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Zach Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” has resided at No. 1 on Hot Country Songs for six weeks, joining Johnny Cash’s version of “Orange Blossom Special” as the only top 10 country songs to employ the citrus color in their titles.
Meanwhile, Dustin Lynch rides at No. 49 in his third week on Country Airplay with “Stars Like Confetti,” a song that, if it reaches the top 10, would become the first in that tier to reference a blast of party paper in its name.
The country genre has long used wordplay to tell its stories and hook its listeners, but increasingly, the wordplay is less about twisting meanings and more about applying words that one doesn’t normally expect to hear in a three-minute song. Sometimes it’s a reference as silly as the restaurant shoutouts — Applebee’s, Frosty and Oreo shake — in Walker Hayes’ “Fancy Like” or as weighty as the term “patriarchy,” which appeared in Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version).” Both songs topped Hot Country Songs in the last two years.
“The line was on a key chain,” Swift’s co-writer, Liz Rose, notes of “patriarchy.” “That was very specific.”
Capturing details from the writers’ lives — as both “Fancy Like” and “All Too Well” did — is one of multiple reasons to throw an odd word or phrase into a lyric. Sometimes it happens because it’s dictated by geography: Alan Jackson created a light atmosphere when he rhymed “Chattahoochee,” a river that was previously unknown to large swaths of Americans, with “hoochie koochie”; The Oak Ridge Boys brought a Pennsylvania tributary, the Monongahela, to the national spotlight with their 1988 release “Gonna Take a Lot of River.” And in other instances, the word fulfills a poetic function at the end of a line, as the phrase “happily delusional” does in Old Dominion’s “Memory Lane.”
“We had ‘loving you as usual,’ and you’re just searching for a rhyme,” the band’s Trevor Rosen recalls. “The guy had to throw [“delusional”] out there twice. It’s a weird word. It’s like, ‘I wonder if you could say that?’ And then it was like, ‘Oh, wait, no, that’s actually it.’”
Old Dominion has a history with oddball phrases —“drunk as a skunk eating lunch” appears in “I Was on a Boat That Day,” and it titled a 2015 single “Snapback,” a ball-cap term that wasn’t necessarily known to everyone. But that happens in great part because the band is willing to chase down odd terms, where some other songwriters might balk.
“It depends on the room,” says “Memory Lane” co-writer Jessie Jo Dillon. “People like the Old Dominion guys — I mean, nobody’s scared to do something strange.”
Lynch, on the other hand, experienced an internal debate about “Stars Like Confetti.” He had doubts regarding the song he was about to hear when he first saw the title, and even after the demo hooked him, he still had reservations for a time, fearful that the vocabulary might not suit him.
“I’ve been the one that has questions, if the word ‘confetti’ isn’t masculine enough to do,” Lynch admits. “The circle I have, obviously we scrutinize a lot. We’re very tough on ourselves and try to really pick apart everything we can about a song and make sure we’re looking at all the angles of a song. I kept coming back to, like, ‘Is it cool for a dude that lives to hunt and farm? Do I sing “confetti”?’ I had to do some soul searching and just make sure you’re like, ‘OK, am I going to be cool singing a song the rest of my life if it takes off?’”
Obviously, “Confetti” won out. Others have fared well over the long haul with terminology that seems uncommon in the conservative country world. George Strait calmly considered “transcendental meditation” in his breezy “All My Ex’s Live in Texas,” Faith Hill navigated “centrifugal motion,” “perpetual bliss” and “pivotal moment” in the chorus of “This Kiss,” and Lori McKenna shared a Grammy nomination with Swift this year for “I Bet You Think About Me,” a song that whips out “pedigree,” “upper-crust circles” and “organic shoes” in its narrative.
“We’re so used to listening to things in the background,” McKenna says, noting that unusual vocabulary “really can bring the listener right to ‘Wait, what was that?’ I don’t think it’s meant to be a trick, but I never stop an artist when a word works for them. My job is to stay away from changing their truth.”
Neal McCoy, who sang “no need to psychoanalyze” in the course of the 1994 single “Wink,” was perhaps ahead of his time with the therapist lingo. Chris Young couched the phrase “to hell with the closure” in a key chorus passage in “I’m Comin’ Over,” and Ingrid Andress’ new “Feel Like This” explores “manipulation,” “toxic situations,” “security” and “stability.”
Andress offers those words unapologetically.
“That was sort of intentional,” she says. “I wanted to move the genre forward and to kind of keep up with the rest of society because in most places, I think people in my generation are comfortable talking about the fact that they go to a therapist, but I know that that’s not true for everywhere. I just want to start normalizing that in conversation.”
Although that kind of expression may not feel normal to every act.
“Those are words — like ‘manipulation’ — that only a girl like her can use,” says “Confetti” co-writer Zach Crowell. “I would encourage her to use that stuff. You don’t hear Luke Bryan saying those words. That’s good. It’s honest.”
That’s great confirmation, though Andress doesn’t seem to need it. Something in the orange says she’ll be populating her songs with intelligent phrases as long as she pursues her singer-songwriter role.
“At the end of the day, I’m just writing my story,” she says. “It will come out the way that it feels truest to me. If that’s something that has not been done before in the genre, then I view that as a win. Because I think my goal is to constantly discover new art forms and new ways of saying things. Whether people like it or not, I’m still going to be doing it anyway.”
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When it came time to kickstart Super Bowl 2023 on Sunday (Feb. 12), country superstar Chris Stapleton was more than up to the task.
Following the presentation of the colors, Stapleton appeared on the field dressed in all black with his trusty guitar in hand to give a rousing rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Joining him on the field was Academy Award winning actor Troy Kotsur, who took home best supporting actor for his role in CODA, to offer an ASL interpretation of the national anthem.
Stapleton kept his performance simple, letting his gruff voice convey all of the raw emotion necessary for the national anthem, while his restrained guitar performance offered a further sense of gravitas to the set. A number of players and coaching staff — including the Eagles’ head coach Nick Sirianni — were seen crying on the sidelines during the country star’s performance.
Stapleton was one of three performers to open up the show at the 2023 Super Bowl: Abbott Elementary star and Broadway legend Sheryl Lee Ralph gave an emotional rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” while super-producer Babyface joined the pre-game ceremony to deliver his take of “America the Beautiful.” Later on in the evening, Rihanna is set to take the stage as this year’s halftime show performer.
Stapleton made history in November at the 2022 CMA Awards, becoming the first six-time winner of the prestigious artist of the year award, surpassing Vince Gill, Blake Shelton and George Straight, who all were tied with Stapleton for the record with five wins each.
Watch Stapleton’s emotional performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” above.
Everyone from Taylor Swift to Paramore dropped new music just in time for Valentine’s Day, and Billboard wants to know which release you plan on having on repeat going into the holiday.
Swift continues riding the wave of her newest single “Lavender Haze” with a dance-heavy remix for the Midnights opener by Felix Jaehn. (Prior to being tapped by the superstar, the German producer was likely most familiar to U.S. audiences for helming Omi’s 2015 No. 1 hit “Cheerleader.”)
Hayley Williams and her bandmates, meanwhile, deliver their long-awaited comeback album This Is Why. The pop-punk trio’s first follow-up to 2017’s After Laughter contains singles “This Is Why,” “The News” and “C’est Comme Ça.”
Elsewhere, Lizzo teams up with her bestie SZA for a new remix of “Special,” which finds Billboard‘s newly revealed Woman of the Year preaching, “Woke up this mornin’ to somebody judgin’ me/ No surprise they judgin’ me, don’t know who I’m ‘posed to be I’m just actin’ up, I’m crass as f–k, and never sayin’ sorry/ Found out in the end that I can only do it for me.”
Dove Cameron also joins forces with Khalid on the sultry new collaboration “We Go Down Together,” Luke Combs follows up his debut on the Grammys stage with”Love You Anyway” off his upcoming album Gettin’ Old, D4vd unveils the heartsick, pleading “Placebo Effect” and Mariah Carey cashes in on the viral resurgence of “It’s a Wrap” by dedicating an entire EP to the Memoirs of An Imperfect Angel fan favorite.
Vote for your favorite new release of the week in Billboard‘s poll below.
First Country is a compilation of the best new country songs, videos & albums that dropped this week.
Luke Combs, “Love You Anyway”
In this ballad from Combs’ upcoming March 24 album, Gettin’ Old, Combs maintains that even if his current love turned to heartbreak, it would all be worth it. Written by Combs with Ray Fulcher and Dan Isbell, the song features lyrics comparing a love to broken glass and ancient Rome, all melded together by Combs’ burnished vocal.
Megan Moroney, “I’m Not Pretty”
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While Moroney’s breakthrough hit “Tennessee Orange” continues to climb Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart, her new release is a cheeky, defiant clapback to her ex’s new lover, who seems intent on scrolling through her Instagram and tearing her down. Here’s she continues with the conversational lyrical stylings found in “Tennessee Orange,” as she sings, “Like the Queen of the Mean Girls committee/ But hey, whatever helps/ Keep on telling yourself I’m not pretty.”
Hannah Ellis, “Someone Else’s Heartbreak”
The initial lyrics on this smooth ballad make the listener think the song’s setup is a woman comforting her close friend with all the usual platitudes after a romantic breakup. But Ellis gives the storyline a twist, as it becomes clear that the advice she would give to a friend is hard to follow when it comes to her own fallout from a fizzled relationship. A sturdy, vulnerable release from Ellis.
Ernest, “This Fire”
Ernest offers up a continuation of his previous Flower Shops project, with Flower Shops: The Album (Two Dozen Roses), out today. The whole project melds traditional country with shades of sleek pop-country. Meanwhile, the rollicking “This Fire” portrays the impact of a heartbreak and alcohol-fueled bender, most keenly on the lyrics, “I’ve done it to myself, I dug a lonely grave/ I walk amongst the ashes of the bridges that I’ve made.”
Darius Rucker, “Lift Me Up”
Rucker lends his powerful, unmistakable voice to this cover of Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up,” from the soundtrack to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Rucker lends gospel overtones to this piano ballad, delivering an understated, yet wisened and fervent vocal rendering that elevates the song’s somewhat generic lyrics.
Reyna Roberts feat. Tayler Holder, “Another Round”
Roberts’ majestic voice is supported by Holder’s gravelly rendering, though their harmonies get slightly muddled through the chorus. Written by Roberts with Laura Veltz and Jimmy Robbins, this slow-burn track finds each vocalist concluding that — just like with booze — they know their limits and when they can’t take another round of a relationship that’s not serving their best interests.
Allie Colleen, “Honest Man”
“You say you love me, I’m calling you out/ Let’s set these plans with a stone,” Colleen sings in this lilting acoustic track, boldly willing to make an honest man of the guy she loves. Her voice is warm and a slightly rough around the edges, a perfect foil to the vulnerability and personal agency of the lyrics.
Michael Warren, What’s Country to You EP
Alabama native Warren’s new four-song EP operates along the same country-R&B lines that have made hits for artists like Thomas Rhett and Jimmie Allen. The radio-friendly title track (and Warren’s debut single), written by Dylan Schneider, Zac Kale and Jake Rose, rattles off a list of potential country bona fides and nods to the genre’s expanding boundaries. The EP follows with a trio of equally smooth tracks that showcase Warren’s agreeable, unassuming voice, including the pleasantly romantic “Another Round,” which namechecks Shenandoah, while “Chevy Shotgun” is nostalgic and bittersweet. “One Beer at a Time” blends elements of a soft R&B vibe as he declares he’s “gettin’ over you girl/ One beer at a time.”
Just over a decade ago, Chase Rice’s music career exploded as a co-writer on Florida Georgia Line’s 2012 breakthrough juggernaut “Cruise.” From there, propelled by the surge of the bro -country era he helped ignite, he notched several hits as a recording artist, including 2013’s “Ready Set Roll” and 2018’s “Eyes On You.” But, as grateful as he was, the path he was on wasn’t fulfilling.
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“It was easy,” Rice recalls of those early years to Billboard, during a visit to his home south of Nashville. “But with that success, it also makes you want to continue with that sound, like, ‘Oh, I guess this is what I do.’ Looking back on it, I can’t have regrets — because it’s ‘Cruise’ and “Ready, Set, Roll,’ the Ignite the Night album went platinum, all the way up to ‘Eyes on You.’ I had a blast making that music. But deep down, I knew there was something more I was missing.”
The hit songs, which also included his chart-topping 2020 FGL collaboration “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen,” and non-stop touring came to an abrupt halt in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, Rice found himself in isolation — away from the crowds and the frenetic pace of touring, and alone with his thoughts, hopes and fears. For nine months, Rice didn’t pick up a guitar.
Then, in December 2020, he sat down at his kitchen table with paper, a pen and a guitar, the songs began pouring out — starting with “If I Was Rock & Roll,” the first song he wrote for his new album, I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go to Hell, out today (Feb. 10) via Broken Bow Records.
“I’m not chasing anything anymore,” Rice tells Billboard, while seated at that same kitchen table on a cloudy day in February, wearing a black shirt with “Nashville” spelled backward and his requisite ball cap.Rice had a hand in writing every song on the album, but it was a trio of solo writes, starting with “If I Was Rock & Roll,” followed by “Life Part of Livin’,” that set the pace. The exercise in penning those two tracks — as well as a friend’s sobering story — opened the gateway for one of the album’s most striking moments, “Bench Seat.”
Rice wrote the song in January 2021, not long after a close friend confided in Rice that he’d nearly taken his own life.
“He told me that he almost shot himself with a .45 — but at that moment, his dog Butters came up to him and kinda looked at him funny and put his head on his lap, and that stopped him,” Rice says. A few days later, alone, Rice wrestled with the creative urge the moment inspired.
“He’s doing okay now,” Rice assures. “But I remember picking up my guitar, setting it down and just walking out of the room, like ‘F–k no. I’m not doing this today,’ But I had to. I couldn’t ignore it. I just started writing and it took me probably six hours or so. It was not an easy write.”
“Bench Seat” is subversive; the song’s lyrics come with a twist ending, as listeners realize the song is written from the dog’s perspective: “I always knew this day would come, Just thought I’d be the first called home/ Your little boy and her, don’t worry ‘bout them/ I’ve got ‘em … see ya soon my friend.”
The video for “Bench Seat” is equally commanding, with Rice portraying a struggling addict who gets a dog as a companion as he tries to put his life back together. Rice’s own dog, Jack, appears in the clip. Rice’s character goes to rehab, where he meets a love interest. With her help, and the aid of his dog, he slowly regains some semblance of happiness — but, as with the song, the video comes to a heart-wrenching conclusion, as Rice’s character dies of an overdose.
“We thought, ‘Well, if we are gonna rip viewers’ hearts out, let’s do it.’ It’s relevant and it happens all the time. It just felt more real for me to go there,” Rice says.
Even as he shared his new music with his management team at Why & How, Rice was uncertain if he should proceed. “At first, I thought, ‘Damn, I’m about to make a record that’s about to ruin my career.’ Because people think one thing about you, and they are going to hear this and think you are a liar,” he says.
Instead, this album is Rice moving into the natural next phase for him, as he jettisons the last visages of the bro-country era. The music is still propulsive with arena-ready moments, but is laced with deeper, more introspective themes.
For the new album, Rice teamed with Boy Named Banjo producer Oscar Charles. Together, they converted Rice’s living room into a makeshift recording studio and drilled deep into Rice’s range of influences. The resulting 13-track album ranges from the swampy grit of his current radio single, “Way Down Yonder” — Rice recalls trying out different pairs of boots to perfect the stomp clap in the song’s bridge — to the intense “I Walk Alone,” and the saloon country of the tongue-in-cheek “I Hate Cowboys.”
“Jake Owen played ‘Cowboys’ for me during a trip to Cabo. He was like, ‘I don’t think I’m cutting it. Dierks [Bentley] already cut it, but he’s not doing it.’ So I hit up [one of the song’s writers] HARDY and said, ‘There’s changes we want to make to this. I think there’s an outro thing that would be sick on this. Are you OK with it?’ He loved it, so we recorded it. And I trusted Oscar a lot because of the Circles EP, because I loved that album.”
Even Rice’s featured collaborators are far from the pop-country bonafides one might expect. Boy Named Banjo appears on “Goodnight Nancy,” while the Read Southall Band lends their rural rock stylings on “Oklahoma.”
“People have heard this and say, ‘Oh, this is so different for you’ — which is my fault. I’m showing sides of me that I knew were there the whole time,” Rice says. “Even when I wrote these first three songs, my first thoughts were ‘Oh, that would be cool for down the road, or for someone else to record’ — until I kept writing more. I think this is way bigger for my career than anything I’ve ever realized.”
While crafting the album, Rice was bettering himself emotionally and personally, working to win his own battle against the bottle.
“When you wake up sober every day, it forces you to face whatever’s going on in your life,” he says. “A Navy buddy told me one time, ‘Dude, you can hold it inside your whole life, and at some point, it’s gonna catch up with you.’ Some stuff leads to depression to addiction. But at least I’m in the battle now.”
He describes trying rehab and therapy, and undergoing the popular 75 Hard program last year (“75 days of no drinking, you have to read 10 pages of a book per day, two workouts, all this stuff,” Rice says). What has helped him the most is accountability.
“I’m trying to not drink during the week anymore. I don’t want to be the guy that never drinks, right? I want to go have some drinks with my buddies. I want to find balance. It helps having people around you that can be like, ‘Chill out’ or whatever,” he says. “At some point, you just gotta hold yourself accountable. I got good people around me that I text every day.”
The album closes with the intensely personal “For a Day,” a tribute to his father, Daniel Rice, who died from a heart attack when the singer-songwriter was just 22. Rice recalls recording the song at the very end of the album-making process, at 11 at night, when they had already torn down most of the recording gear.
“The drums were gone, there were still panels and cables everywhere,” Rice says. “I did three takes, and I was bawling at the end of that. I think they cut most of that out, but that was the final song.”
‘I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell’
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The album cover for I Hate Cowboys and All Dogs Go To Hell is also a tribute to his dad, featuring a photo of his father, taken at Jackson Hole in December 1987.
“I love that his picture is everywhere—he’s on Jimmy Kimmel, he’s in Times Square,” Rice says with a bittersweet grin. “There are a lot of topics on this album, but there was some healing going on. In ‘Life Part of Living,’ I sing, ‘Losing dad can make it pretty tough,’ so it’s just stuff that I could finally sing about. I wasn’t ready to face it, to sing about it, back then. I am now.”
“For a Day” is perhaps Rice’s most vulnerable recording to date, and he’s performed it live only once, at the Grand Ole Opry. But he feels his open-hearted approach to his new music is already paying off.
“I think people are gravitating toward the music because they believe me now,” he says. “Before, they were like, ‘That’s the guy that sings “Eyes on You.”’ But I’d rather have 2,000 people show up that are all about this music, than 15,000 people show up that are like, ‘Eh, whatever.’ The passion is back, which is awesome. And most of all, I think my dad would be proud of this music.”
On Tuesday evening (Feb. 7), singer, songwriter and trailblazer Frankie Staton celebrated a career highlight more than four decades in the making: her Grand Ole Opry debut performance.
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“I never thought this moment would happen, but it did,” Staton told Billboard prior to her debut. Since moving to Nashville from her native North Carolina in 1981, Staton has been a champion for Black country artists and songwriters, in addition to forging her own career, and was instrumental in launching the Black Country Music Association alongside Cleve Francis in the 1990s.
As she has done for decades, Staton used her Opry moment to once again uplift those around her, welcoming longtime friends and artists Valierie Ellis Hawkins and Jonell Mosser, as their voices intertwined in superb harmonies during Staton’s brief set.
“To God be the glory,” Staton told the audience in the Opry House Tuesday evening, standing in the spotlight of country music’s most venerable stage.
As part of her Opry debut, singer-songwriter Staton performed her own music: “Your Dream” and “Forever Loretta,” the latter a tribute to the late Country Music Hall of Famer Loretta Lynn. For that song, she asked the audience to hold their cell phone lights high in the air. “We are going to light up the Opry House up for Loretta,” she told the audience, as the Opry House was quickly lit aglow.
Prior to her Opry debut, Staton told Billboard, “Loretta was one of my icons. I’m excited about singing my own music and about singing a song that is very personal to me about somebody that I cared a lot about.” Staton also recalled meeting Lynn — a story she later also shared with the Opry audience.
“I was waiting tables at the Cooker by Centennial Park,” Staton told Billboard. “Crystal Gayle and Loretta Lynn came in the day that they buried Owen Bradley, who had produced Patsy Cline and Loretta. I went up to her and said, ‘Loretta, I’ve thought about you a lot…I thought if I could have anything in the world for you, I’d have your daddy know what happened to you.’ In that instant, she started crying, and then Crystal started crying. I thought, ‘Oh no, I made Loretta cry!’ Then she said, ‘Look, honey, it’s a good cry, because we love our Daddy.’”
It was Lynn’s own hardscrabble story and unflinchingly honest music that inspired Staton to chase her music dreams to Nashville in 1981, after watching the movie Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Speaking to Billboard, she recalled one of her earliest performances in Nashville: As Staton was on her way to a jam session in the Printer’s Alley area of Nashville, a police officer stopped her and questioned where she was headed. He then followed her to the venue, where Staton was one of the earliest singers to sign up to perform. Then, while other performers who signed up after she did were called onstage to sing, Staton had to wait until nearly 2:30 a.m. for her turn to perform.
“I knew when they wouldn’t let me up there, this would be a defining moment of my life,” Staton recalled. “You don’t run from this. There are times in your life where you have to stay and fight for what you want. Things that have come normally to other people, Black people have had to bend over backwards to get the opportunity. I knew if I left, they would never know the potential I had. I said, ‘I don’t care if I have to stay here all night long, I’m not leaving.’”
Her determination led to her being called back to perform the next evening, which resulted in an audition at another nearby restaurant and her first paying gig in Nashville. In 1997, after reading a newspaper story that included a record executive claiming they could not find Black country music talent, Staton was again determined to challenge the inequity she was seeing.
“I read the story over and over and thought, ‘That’s not true. There are some real talented Black country singers here.’”
In February 1997, she launched the first country music showcases for Black artists at Nashville’s Bluebird Café, the venue famous for helping to accelerate the careers of artists including Garth Brooks. “I was trying to open a door for more diversity in country music and bring to this American art form a whole new page of light that they know nothing about,” Staton told Billboard.
The group quickly swelled to over 60 artists, but Staton recalls that among those who attended that first showcase was Hawkins, who last night stood beside Staton on the Opry stage. “She had an incredible country voice and story,” Staton recalled of first meeting Hawkins. “She loved Don Williams and Vern Gosdin. She sang at Loretta Lynn’s ranch all the time, but I couldn’t get anyone on Music Row to listen.”
Ellis Hawkins had a potential artist development deal with a major label, but it soon fizzled out. “It made me sick to see that level of real country talent just be dissed and ignored,” Staton stated. “It made me sick because I knew she was the real deal. We dreamed together and we’ve been friends ever since.”
Staton forged ahead, writing songs, performing music and becoming a staple in Nashville’s live music scene. During her career, she has spent a decade as a performer on Ralph Emery’s morning television show and made appearances on Nashville Now. She’s spent years as a regular pianist and performer at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center. Behind the scenes, she has also spent considerable time as a champion, supporter and mentor for scores of Black artists, songwriters and other creatives within Nashville’s music community.
Her work in launching the Black Country Music Association laid the groundwork for organizations and individuals spearheading current diversity and inclusion efforts, as well as platforms highlighting Black country musicians, including the Black Opry, the Black Opry Revue, the Rosedale Collective, Rissi Palmer’s Color Me Country Radio program on Apple Music and Color Me Country artist grant fund, as well as the Country Music Association’s diversity and inclusion fellowship.
Meanwhile, a whole new generation is learning of Staton’s career journey, through Amazon Music’s documentary, For Love & Country (“Your Dream” is featured in the documentary’s playlist). Staton’s work alongside Francis with the Black Country Music Association is also featured as part of the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum’s current exhibit, American Currents: The State of Music – Unbroken Circle, which will open March 8 and run through February 2024.
“My mantra has always been to be the change I wanted to see,” Staton said.
People who are extremely guarded about their private lives — particularly their love lives — would do well not to get involved with an ace songwriter. Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” left music fans speculating for decades about the narcissist at the core of her venomous takedown, and Taylor Swift rather famously built a big part of her catalog on a string of disappointing relationships, dropping clues about her subjects’ identities but declining to name them.
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Alana Springsteen delved into her own real-life bouts with heartbreak in her first full-length album, 2021’s independently released History of Breaking Up (Part One), and again in 2022’s Part Two. Now signed to the New York division of Columbia, her first release for the label — “You Don’t Deserve a Country Song,” issued last month — reflects her efforts to purge the emotional residue after the split that informed those prior projects.
“Coming off History of Breaking Up (Part One) and (Part Two), it made a lot of sense to start the year off with this song,” Springsteen reflects. “If they found my music through that period, this is going to feel really familiar to them.”
The room was crowded when “Deserve” came into the world in fall 2021. Springsteen already knew three of her four male co-writers — Michael Whitworth (“Break It In”), Geoff Warburton (“Best Thing Since Backroads”) and Will Weatherly (“Thinking ’Bout You,” “Lose It”) — and was introduced to Mitchell Tenpenny, who subsequently made her an opening act during a 2022 tour. Her willingness to put her emotions on the line in that room impressed him.
“You can tell that she was vulnerable about it,” Tenpenny says. “She’s opening up in a room full of dudes to tell us how she feels, and I respect the s–t out of that. She’s a badass.”
Springsteen possessed the musical catalyst for the day’s work at that writing session. She introduced a stuttered, descending acoustic guitar line played at an aggressive pace in an open tuning, and it sifted into a sort of cluttered conversation. In the middle of it, Tenpenny offered a title that he had logged in his phone, “You Don’t Deserve a Song.” It resonated with Springsteen’s recent breakup.
“When things were good between us, we would actually have conversations and talk about me being a songwriter, and maybe writing something about our relationship or him getting to hear his name on the radio,” she recalls.
They tweaked Tenpenny’s title to accommodate the genre — “You Don’t Deserve a Country Song” — and set out to write a tune that refuses to acknowledge a relationship, even if writing it undercut the actual message.
“I thought it was cool to say you don’t deserve it while you’re giving them a country song,” Tenpenny says. “I’m writing it about you, but I just love the irony in saying you’re not going to do it. You’re doing it because that’s what we [as songwriters] do.”
They wrote the chorus first, with the singer vowing not to do the standard things that jilted lovers do in broken-hearted country songs: no drinking alone at the bar, no stalking the ex’s house. All the writers knew her emotional situation, regardless of whether they knew her ex.
“I actually have no idea who this person is in Alana’s life, but I have that person in my life,” says Weatherly. “That’s what makes the entire thing more universal. Everyone knows that person in their life.”But with each of those five creatives contributing their viewpoints, “You Don’t Deserve a Country Song” has a certain orderliness to it. Every stanza serves a different purpose, structured in a way that makes chronological sense to the listener, even though the room itself was a bit disorderly.
“It is chaos when everybody’s tossing out ideas, but everyone in their own mind has an idea of what they think it should be,” Whitworth notes. “Five people’s ideas amalgamate into the final product, but every one of us could have written our own version of that song.”
They first explored the details of writing a song — putting pen to paper, rhyming and forming chords — while vowing not to waste the effort on the ex. Verse two invoked other classic country songs that mined the same subject: “What Hurts the Most,” “You’ll Think of Me” and “Neon Moon,” the latter written by Ronnie Dunn for Tree Publishing (now a part of Sony Music Publishing) when Tenpenny’s grandmother, Donna Hilley, was one of the company’s leading executives. The titles appear in the story with surprising subtlety.
“Maybe it doesn’t catch you on the first listen, but it still services the song and the hook,” says Whitworth. “There’s a backstory no one would ever know listening to the song, but we kind of put in songs that got us into country music.”
Weatherly oversaw the demo, using layers of guitars over a pulsing, synthetic bass to create a near-constant sense of forward motion. He built the sound to a crescendo at the end of the bridge, where Springsteen proclaims, “You don’t get to hear your name on the radio.” He followed it with a down chorus, designed for a short respite before raising the intensity once again at the close.
“As a listener, I don’t want a kick drum hammering my ear the entire time,” Weatherly explains. “So you either do a down bridge and an up chorus, or you do an up bridge and a down chorus. You give the listener a moment to breathe.”
Weatherly’s demo was so well-executed that producer Chris LaCorte (Sam Hunt, Cole Swindell) gave him co-producer credit after using the bass and some of the percussion parts from that demo for the master recording. They were only cutting one song at the time (as opposed to three or four songs in a session), so to keep costs down, they built it with the musicians recording individually in their home studios. The cast included drummer Aaron Sterling, guitarist Sol Philcox-Littlefield and keyboardist Alex Wright, with LaCorte playing bass.
LaCorte lowered the key a half step, beefed up the basic foundation with a few extra tracks and recast the bridge, making that the part where the song’s intensity drops. As a result, the line “You don’t get to hear your name on the radio” stands out.
“A lot of times, I look at how the songs would be performed live,” he says. “This is a moment here where it’s just you and a spotlight out there on the catwalk, you throw the guitar behind your back, you grab the mic, and you’re just singing these lyrics. It’s super intimate, and that was kind of the moment I wanted it to feel like.”
Springsteen’s final vocal had all the intimacy that was required — and all the bite, finding that part of the spirit by listening to her now-disgraced former boyfriend’s voice on an old phone message “Her pitch is crazy good,” LaCorte says. “She has such an ear for pocket or the timing of her words. And she’s so in tune with it, too. So we’ll record a bunch of passes and piece together our favorite stuff. And she’s right on top of me for getting the timing right. I love an artist that’s particular about their vocal.”
“You Don’t Deserve a Country Song” teases Messing It Up, a collection due Mar. 24 as the first installment in a three-part album, Twenty Something. “It’s for everybody who’s decided that they’re done putting somebody else’s happiness first and they’re deciding to choose themselves,” Springsteen asserts. “I think there’s a lot of power and competence that comes from that.”
Zach Bryan, whose “Something In The Orange” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts, has signed a worldwide publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music. Warner Chappell declined to disclose terms of the deal.
Bryan, who is signed to Warner Records, has broken through as one of the brightest new artists of the past few years, including being named Billboard’s Top New Country Artist of 2022.
Los Angeles-based David Goldsen, WCM head of A&R, Australia and vp of creative, signed Bryan. “Zach is a truly generational songwriter and that was obvious from the first time I heard his music. Those songs then, along with countless more since, resonate with everyone who hears them. He’s a natural storyteller with an innate ability to write songs that are unapologetically raw and vulnerable. In a short amount of time, he’s captivated fans of all music, and we’re beyond lucky and thrilled to work with him.”
Goldsen began courting Bryan some time ago. “I’d like to personally thank David and the team over at Warner Chappell. I was just a confused kid in the Navy four years ago and they were the first people I talked to in the industry, literally,” Bryan said in a statement. “They never pushed a four-man writing team on me, they never asked me to do anything I didn’t want to do, they just believed in me. I owe them more than just support, I owe them back the faith they had in me as a barely 23-year-old Oklahoma kid walking around New York like a sore thumb.”
Bryan’s major-label debut, American Heartbreak, came out in May with Bryan penning all 34 songs by himself. It debuted atop Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and hit No. 5 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart. According to Warner Chappell, he has surpassed one billion global streams.
“Zach has already had a record-breaking start to his career and there’s so much more to come,” said Warner Chappell Music president of North America Ryan Press. “He isn’t afraid to do things differently, and it’s been incredible to see him become such a positive force in the industry and reshape how singer/songwriters release music. This is a huge moment, and we’re very proud to be on this journey together as he continues to carve out his own path.”
Bryan’s Burn Burn Burn North American Tour kicks off May 10 at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, Va.
Zach Bryan, fresh off a collaboration with Maggie Rogers and a nomination for best country solo performance at Sunday’s Grammy Awards, seemingly deactivated his Twitter account on Tuesday (Feb. 7).
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When fans attempt to visit his @zachlanebryan Twitter handle, a message pops up, saying, “This account doesn’t exist,” though his Instagram account is still active.
A rep for Bryan declined to comment on Bryan’s now nonexistent Twitter handle. The deleted Twitter page is interesting, as Bryan is known for having a constant, direct connection with his fans, primarily via social media platforms.
The release of “Dawns,” featuring Rogers, was a promise fulfilled to Bryan’s fans, after he had previously vowed to release the track if the Philadelphia Eagles won against the New York Giants; on Jan. 21, the Eagles triumphed over the Giants, 38-7, writing their ticket to Sunday’s Super Bowl.
Currently, Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” sits atop Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart for a sixth week, while his American Heartbreak album ranks at No. 2 on the Top Country Albums chart, just behind Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album.
He followed American Heartbreak with the EP Summertime Blues and the live album All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster (Live From Red Rocks). True to his album title, Bryan’s upcoming Burn, Burn, Burn Tour will be handled primarily via AXS. The tour launches May 10 at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, Va., and concludes at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Mo., on Aug. 30 and includes stops in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York and more.
New music from TOMORROW X TOGETHER and Morgan Wallen occupy the top five of Billboard’s Hot Trending Songs chart dated Feb. 11.
Billboard’s Hot Trending charts, powered by Twitter, track global music-related trends and conversations in real-time across Twitter, viewable over either the last 24 hours or past seven days. A weekly, 20-position version of the chart, covering activity from Friday through Thursday of each week, posts alongside Billboard’s other weekly charts on Billboard.com each Tuesday, with the latest tracking period running Jan. 27-Feb. 2.
“Tinnitus (Wanna Be a Rock),” from TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s new five-song EP The Name Chapter: TEMPTATION (released Jan. 27), starts at No. 1. It’s followed by fellow entries from the EP “Devil By the Window” (No. 3), the Coi LeRay-featuring “Happy Fools” (No. 5), “Farewell, Neverland” (No. 7) and “Sugar Rush Ride” (No. 15).
Concurrently, TEMPTATION bows at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, as previously reported, with 161,000 equivalent album units earned, according to Luminate. Each of the songs also reach the World Digital Song Sales tally, led by “Ride” at No. 1 (3,000 downloads).
Wallen’s “Everything I Love,” “Last Night” and “One Thing at a Time” appear on the ranking at Nos. 2, 4 and 16, respectively. The former two were released Jan. 31 ahead of the country singer’s new album, One Thing at a Time, due March 3, while the latter premiered in 2022.
“Night” and “Love” concurrently debut at Nos. 27 and 61, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100, while “Time” jumps 73-54.
Linda Ronstadt’s “Long Long Time,” released in 1970, also sees a No. 6 debut thanks to its appearance in the Jan. 29 episode of HBO’s The Last of Us.
Keep visiting Billboard.com for the constantly evolving Hot Trending Songs rankings, and check in each Tuesday for the latest weekly chart.