion, producer Robert Deaton, put forth the concept. (It helped that BMG is also the publishing company for Rolling Stones’ main songwriters Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.)
As publisher, “obviously one of your main mandates is to say, ‘Okay, here’s a great catalog of songs’ — and, we all know, there is already one great version,” Masuch says. “’So, what do we do to extend the relevance of those songs in a couple of a dimensions? Here’s an audience, a different genre and a different generation.’ I think that’s a core task of a publisher.”
Even so, Masuch says, the quality of the project was more of a defining factor than the dollars. “A music company should be committed to the cultural DNA it’s based on, not just always looking at things and saying, ‘How much can I make my money back?’ — because that’s a little bit too cynical,” he says. “Of course, we all have to make money and it’s important this will be successful, but I think what drove our discussion was more so the chemistry of the whole thing than having a calculator out [and getting] the publishing royalties on [14] songs.”
Deaton adds that the next step, even though they didn’t need it, was getting Jagger and Richards to sign off on the project. “I feel like we have such reverence for them and their song writing,” he says. “They’re the soundtrack of our lives. I don’t think anybody would want to go as deep on something as we put towards the project without have the blessing and permission from Mick and Keith.”
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With the duo’s deep love of country music, it wasn’t a tough sell. “From the early days country music made a real impression on us. There’s an authenticity about country that’s always appealed to me, whether it be Hank Williams, Merle Haggard or a Willie Nelson record,” Richards tells Billboard in a statement. “Also, of course, Gram Parsons was a major player and influence,” he adds of his close friend, the pioneering country rock singer/songwriter.
Deaton, who dubbed the album “a Nashville love letter to the Stones,” says many of the artists, like Church, have long histories with the music: “[Church] said that when he was nobody and just playing guitar in front of 10 people, he got more tips when he played ‘Honky Tonk Women.’ The Stones have been so important to him for so long that it’s been an honor just to be able to say ‘thank you’ on this record.”
Masuch says BMG’s position is to look at such projects in a comprehensive way. Though there is no official word on a documentary, Deaton says, “there were six or seven cameras on every session that we did,” and Masuch brings up the idea of “maybe turning [the album] into a live event, if possible, at a certain point. It would be [amazing] to have those artists in a big venue, performing their favorite songs, and maybe getting one or two members of [the Rolling Stones] to be around.”
But all ancillary projects were secondary to making the album that served the music, Deaton says. Starting in January 2022, he listened to Stones’ songs “over and over, 100 times, so that I could get the right artists with the right songs … And then I thought about, how do I make it different? How do I make this a tribute to them and also still unique?”
To do so, Deaton had to ensure he had unfettered freedom to make the project he wanted. “Hartwig is one of my dearest friends, and I told him, ‘Listen, I’m getting ready to go deep on this and I need to ask you one question from a business standpoint before I go under here: how many BMG artists do I have to have on the record?’” Deaton recalls. “And he said, ‘Go make the best record you can make. There’s no minimum, there’s no maximum.’” The album ended up with three BMG artists: Wilson, Jimmie Allen and Shane.
As Deaton began casting the album, he says 95% of his attempts to match artists with songs ended up working out. “The only song that I left open was for Zac Brown Band, because they can do so many different things and so many different styles,” Deaton says. On their first conversation, Brown picked “Paint It Black.” Deaton and Wilson also went back and forth on four or five songs and had a false start, cutting “Get Off of My Cloud” before switching to “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
“I went to BMG and said, ‘You know what, I think we got the wrong song’ because it wasn’t country enough,” Deaton says. “When I was trying to put together the record, I found that anything of that era was really hard to fit into our album because we’re being unapologetically country and we’re making a country record. It was very hard. ‘Get Off of My Cloud’ just didn’t fit in the overall arc of the record.”
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” resonated strongly with Wilson. “The Rolling Stones are global music icons, from the musicianship to the swagger to the relatable perspective with songs like ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’” she tells Billboard. “Man, if I haven’t had to learn that lesson time and time again. I know that feeling of resisting your fate, that struggle, but I also know that sense of pride and peace when you understand the tough times made way for something better. I try not to take myself too seriously — I’ve heard you can’t be great if you do — so I love the way the production builds into a light-hearted cathartic jam at the end. This song leaves me shaking my head, smiling at myself, and feeling grateful. And that’s what The Stones always did. They made you feel something, and they made you feel good.”
Understandably, Deaton had to occasionally contend with artists’ nerves when tackling the classic rock songs. “Karen Fairchild from Little Big Town said, ‘The only thing I’m concerned about is that Mick is going to hear all this, and I hope he doesn’t go, ‘Well, that sucks,’” he recalls. “Every artist wanted to put all their love into it, which was incredibly refreshing.”
The sessions were recorded without click tracks and with all the musicians playing live together, including the backing vocalists. To increase the authenticity, long-time Rolling Stones touring keyboardist Chuck Leavell played on “Shine A Light,” recorded by Koe Wetzel.
“I wanted everybody in the same room together so that they all could feed off of each other and [have] it be as organic and as real as possible,” Deaton says. “Whatever that Stones thing is that they have [whenever] they’re in a room, I wanted to be able to create that and get as close to it as we possibly could.”
Throughout the album, there are nods to great musicianship, even beyond the Stones. For example, Mickey Raphael, who has played harmonica with Willie Nelson for more than 50 years, opens “Miss You,” covered by Allen. “It ended being a tribute to what I feel are the best musicians in the world,” Deaton says.
A number of tribute albums by country artists have become best sellers, including 1994’s Common Threads: Songs of the Eagles, which the RIAA has certified triple platinum, and Lionel Richie’s Tuskegee, a 2012 platinum set that paired him with top country artists remaking his biggest hits.
Masuch sees Stoned Cold Country having a similar, if not wider, appeal, given the Rolling Stones’ global fandom and “the fascination in nearly all European countries for country music,” he says. Access can be lacking to country acts outside the US, so Masuch says it’s important that the project “will get onto [people’s] iPhones and can create much more excitement for some of the musicians outside of North America than ever before.”
Extending country’s reach has been one of Germany-based BMG’s goals ever since it bought Broken Bow Records in 2017, giving the company an instant foothold in Nashville. “I think it’s imminent that some of these artists will have big international careers,” Masuch says, “and hopefully this project can be one of the triggers in achieving that.”
Stoned Cold Country Track list
“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” – Ashley McBryde
“Honky Tonk Women” – Brooks & Dunn
“Dead Flowers” – Maren Morris
“It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll (But I Like It)” – Brothers Osborne & The War And Treaty
“Miss You” – Jimmie Allen
“Tumbling Dice” – Elle King
“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” – Marcus King
“Wild Horses” – Little Big Town
“Paint It Black” – Zac Brown Band
“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – Lainey Wilson
“Sympathy for the Devil” – Elvie Shane
“Angie” – Steve Earle
“Gimme Shelter” – Eric Church
“Shine A Light” – Koe Wetzel
Spoiler alert: This story contains information about contestants eliminated on Wednesday’s (Feb. 15) episode of The Masked Singer.
The ninth season of Fox’s The Masked Singer launched with formidable competition, with night one seeing the Mustang—an Academy of Country Music award-winning artist—galloping off into the sunset on the season’s premiere episode.
The evening featured Mustang showing off some serious vocal power on the Whitesnake classic “Here I Go Again,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1987. It was an unexpected song choice from this sometimes traditional-leaning country vocalist. Guesses from judges ran the gamut, from P!nk to Suzanne Somers, with only one judge picking up on the hint of twang in Mustang’s voice — and even then, guessing (incorrectly) that Mustang might be Wynonna Judd.
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Guesses for Nancy Wilson and Joan Jett were also tossed into the mix, before it was revealed that hiding under the decadent red-and-black costume was “A Little Bit Stronger” singer Sara Evans.
Before her elimination, Evans spoke with Billboard about singing the Whitesnake classic, her reactions to the judges’ guesses and why she didn’t tell her family members she was competing on The Masked Singer.
What drew you to being part of The Masked Singer?
I thought it would be fun and something different to experience, and of course, being on television is good for anyone’s career. It’s also different from our normal routine of writing and touring, so any chance I get to do something different and exciting, it gives you a new energy.
Had you watched the show before?
I had watched maybe a handful of episodes. I didn’t realize everything that went into it and it’s just incredible and the secrecy is so fun. Some of my good friends, Clint Black and Lisa Hartman Black, I saw their time on the show.
Did they give you any advice on the show?
They were just like, “The costume can be claustrophobic, just know that going into it and they’ll do what they can to help you feel comfortable.” But it was great because my costume was, aside from a big horse head, which was heavy, it was really just like leather pants and a leather top. It wasn’t too restrictive.
How did you decide on the Mustang as a costume choice?
Producers and people sometimes help with those decisions. They came to me with that idea and I loved it. It was great because I grew up on a farm and I grew up on a horse and adore horses. There couldn’t have been anything better.
You performed “Here I Go Again” from Whitesnake, and also did the battle round, performing Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” Those were perhaps unexpected choices for you.
I was going to be on a different episode, doing ABBA Night. But then someone had to drop out and the producers asked me if I would fill in for that person and take their songs to be on the first episode of The Masked Singer instead. So I already knew the Whitesnake song; of course, everyone knows it, but I got it at like 11:30 the night before we had to film it, at the last minute. Everyone was really appreciative, though, and I ended up having so much fun singing the Whitesnake song, especially.
The judges had some great guesses—P!nk and Joan Jett among them. Were you surprised by any of their guesses?
I was flattered. Everyone they guessed, I was like, “Oh, my god. I’m a fan of hers, and hers, and she’s a legend.” It was great. I felt like it was a huge compliment.
It sounded like you didn’t tell anyone in your family that you were going to be on the show.
Yeah, ’cause I wanted my kids to be surprised and I didn’t trust my mom not to tell people. [laughs] I’m going to tell my mom and siblings and everyone tonight, like around five or six o’clock and ask them to watch.
What is coming up for you, musically?
I’m gonna make a new album. I’m still writing songs for it, and we will go into the studio probably around April and start recording it. I haven’t had an album out since 2020, so that will be a big part of our year. We’re also on the road. We usually do about 80 shows a year and that starts next week, so we are just always busy working and on the road.
That country kind of love. Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani celebrated Valentine’s Day on Tuesday (Feb. 14) with a romantic duet on social media.
In a black-and-white video posted to Shelton’s Twitter and Instagram feeds, the pair of lovebirds perform their 2019 duet “Nobody But You,” singing, “I don’t wanna live without you, I don’t wanna even breathe/ I don’t wanna dream about you, wanna wake up with you next to me/ I don’t wanna go down any other road now/ I don’t wanna love nobody but you/ Lookin’ in your eyes now, if I had to die now/ I don’t wanna love nobody but you.”
While the country star’s social team encouraged his followers to tag their valentines in the post, most opted to focus on The Voice coaches’ lovey-dovey relationship. “Find someone who looks at you like this two look at each other,” one fan wrote on Instagram, while another commented, “Happy Valentine’s Day to my favorite celebrity couple.” A third had an idea in mind in the wake of Rihanna’s epic Super Bowl performance, suggesting, “Blake and Gwen for the next Super Bowl halftime show!”
Shelton and Stefani most recently wrapped filming Season 22 of The Voice together, with the former winning his ninth season as a coach with champ Bryce Leatherwood. Team Gwen last won Season 19 with teen sensation Carter Rubin.
This spring, the “Hollaback Girl” singer is set to headline the 2023 BeachLife Festival in Redondo Beach, Calif., alongside The Black Keys and The Black Crowes.
Watch Shelton and Stefani’s cute Valentine’s duet below.
The lives of country artists’ spouses can be challenging — their partners spend long periods of time on the road, often chew up their home time with business meetings and songwriting appointments, and get interrupted periodically by strangers when the couple is out in public.
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So it’s telling that Lauren Akins, who celebrated her 10th anniversary with Thomas Rhett last October, sweetly defines herself by that relationship in the profile on her Twitter page: “Blessed to be married to my best friend.”
Rhett clearly remains enamored of his wife, documenting their lives together through much of his material, including “Life Changes,” “Look What God Gave Her” and “Star of the Show.” Part of that appreciation is his recognition of the abnormal scenario she freely embraces.
“Anyone married to someone in the spotlight, it takes a very special human being,” he says. “The amount of days I’ve been gone, the amount of times I’ve let work overtake my family life, the amount of times I’ve said yes to stuff that I probably should have said no to — and [she was] there with me the whole way.”
His newest single — “Angels (Don’t Always Have Wings),” which Valory released to country radio via PlayMPE on Jan. 23 — reflects both his gratitude for her and some degree of guilt for his job’s infringements, though Rhett didn’t necessarily intend to be the voice delivering that message.
“Angels” emerged from a co-writing appointment with Teddy Swims, a multigenre singer-songwriter who made Rhett a featured artist on his rhythmic 2021 track “Broke.” “Teddy Swims is like if Chris Stapleton started an R&B band,” Rhett says. “That’s what he sounds like — absolutely insane.”
Rhett aimed to write something that Swims might not typically record: a “frickin’ country ballad that the chorus is just at the tip top of his range,” says Rhett. “Selfishly, I wanted to hear Teddy singing something like that.”
The night before the session, Rhett read a book that raised the possibility of meeting an angel who presents in the physical world as a human being. From that idea, he drifted to the phrase “Angels (Don’t Always Have Wings)” and decided the concept applied to his wife. He introduced that idea during his Nashville writing date with Swims, Josh Thompson (“I’ll Name the Dogs,” “Ain’t Always the Cowboy”) and songwriter-producer Julian Bunetta (“Craving You,” “Beer Can’t Fix”). Everyone bought into it, with Rhett leading the charge.
“You have to stand around with, like, trash cans to pick up all the stuff leaking out of him,” Bunetta says. “You can’t pick it up fast enough. He’s one of the most prolific writers I have ever been around.”
They wrote “Angels” in a waltz time signature, placing the song’s female subject on a pedestal while the singer, self-described as a “mess of a man,” takes responsibility for his own failures and a “selfish heart.” It is, agree Rhett and Bunetta, an exaggeration of Rhett’s character, though Rhett expected Swims to sing it in the end anyway.
“It’s not like every movie that Robert De Niro is in, he had to live,” Bunetta reasons. “The greatest artists have always been able to interpret the song the way it needs to be interpreted. Whether or not they lived that is sort of beside the point.”
They fashioned “Angels” with the music and lyrics working in tandem to wring maximum emotion out of the experience. It starts humbly and conversationally in its opening verses, rising in the chorus to a higher melodic plain. In the process, it uses a fairly small number of words, allowing the phrases — and the song’s heart — to unfold slowly.
“The use of space in songs is good,” Bunetta notes. “Sometimes space says what needs to be said.”The mix of sweet adulation and self-abasement proved dramatic, reaching the climactic, semi-spiritual line in the narrative just before the chorus’ end: “I don’t know why you were patient and wasted good savin’ on me.” The foursome felt a bridge was needed to complete it, and they wrestled with numerous ideas before Thompson asserted himself, using “wings” as both the last word in the chorus and the first word in the bridge.
“He is the least-vocal songwriter that I write with — and by least vocal, I mean the person that is not just shouting out every melody and lyric that comes to his brain,” Rhett says. “I think he kind of allows the write to happen. He just kind of tucks away in a corner with his laptop that’s from 2001 because he’s too old school to upgrade. We got stuck; he just spat out that bridge. And we were just like, ‘That’s what it was supposed to be the whole time.’”
Swims sang over a drum loop and acoustic guitar for the Bunetta-produced demo, but by the next morning, Rhett was already having second thoughts about who should sing it. He checked in with Swims periodically to gauge what was happening with “Angels,” and after several months, got Swims’ permission to keep it for himself. Rhett recorded it with producer Dann Huff (Kane Brown, Brantley Gilbert), who honored the song’s spacious needs.
Rhett, meanwhile, needed private space for his vocal. The chorus tested his falsetto in a way that he had never quite encountered before in the studio, and he wasn’t certain he could capture the song’s vulnerability in front of a producer and engineer. So he holed up in his home studio and sang 60 or 70 takes, which would later be compiled into one vocal.
“I really just wanted to lock myself in that emotion alone and see what would come out,” he says. “The intricacies of my voice breaking up or the falsetto not being perfect — that’s the realness of it.”
After Rhett’s album Where We Started arrived April 1, 2022, his manager, G Major Management founder Virginia Davis, saw particularly strong fan reaction to “Angels,” and she encouraged Bunetta to explore a remix. He redid the bass and drums, and added a piano with a tremolo effect in the opening bars. “I thought that the intro, if we’re going to radio with this song, needed some ear candy to perk your ear up,” says Bunetta.
“Angels” debuted at No. 51 on the Feb. 11 Country Airplay chart and moves to No. 32 in its second week. The song also continues to generate direct messages on social media as fans adopt a song Rhett wrote about his wife as their own.
“It was really cool,” he says, “to watch something so personal resonate on such a large scale with people from different walks of life.”