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The Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards revealed a slate of changes on today (Dec. 1), including the expansion of the number of final-round nominees in the coveted entertainer of the year category from five to seven final nominees.
The 58th annual ACM Awards, produced by dick clark productions, will livestream exclusively on Amazon’s Prime Video on May 11, 2023, live from Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.
“The 58th ACM Awards cycle brings thoughtful and well-considered changes to numerous awards categories to better match the landscape of our industry’s music, visual content, and radio broadcasts and, specifically, how they have changed and grown with the times,” Kelly Rich, chair of the ACM Awards, voting, and membership committee, said in a statement.
Additional new category changes are as follows:
Songwriter of the year
The category will split into two categories: songwriter of the year and artist-songwriter of the year.
The ACM songwriter of the year award is presented to an individual known predominately as a songwriter and does not serve as the primary artist on any songs in the top 20 Billboard’s Hot Country Songs or Mediabase Country charts during the eligibility period. Nominees will be selected by a professional panel of judges composed of songwriters, publishers, producers, and performing rights organization (PRO) representatives. The panel will submit five nominees, which will be placed on the final ballot once approved by the ACM board of directors.
The ACM artist-songwriter of the year award is presented to an individual known both as an artist and a songwriter who was the predominate recording artist on at least one song that charted in the top 20 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs or Mediabase Country charts during the eligibility period. Nominees will be selected by the same professional panel of judges as songwriter of the year, who will submit five nominees.
Album of the year
The criteria for the ACM Awards album of the year category will increase the required amount of previously unreleased content from 51% to 75%, while the release window has been updated to better accommodate gradual release schedules.
An album is defined as a unified, released body of work with a minimum of either seven (7) full-length musical works and/or thirty (30) minutes in length. An album is considered released on the first available date that the material can be purchased or streamed by a consumer in its entirety. If the album was released during the two prior eligibility periods but achieved its highest charting position on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart during the eligibility period, it is eligible unless it has appeared on a final ACM ballot in this category.
“Best Of,” “Greatest Hits,” and re-recordings of previously released albums are ineligible. Only the standard edition of an album may be submitted for eligibility. Once an album is nominated in the final round, it may not be nominated in alternate configurations for future voting.
Video of the year
The video of the year category has been expanded into visual media of the year, to include additional formats of visual content.
Radio Awards
There are also shifts in the criteria for the ACM’s radio award for national personality of the year, which has been updated to require that show submissions are distributed across all U.S. continental time zones. This shift will impact the national weekly on-air personality of the year, as well as the national daily on-air personality of the year.
Submissions for the 58th Academy of Country Music Awards will open at 11 a.m. CT on Jan. 9, 2023. The Academy will accept entries through Jan. 27, 2023 at 7 p.m. CT.
First-round voting for the main awards will run from Feb. 27, 2023-March 6, 2023, with second-round voting running from March 27, 2023-April 3, 2023 and final-round voting for the main awards running from April 17, 2023 through April 24, 2023. The eligibility period for submissions for the 58th Academy of Country Music Awards runs from Nov. 16, 2021 through Dec. 31, 2022.
First-round voting for the radio awards run from Feb. 27, 2023 through March 13, 2023, while final-round voting for the radio awards runs from March 27, 2023 through April 10, 2023.
Billy Ray Cyrus couldn’t be happier. In a new social media post, published Wednesday (Nov. 30), the country star posed with his new fiancée Firerose.
“Happiness is everything,” he captioned the joint post with the Australian singer. In the snap, the “Old Town Road” singer wears his long ombre hair in two pigtail braids under a cream-colored hat while his bride-to-be shows off her engagement ring in a pink-and-white flannel with an all-black manicure.
Cyrus first confirmed his engagement to the 34-year-old in a statement to People earlier this month, revealing that he proposed back in August after Firerose moved into his Tennessee home over the summer.
Apparently, the couple first met more than 12 years ago on the set of Hannah Montana. (Firerose is just four years older than Miley Cyrus and one year younger than her older sister Brandi.) They’ve also collaborated on music together, releasing the single “New Day” in 2021 and the follow-up “Time” earlier this year.
Throughout 2022, the Cyrus family patriarch has also joined forces with the likes of Avila Brothers and Snoop Dogg (“A Hard Working Man”), his younger cousin Bobby Cyrus and wife Teddi (“Roll That Rock”), and youngest daughter Noah Cyrus (the duet version of “Noah (Stand Still)” from her 2022 debut studio album The Hardest Part).
Billy Ray’s landmark 1992 hit “Achy Breaky Heart” celebrated its 30th anniversary back in June, just two months before the music video for “Old Town Road” joined the billion-views club on YouTube.
Check out Cyrus’ latest snapshot with Firerose below.
For Santa Barbara, Calif., native Katy Perry, Luke Bryan‘s country twang takes some getting used to.
During his recent appearance on Audacy’s Rob and Holly show, the “Knockin’ Boots” singer shared a funny story in which he was FaceTiming his 14-year-old son, Thomas, while on set at American Idol, where he and Perry appear as judges. “So Katy’s listening to me talk to my 14-year-old, and he goes, ‘Dad, do we have any doe pee around here?’ which is doe urine,” Bryan recalls. “But, watching Katy Perry try to figure out what the hell me and my son were talking about, she was like, ‘Did your son just ask you do you have any dope around the house?’ I said, ‘Katy, he’s asking for doe pee,’ and she goes, ‘Like urine from an animal?’ I was like, ‘Yes, what’s we use to bring the big bucks in.’”
He added with a laugh, “I feel sorry for her and Lionel [Richie] and the country education that they have to get from me.”
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Earlier this year, Bryan discussed his friendship with Perry on Good Morning America, revealing that the two have a “fun friendship.” The country superstar also admitted that he also has a budding bromance with the “Roar” singer’s fiancé. “You know, she’s really a little jealous because she believes that Orlando [Bloom] might have a little man crush on me,” he said with a laugh. “Orlando came into Nashville and I had all these outdoor activities planned for him, so me and Orlando, our love is strong.”
Thanks to her viral hit “Tennessee Orange,” Megan Moroney’s career is red-hot.
The Douglasville, Georgia, native recently inked a hybrid label deal with Sony Music Nashville and New York-based Columbia Records as SMN sends “Tennessee Orange” to country radio where it debuted at No. 60 for Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Dec. 3.
The heartfelt ballad, about being so smitten with someone that you’re willing to temporarily trade her University of Georgia red and black hues for their beloved University of Tennessee orange, broke onto the Billboard Hot 100 in October. “Tennessee Orange” sits at No. 21 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, while Moroney is at No. 13 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart. According to Luminate, the song has earned 52.5 million on-demand official U.S. streams.
Of her Sony Music Nashville/Columbia Records deal, Moroney tells Billboard, “I felt like they most understood what I’ve been doing. They don’t want to change me at all. My goal is to stay country. We brought in Columbia because my lyrics feel cultural — I’m not necessarily singing about trucks and beer and stuff like that. I noticed in my messages and comments, so many people are like, ‘I don’t like country music, but I love your songs.’ I wanted a team that can get this music out to a bigger audience, so that’s why I felt we needed the Columbia team, too.”
Moroney grew up in a musical family, taking piano lessons and singing with her dad. However, she “never really thought of music as a career,” and initially studied accounting at the University of Georgia, before transitioning to marketing and music business. She was in college when she began writing music and quickly integrated herself into the Music City co-writing scene once she moved to Nashville in 2020.
Moroney spoke with Billboard about crafting “Tennessee Orange,” working with Sugarland’s Kristian Bush (who produced “Tennessee Orange”), and her dream collaborations.
What do you recall about writing your first song?
I had the opportunity to open a show for Chase Rice at the Georgia Theatre and he told me I needed an original song to do the show. So I wrote my first song at 19, called “Stay a Memory,” to be able to do that—it was my first real gig. I didn’t grow up dreaming of being a music artist. As a little girl, I did music for fun, but I never would’ve thought that songwriting and being an artist could be a career.
You graduated from UGA and moved to Nashville in mid-2020. What was that like trying to break into the industry during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic?
I moved here and was trying to meet people and network, but it was hard because everything was closed. At UGA, because I had been in the music business program, I was Kristian Bush’s intern in Atlanta, and we kept in touch after I graduated. I had been in Nashville about three months, and Kristian was asking how it was going and I was like, “Well, I’ve met friends, but not really any co-writers.” So he offered to help me record some demos of songs I had written.
When you were an intern, did Kristian know you were also an aspiring artist?
I didn’t really bring it up, that I was trying to do the whole music thing — because the first time I walked into their studio, there were a bunch of CMA awards and Grammys on the wall. I was like, “I’m keeping my mouth shut. I’ve written like three decent songs in my life, so I’m not gonna sit here and tell them that I’m an aspiring artist.”
You are managed by Juli Griffith at Punch Bowl Entertainment. How did you two get connected?
Kristian introduced me and Juli was a publisher in Nashville for a long time. She connected me with Ben Williams and that was my first co-writing session ever, on Zoom. He wrote like half my EP [Pistol Made of Roses, released in July].
Before you released the EP, you’d released a song called “Wonder.” How did that shape you as a songwriter?
I wrote that completely by myself, and it was one of the songs I demoed with Kristian. I was at the beach with my friend Natalie and she was arguing with this guy and was upset about it. I told her, “If he loved you and cared about you, you wouldn’t be wondering if he did.” I had a couple of drinks in me and just started rhyming s–t. We had a house full of people we went to the beach with and I played it for them and they were like, “How did you do that?” I think that was the first song that I wrote where I thought, “There is something here.”
You wrote “Tennessee Orange” with Ben, David Fanning and Paul Jenkins. What do you recall about the writing session?
Ben is my go-to writer, and I had not met David or Paul before. I woke up that morning and had the hook of “In Georgia they’d call it a sin/ I’m wearing Tennessee orange for him.” I felt like it was risky taking that idea for a song in, because I didn’t know two of the other writers, and I didn’t know if they even cared about football. But it was a great writing session, and I just became obsessed with getting the song right.
I went home and kept chipping away at it for a couple more hours and then I sent them the changed version — just changing things like [how] the line about “You raised me to know right from wrong” was in the second verse originally, but I felt like we needed that [in the first verse] to make the storyline — you have no idea what I am going to say until the hook, and the verse builds up that mystery.
What has the reaction been like when you play “Tennessee Orange” in Georgia?
I had two shows in Athens in November, and was so nervous to play it — but the crowds sing it really loud anyway. I played the Georgia Theatre this past week, and it was the loudest I’ve heard a room of people sing it. They are so supportive, which I am grateful for. I have a show in Knoxville this spring, and I’m sure it will go over really great there.
You are working on a full album. Where are you in the process?
We haven’t gotten into the studio yet, but it’s completely written. The songs are all very me. I don’t like cutting songs that I could just pitch to any female country artist. They all have to be very personal to me.
Who are some of the co-writers on the project?
Ben is on a lot of the songs, but also David Messy [Mescon]. And there’s a song I wrote called “Girl in the Mirror” with Jessie Jo Dillon and Matt Jenkins, and it’s so freakin’ good.
Who would some of your dream duet collaborators be?
Chris Stapleton and Miranda Lambert are at the top for me. I’ve been a fan of both of them for so long. I’m also obsessed with Justin Bieber, so that would be fun.
You moved to Nashville when artists were off the road. Now that you are able to get out and tour, what are some of your on-the-road essentials?
Advil and Red Bull [laughs]. I drink probably two Red Bulls a day when I’m on the road. I have to have my Airpods for sure, and all of my flashy boots.
Dolly Parton and Kelly Clarkson have teamed up for a performance of the country icon’s 1981 hit “9 to 5” on The Kelly Clarkson Show, and offered a behind-the-scenes sneak peek of the rehearsals when Parton visited the show’s set.
“I love Kelly. I love your show,” Parton tells the show’s music director Jason Halbert in a clip released Wednesday (Nov. 30). “Y’all do a great job.”
For the performance, the music team recreated the signature typewriter sound from the original and brought in a horn section. Meanwhile, the clip shows Clarkson and Parton showing off their vocal talents, sharing harmonies and showcasing their fanship of one another.
Earlier this year, Parton and Clarkson released a studio version of their collaboration of the song, which premiered in the documentary Still Working 9 to 5. For their upcoming performance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, they melded the new version with the original for a one-of-a-kind performance.
Music luminary Parton wrote the working-class anthem for the 1980 movie of the same name, which she also starred in alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
Parton’s original “9 to 5” spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1981, becoming one of her biggest hits, alongside her Kenny Rogers collaboration “Islands in the Stream,” which also spent two weeks atop the chart in 1983.
Earlier this year, Clarkson honored Parton by performing “I Will Always Love You” during the 57th annual Academy of Country Music Awards.
Watch the behind-the-scenes clip of “9 to 5” from The Kelly Clarkson Show below. The performance airs on Thursday (Dec. 1).
In 1989, country radio — and the genre in general — experienced a seismic shift when Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt and Clint Black all released their debut albums in the same year.
Referred to collectively and reverentially as “The Class of ’89,” the movement brought a sea change to country music, ushering in an era of unprecedented growth and popularity.
Now a new crop of male artists is taking the charts by storm, leading industry executives to believe another watershed moment could be happening at country.
In a rare move, six artists all have their first singles sent to country radio in the top 35 of Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Dec. 3: Jackson Dean, “Don’t Come Lookin’” (No. 3), Bailey Zimmerman, “Fall in Love” (5), Jelly Roll, “Son of a Sinner” (8), Nate Smith, “Whiskey on You” (12), Corey Kent, “Wild as Her” (26) and Zach Bryan, “Something in the Orange” (33).
“It’s a paradigm shift we see in the format every now and then when there’s a crop of new artists that come in, push their way onto the chart and you can’t ignore it anymore,” says Tim Roberts, country format vp/brand manager for the Audacy radio chain.
“It feels unprecedented,” says Sony Music Nashville chairman/CEO Randy Goodman, whose roster includes Smith and Kent.
Preceded by acts like HARDY, who straddles country and rock, these artists are not only storming the airwaves, they’re setting records. Two years ago Zimmerman was building gas pipelines and posting original songs to social media. Shortly thereafter, Elektra’s senior vp of A&R/head of research and analytics Jacob Fain noticed “a quick moment” was happening on TikTok and helped sign him. In September, the 22-year old made history on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart when he became the first act to place three career-opening entries in the tally’s top 10 simultaneously since October 1958, when it became an all-encompassing genre ranking. (The chart now measures streaming, airplay and sales.)
A decade after bro-country hit radio airwaves, the new era of ronky tonk feels more like woe-country — that feel-good sound’s antithesis. Instead of uptempo beats and lyrics about a care-free lifestyle filled with girls, trucks and beer, these songs often display a rawer rock production with a brooding vocal delivery. Alcohol is used to drown one’s sorrows rather than for celebration. Troubles, they’ve got them — often with a side of heartache and a past they can’t escape.
“Nate’s very open with his lyrics about heartbreak and Bailey’s just 22, but he’s got his heart broken many times and both guys and girls are really connecting to the lyrics and music,” says Simon Tikhman, CEO and co-founder at Core Entertainment, who co-manages Smith with Kevin “Chief” Zaruk. The pair also co-manage Zimmerman with 10th Street Entertainment’s Chris Nilsson and Scott Frazier.
Warner Music Nashville co-president Cris Lacy, who works with Zimmerman (in partnership with Elektra) and Bryan (who’s signed to Warner Records with assistance from WMN) credits the acts’ authenticity for their success. “A lot of artists that come to town work into a system full of brilliant songwriters, musicians and artists, and it’s intimidating. Sometimes you shrink before you expand,” she says. “They came to town with the stories that built them – Zach with his military career and Bailey working on pipelines – and put the music out. It really wasn’t subject to any scrutiny or any rewriting or any trying to make it fit in a box.”
They also bring with them an edge that provides a counterpoint to the pop-leaning sound that has filled country radio recently. “It’s not that people don’t like pop country,” Roberts says, “but the format always needs balance. I think it’s a correction that we’re seeing and the audience is eating it up.”
“Country had started to feel very safe, not dangerous,” says Zaruk. “Now you’re seeing [rock] influences come in that you normally wouldn’t see. It’s not the typical dirt roads and tailgates.”
Some of the acts are experiencing crossover success on the rock charts as well. Jelly Roll’s “Son of a Sinner” peaked at No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart, while his “Dead Man Walking” reached No. 1 on Mainstream Rock Airplay. Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” climbed to No. 2 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs. (HARDY’s “Sold Out” topped Billboard’s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart in March, the same week “Beers On Me, his team-up with Dierks Bentley and Breland, was No. 4 on Country Airplay before ascending to the top spot).
Industry executives cite other reasons for the flurry of activity, including audiences opening their ears to new sounds following the pandemic. “Every research piece I saw during the pandemic said people don’t want to hear new music right now. They had other crap to worry about, like getting groceries and finding toilet paper,” Roberts says. “We’re in an era that’s post-pandemic, and people are feeling better from an emotional and mental standpoint and now do have an appetite for new music. And I think radio is smart enough to see it.”
Country radio, which tends to move conservatively, is also smart enough to see that some of these acts are earning massive streaming numbers and stations risk hesitating at their own peril. The country genre has been slower than pop and hip hop to adapt to streaming, but the numbers are steadily increasing. In his short career, Bryan has already earned 2.45 billion on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate, compared to 13.4 billion career streams for Luke Combs.
“Where I was really seeing it was on the country on-demand streaming chart,” Goodman says. “Just looking at the number of new entries there has been quite astonishing.”
RADIO PICKING UP THE PACE
Terrestrial radio, once the entry point for listeners to hear new music, now often follows streaming when it comes to musical discovery — building off momentum established first on Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok and other platforms. But Big Machine Label Group bucked current practice and went straight to radio with Dean’s “Don’t Come Lookin’” instead of waiting for other indicators to show the song was growing.
“When I hear that radio is a great finisher, there is a small part of me that gets offended, because it historically has been such a massive medium of exposure,” says Kris Lamb, Big Machine’s senior vp of promotion and digital. “Jackson crushes it live with acoustic shows. We could very economically take him to every tastemaker that would open their doors, so we thought, ‘Let’s let radio lead on this,’ and we started our radio tour at the beginning of the year.”
The results are a hit at radio concurrent with building streaming success. “Ever since the record has been inside the top 10 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart, it’s taken on a new life of its own when it comes to on-demand streams, sales and consumption. I really do think it’s an incredible case study of how radio can lead the charge and break an artist,” Lamb says.
“Country radio is stepping out [and] taking risks on these artists,” Lacy says. “It used to be radio would ask us when we wanted to release [a song]. Now, they’re picking up the song and playing it, whether we are planning on releasing it or not. In Zach’s case we weren’t working [“Something in the Orange”] at all.”
Similarly, Zimmerman went to country radio very early after being signed. “It was a risk, but we felt that this record was strong enough and the story was building so quickly, that we wanted to get the shot,” Fain says. “Bailey and some of the country records are moving so quickly almost like what you would expect out of a coastal signing. The genre is changing and evolving.”
Country radio is the last format where labels build new artists by sending them on expensive radio tours around the country to introduce them in person at various stations. (This step is considered so crucial that during the pandemic, BMG funded a high-tech studio that enabled new artist Elvie Shane to perform virtually for more than 120 individual stations in order to facilitate the one-on-one interaction with studio personnel).
Not everyone’s taking the radio tour route though, and some of these acts — including Zimmerman and Smith — are letting metrics trump tradition because fans are reacting so strongly. “For the longest time, it was like, ‘You’ve got to go do the 20-week country radio tour [and] play for the programmers to build relationships,’” says Zaruk. “With analytics, it’s no longer, ‘Can you give us two spins at midnight?’ That’s old school. Now you go, ‘Hey, this song is streaming 5 million streams a week. Here’s 14 markets on DSPs where there’s 15,000 people a day listening to the song.’ You fire that info to radio and they’re like, ‘We have to play this song.’”
With Smith, Sony Nashville built a story by sending two other tracks to digital service providers (DSPs) before taking “Whiskey on You” to radio. “We said, ‘Look, this thing is exploding,’” Goodman says. “‘Put it in day parts and give it a shot and if it doesn’t work, we’ll move on because we’re seeing the consumption blow up and we’re making money.’”
Similarly with Sony’s Kent, radio stations moved quickly after they saw action on DSPs and SiriusXM’s The Highway with terrestrial stations in major markets like Los Angeles, Denver and Dallas leading the way. “Those are three of the five biggest stations. [They] typically aren’t going to jump on anything, until there’s a fully-orchestrated radio promotion campaign from a major label,” says Kent’s manager, Triple 8 Management founder George Couri. But bolstered by the fan response, the stations didn’t wait.
“When the music is this good and your audience wants it, you have to react to it,” Roberts says.
It is early days and way too soon to tell which, if any, of today’s breakthrough artists become tomorrow’s superstars. “Staying power is always the test of time,” Roberts says, “but these people all seem very talented and capable of producing a lot more music.”
In the meantime, Cumulus Media vp of country Charlie Cook says this bumper crop of newcomers are taking advantage of the opportunities and resources that the class of 1989 lacked.
“They have an additional avenue that the class of ’89 didn’t have, and that’s going directly to the consumer. The people in ’89 had to go through radio,” he says. “We get accused of being gatekeepers sometimes. I think in this case, the gatekeepers have said, ‘Come on in, let me open this gate wider for you, and make sure that we give you space to grow the brand that you’ve already developed.’”
Country music fans are getting an early holiday gift! Tanya Tucker is set to star in the movie A Nashville Country Christmas, which will premiere Monday, Dec. 12, at 8 p.m. ET via Paramount Network, with a simulcast on CMT.
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Tucker portrays a country music singer who is overwhelmed with her work on an over-the-top Hollywood production and seeks respite by retreating to her grandmother’s Tennessee farm. However, she also finds much-needed reconnection on several levels, from rekindling a romance with an ex-lover, returning to her own musical roots, and discovering a unique familial bond when she realizes three children who have outsmarted the local foster care system are instead residing at the family’s property.
In addition to Tucker, the cast includes Keith Carradine, Ana Oritz and Olivia Sanabia. Tucker also serves as an executive producer on the project, alongside Stephanie Slack, Margret Huddleston, Ali Spuck and Kristofer McNeeley.
“It’s amazing that after 50 years in this business, I get to see my dreams become reality! And being part of A Nashville Country Christmas is definitely one of them,” Tucker said in a statement. “I’ve always wanted to do more acting, and it was a gift from the good Lord when this role came along. I can’t wait for everyone to enjoy the movie this season.”
The film was produced by Andrew Gernhard and Dustin Rikert, and directed by Ashley Williams. For MTV Entertainment Studios, executive producers include Trevor Rose, Leslie Fram, Amal Baggar, Andrew Lutin and Donny Hugo Herran.
An encore presentation of A Nashville Country Christmas will air Sunday, Dec. 25, at 11 a.m. ET on CMT.
The romantic holiday movie is the latest film project for two-time CMA Award winner Tucker, who recently teamed with Brandi Carlile for the documentary The Return of Tanya Tucker, which chronicles Tucker’s five decades in the music industry, as well as the making of her Grammy-winning album While I’m Livin’ (produced by Carlile and Shooter Jennings). Over the years, Tucker has also appeared in several TV movies and series, including 1979’s The Rebels and 1981’s The Love Boat. In 2005, she starred in and served as executive producer for the reality series Tuckerville.
Watch the official trailer for A Nashville Country Christmas below:
Country singer Jake Flint died on Nov. 26 just hours after getting married. According to EW, publicist Clif Doyal confirmed that the 37-year-old up-and-coming singer died in his sleep, with a cause of death not announced at press time.
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The Oklahoma native’s death was announced over the weekend by manager Brenda Cline of Route 66 Entertainment, who wrote on Facebook, “With a broken heart and in deep grief I must announce that Jake Flint has tragically passed away. I’ve tried several times today to make a post, but you can’t comment on what you can’t process. The photo below is when Jake and I excitedly signed our artist management contract. That was the beginning of a wonderful friendship and partnership. Jake was even more than that to me, I loved him much like a son.”
Cline called Flint the “funniest, most hilarious, hardest working, dedicated” artist she’s ever worked with, noting that they were about to embark on some business together after his wedding to wife Brenda, which took place just hours before his passing.
“Yes-yesterday. Jake has a million friends and I’m not sure how everyone will cope with this tragic loss,” Cline wrote. “We need prayers- it’s all so surreal. Please please pray for his new wife Brenda, Jake’s precious mother, his sister and the rest of his family and friends. This is going to be incredibly difficult for so many. We love you Jake and in our hearts forever.”
New wife Brenda also mourned Flint, writing on FB, “We should be going through wedding photos but instead I have to pick out clothes to bury my husband in. People aren’t meant to feel this much pain. My heart is gone and I just really need him to come back. I can’t take much more. I need him here.”
According to “Cowtown” singer Flint’s website, he was born in 1985 and raised in Holdenville, Oklahoma and was best known for his songs Oklahoma Red Dirt-style songs “Fireline” and “Hurry Up and Wait.” Flint pursued music spurred by his late father’s wish to share something with his son. After his dad was diagnosed with ALS, he asked some friends to teach him how to play guitar, leading to the singer “float[ing] through life loving, hating, gaining, losing, experimenting, witnessing, missioning, sinning, breaking the law, paying the consequences while openly and candidly writing about it all.”
Flint’s friend and fellow musician, Mike Hosty, told The Oklahoman that the wedding took place on a remote Oklahoma homestead on Nov. 26, just hours before the singer’s death. “It was rainy, but he’d rented a 40-by-60 circus tent,” Hosty said. “They put up a bunch of carpets over the mud and then got two pieces of three-and-a-quarter-inch plywood and set it on the ground — and that was my stageJake goes, ‘Is that gonna be all right for you?’ And I go, ‘Jake, that’s perfect.’ A piece of plywood or a flatbed trailer is where I shine.”
Hosty called his late friend a “singer-songwriter, through and through, and just a big personality… a big heart, and [he’d] bend over backwards to do anything for you. When any musician asks you to play at their wedding it’s one of those most important days… and it’s always an honor.”
Flint’s most recent album was June 2021’s Live and Socially Distanced at Mercury Lounge, which included the songs “What’s Your Name,” “Drugged, Drunk and Alone/Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Hard Livin’” and “Cold in This House.” Previous studio releases included a self-titled 2020 album and 2016’s I’m Not OK.
See Cline’s tribute below.
Jessie James Decker recently enjoyed a vacation in Mexico with her family, and like many parents, shared some adorable photos of her kids having fun in the sun on Instagram. However, the “I Still Love You” singer received some backlash, with critics claiming that she photoshopped the children’s visible abs or even accusing her and husband Eric Decker of “overtraining” their kids.
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In a follow-up post on Monday (Nov. 28), Jessie addressed the “bonkers” accusations. “Being accused of photoshopping abs on my kids (I can’t help but laugh) or … the polar opposite over ‘overtraining’ our kids makes me realize how bizarre our world has gotten regarding the body and what’s normal and what’s not,” she captioned a series of videos of the couple’s three children — eight-year-old Vivianne, seven-year-old Eric Jr. and four-year-old Forrest — playing outside on the same vacation.
“We preach about body positivity and acceptance but my kids having a mass amount of genetic and built muscle from athletics is ‘weird’?” she continued. “I want to raise my kids to feel proud of their bodies and hard work from either Vivis elite competitive gymnastics to Eric Jr wanting to be like dad as an NFL receiver to little Forrest who spends hours dancing his heart out. Let’s not pick and choose what we normalize regarding bodies and be accepting of all people and children. If we wanna do ‘better’ then do better. I’m proud of my children and encourage them to live their dreams. So we’ll see y’all at the 2032 Olympics, and wearing Bubbys jersey in the stands and dancing at Forrests rock concert.”
Jessie’s husband and NFL wide receiver Eric commented on the post in support, writing, “U get mama bear [raised hands emoji] [lion emoji].”
See her post below.
Thanksgiving was a major life marker for Kelsea Ballerini.
Recently divorced from Morgan Evans, she had had possession of her new home — purchased from fellow country star Kacey Musgraves — for less than a week, and she was already planning to host a holiday soirée with friends.
Single people naturally rely on their compadres in a big way, and Ballerini is set up to do that, not only in her personal life, but also in her latest career move. “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too),” which Black River released to country radio via PlayMPE on Nov. 15, is a “besties” single, a track focused on two women with a shared, rambunctious history. If the title generates thoughts of Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon driving off the cliff in Thelma & Louise or the song’s murder reference leads to thoughts of the Dixie Chicks single “Goodbye Earl,” then it’s working as intended.
“We just started talking about Thelma & Louise, and [“Earl” characters] Marianne and Wanda, and these really beautiful best-friend stories that had a tinge of murder attached,” Ballerini remembers. “Me and my girlfriends will all listen to Crime Junkie and text each other every Monday after we listen to the podcast. And if we have a girls’ night, we’re going to watch some kind of true-crime documentary.”
Ballerini had that Thelma & Louise conversation with two male friends — songwriters Julian Bunetta (“Craving You,” “Look What God Gave Her”) and Shane McAnally (“Body Like a Back Road,” “One Night Standards”), who co-produced her current Subject to Change — during the final stages of the album’s production this summer. They felt they had enough material to make a solid album, but they mapped out one last “Hail Mary” writing day on the chance that they could craft a song that would beat what they had already cut. That morning, they penned “I Can’t Help Myself” with Josh Osborne (“I Was on a Boat That Day,” “Merry Go ’Round”); after he left, they had one more hour to work, and they reviewed the topics that might be absent from Subject to Change.
“There was a big, missing puzzle piece, and that was a song that honors my friendships,” she recalls. “Friends was a huge theme on my last record — the two lyrics that popped up the most on that Kelsea record were ‘home’ and ‘friends.’ And so it was like I was doing a disservice to a pillar in my life to not have a song that carried that through.”
Bunetta found a groove with a celebratory attitude, driving home a simple, fast-paced chord progression that provided a foundation for the story. He kept at that rhythm, bolstered by a distinct chop, for much of the write. “I got this funny little guitalele that is my fun writing guitar that songs just seem to pour out of,” he says. “It’s just a fun little nylon-string, so it’s easy on the hands.”
They instinctively locked in on a melody that reflected the attitude. The lines in the opening verse start primarily with an ascendant passage, ending in a flood of syllables. The chorus flips that pattern a bit, descending in its opening moments and making longer notes more prominent. That cheery setting gave them plenty of leeway to go dark with the plot.
“The juxtaposition of lyric and music, if you can get them right [as] opposing forces, it always makes it a bit more intriguing and multilayered than sad music/sad lyric,” notes Bunetta.
The first line — “I’ve known you since Brad and Angelina” — used a celebrity couple rather than a calendar year to provide a sense of the friendship’s longevity. And it also tied the lyric further to Thelma & Louise because that movie introduced the world to a shirtless Brad Pitt. The rest of the lyric embraced holding secrets and hiding evidence as the two women look after each other’s reputations in a mutually beneficial manner: “Dirt on you is dirt on me,” Ballerini sings at the start of the chorus.
The song continues to traverse an outlaw path, with an imaginary bank robbery and a “getaway Mercedes” — shades of Bonnie and Clyde — plus an additional pledge to lie on her girlfriend’s behalf should their crime spree take the ultimate twist: “Hypothetically, if you ever kill your husband …”
They introduced subtle variation to the structure of “Go Down” by playing with the final line of the choruses, singing “If you go down, I’m goin’ down too” once at the end of the first chorus, twice to wrap the second and three times when they reached the fourth (and final) chorus.
Ballerini sang over Bunetta’s guitalele for the demo, though all three writers agreed that the lyrics might be misordered. In fact, when they met up again the next day to record “Go Down” at Starstruck Studios on Music Row, they swapped two of the verses and delayed a lyrical change in the chorus — “Our bodies are buried, and they’re in the same ditch” — until the final chorus, instead of the second; it made more sense for that reference to come after the “kill your husband” thought.
Most of the instruments were acoustic — only one electric baritone guitar is present among two acoustics, a mandolin and a Dobro. Drummer Evan Hutchings plays the snare with brushes instead of sticks, and bassist Craig Young borrowed Bunetta’s Kala U-bass, which enhanced that acoustic motif.
“It sounds kind of like an upright bass, but it’s still got like some give in the in the notes, meaning that they bend a lot because of the way that those rubber strings are, so it just fit the texture perfectly,” Bunetta says. “I happened to bring it out and kept it in my car because I just had a feeling that we’d use it.”
They brought in Jenee Fleenor later to overdub a fiddle part, and she filled in half of the original solo section, creating a trade-off between fiddle and mandolin. “We really wanted to lean into a very ’90s country feel, and so we brought in fiddle for the song, which I think to me makes it,” says Ballerini. “That’s also why there’s a Chicks reference to it, which everyone picks up on, which was absolutely intentional. I didn’t want to make it sound like anything else on the record. I wanted it to be its own moment.”
Ballerini spent roughly two hours on the vocal. The notes weren’t particularly difficult, but she worked very specifically on providing lines that sounded like an aural wink, ensuring that the listener would not take the song’s criminal streak seriously.
“You can almost see her acting it out,” Bunetta says. “It was a very visual thing, [the way] the vocal was being shaped.”
Black River assigned “If You Go Down” a Dec. 5 add date, issuing an uptempo single to radio at a time of year when ballads are a little more prevalent. Meanwhile, the running-buddies theme mirrors the new period in her personal life when friends will play a bigger role than they have for several years.
“Sometimes you put out a single because you think that it’s the most radio-friendly, and sometimes you put out a single because it’s actually reflective of where you’re at in your life,” she says. “And then sometimes, both things can be true.”