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Morgan Wallen is set to return to London later this month for a one-night-only show at Roundhouse on Wednesday, May 28. The show, which follows his 2024 BST Hyde Park headlining show, will mark Wallen’s only concert announced outside of North America thus far in 2025.
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Fans can access the exclusive ticket presale by pre-ordering Wallen’s new album I’m the Problem through any format from the Morgan Wallen UK store prior to 10 a.m. BST on Tuesday, May 13.
Wallen’s I’m the Problem is set to release May 16 and will feature collaborations with Post Malone, Tate McRae, Eric Church, ERNEST and HARDY. Wallen co-wrote 22 songs on the album, but also brought in the talents of 49 fellow writers, creating a track list that includes songs such as “Love Somebody,” “Lies Lies Lies” and “Superman,” which is set to release Friday (May 9).
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“A lot of the concepts and things we said were a little more difficult with this album,” Wallen said in a statement. “We were trying to dig deep on things and trying to find new angles. And I feel like we did that. I feel like there’s a lot of stuff that I haven’t said in this record, which I’m really, really proud of.”
In North America, Wallen will launch his 2025 I’m The Problem Tour on June 20 at NRG Stadium in Houston. The 20-show tour will find Wallen playing shows in cities including Seattle, Toronto, and Madison, Wisconsin. Joining Wallen on the tour will be a rotating lineup of guest artists, including Brooks & Dunn, Miranda Lambert, Thomas Rhett, Koe Wetzel as direct support, with Gavin Adcock, Corey Kent, Ella Langley and Anne Wilson as first-of-three on select dates.
In addition to the North American tour dates and his upcoming London show, Wallen will also perform at his own Sand in My Boots Festival, which is slated for May 16-18 in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
If the Academy of Country Music Awards were a game show, the music event of the year honor would be the bonus round.
Appearing in that category on the ballot can make a huge difference in the top nomination totals, and the 60th annual awards — slated to be presented May 8 in Frisco, Texas — are a prime example. Three of the top four nominees — Ella Langley, with eight nominations; Cody Johnson, with seven; and Morgan Wallen, also with seven — had their totals boosted as finalists for music event. That’s also true for seven of the top eight nominees.
In fact, the only artist among the top eight who’s absent from music event is seven-time nominee Lainey Wilson, whose ACM experiences were eventful each of the last two years.
“I think she has done her due diligence on music event,” ACM head of artist relations and awards Haley Montgomery says. “She won for ‘Save Me’ with Jelly Roll. She won for ‘wait in the truck’ with HARDY.So I think she’s just giving us a one-year break.”
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In another era, music event felt a little gimmicky. The category often contained songs that were non-singles or charted tracks that never made the upper reaches of the list. But in the current era, hit collaborations are more plentiful, in great part because there is a larger volume of titles from which voters can pick.
Collaborations “used to be a lot tougher to do,” recalls Brad Paisley, who won vocal event (as it was then called) with three titles: “Whiskey Lullaby,” with Alison Krauss, in 2004; “When I Get Where I’m Going,” with Dolly Parton, in 2005; and “Start a Band,” with Keith Urban, in 2008.”We used to scream at the top of our lungs to labels, ‘Please let us do these things.’ “
Now that streaming has expanded the ways in which music is consumed, former concerns about disturbing marketing plans for two or more acts at radio are far less an issue, Paisley reasons. So artists work together more. Backing Paisley’s point, he appears on Kane Brown‘s The High Road album and Post Malone‘sACM-nominated F-1 Trillion. He has at least two other collaborations in the works, and Chris Young sent him a song recently with hopes that Paisley would play guitar on it.
“Whether or not that ever comes out, I don’t know,” Paisley says. “But that’s what music should be.”
In some ways, the music event field represents the heart and soul of the current awards-show ideal. Producers of every televised awards ceremony look for artist matchups that they can promote as special events that may not happen anywhere else. Chris Stapleton‘s collaboration with Justin Timberlake at the 2015 Country Music Association Awards is perhaps the most impactful example.
“The audience just really loves seeing different artists collaborate together,” says Fusion Music founder Daniel Miller, who co-manages five-time ACM nominee Riley Green with Red Light artist manager Zach Sutton. “Certainly this category has been around for a long time, and some of the most historic songs come from that category. But I think more than ever, they just love the collaboration.”
The total impact of a collaboration goes beyond the music event category. Three of this year’s five music event nominees — Langley & Green’s “you look like you love me,” Post Malone & Wallen’s “I Had Some Help” and Johnson & Carrie Underwood‘s “I’m Gonna Love You” — scored additional nods for single, song and/or visual media of the year. In fact, four of Wallen and Post Malone’s nominations are tied to “I Had Some Help,” while six of Langley’s eight nods and all five of Riley’s derive from “you look like you love me.”
“Riley’s career was certainly taking off in a big way [already], and Ella was starting to be discovered,” Miller says, “but [the duet] was exponentially beneficial to both of them when you add them together.”
With that potential impact, aiming intentionally for a music event award might seem like a good strategy on the surface. But Paisley, Miller, Montgomery and Johnson all caution that collaborating for creative reasons is more likely to succeed than targeting trophies. Johnson, in fact, took issue when his team started sketching out a marketing plan for a possible collaboration with Wilson even before the song had been finalized.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Well, we need to get with her camp about when we’re going to release this,’ ” Johnson recalls. “I said, ‘Hey, I just want to record this. Let me record the song, and then y’all can do all that later.’ “
Landing a music event nomination has an extra bonus for artists who produce their own work at the ACMs, since the organization gives those acts separate trophies for the performance and the production. Carly Pearce, who co–produced her Stapleton collaboration “we don’t fight anymore,” and Kelsea Ballerini, who co-produced the Noah Kahan music event “Cowboys Cry Too,” both doubled up on nominations in the category. Not every awards show provides a second trophy for artist-producers.
“Overall, it’s really important to recognize who we think are pivotal in the background of what caused these moments to happen,” Montgomery says. “And when you’re talking about a music event, bringing two people together, producing that collaboration — speaking as someone who does a very small scale of that, just trying to put together honors compilations or small performances at after-parties — it can be really complicated, so we see value in recognizing the subcredits of who made this magic moment happen.”
The right music event can certainly help an artist pile up nominations, but ideally the nomination isn’t the goal. It’s the result of a performance developed for creative, or collaborative, purposes.
“You could point to this category and say, ‘This is the reason awards shows are watched, because of music events,’” Montgomery says. “So it’s a really interesting one. I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon.”
It was fitting that Miranda Lambert was on hand for Sunday night’s (May 4) “Iconic Women”-themed night. As the show’s top 10 competed for a spot in the top 8, Lambert was in the house for a killer performance of one of her breakthrough hits and to offer advice and encouragement to the singers, beginning with country crooner John Foster, who admitted that the singer was his “first crush.”
They clearly got along like old friends, with country gentleman Foster even taking off his cowboy hat in deference to Lambert, who counseled him to work the stage a bit as they did an impromptu duet on Bonnie Raitt’s “Something to Talk About.”
Lambert wasn’t done singing, though, as she had her own spotlight moment later in the show when she took the stage to perform her breakthrough 2005 hit single, “Kerosene,” which peaked at No. 61 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Nov. 15 on the Hot Country Songs chart. The song, which was the third single and title track of Lambert’s debut album, has lost none of its rocking vibe in the ensuing two decades.
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“Dusty roads ain’t made for walking/ Spinning tires ain’t made for stoppin’/ I’m giving up on love ’cause love’s given up on me,” Lambert sang over her band’s foot-stomping backing, as, following her own advice, she worked the stage in a rhinestone-studded black jumpsuit while the giant screen behind her featured the tune’s title in flaming letters.
Fellow country stars and Idol judges Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan clapped and bopped their heads to the song’s driving beat and gospel-flecked keyboards. Afterwards, host Ryan Seacrest asked Lambert how her mentoring run on the show has been going and she said, “I love them all so much. I’ve had such a blast getting to be part of this Idol family and getting to know these wonderful artists. It has been a real blessing for me.”
Lambert also plugged her new record label, Big Loud Texas, where she said she’s trying to keep the “outlaw movement going.”
Other top 10 performances on the episode included: Kolbi Jordan (Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain”), Josh King (Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”), Breanna Nix (Adele’s “Water Under the Bridge”), Canaan James Hill (Carrie Underwood’s “Love Wins”), Thunderstorm Artis (Adele’s “When We Were Young”), Slater Nalley (Reba McEntire’s “Whoever’s In New England”), Jamal Roberts (Underwood’s “Undo It”), Mattie Pruitt (Lambert’s “The House That Built Me”) and Gabby Samone (Beyoncé’s “I Was Here”).
Idol winner Abi Carter also returned during the episode to sing her new ballad, “Burned.” By show’s end, the top 10 was cut down to the top eight, with Jordan and Hill eliminated. The next episode of Idol, the judge’s song contest, airs on Monday night at 8 p.m. ET, where America will vote for the top six and the judges will use their save to complete the top seven.
Watch Lambert perform “Kerosene” on American Idol below.
In many ways, country music tells the story of America. There is the celebration of rural life and the yearning to recapture a seemingly simpler time. There are murder ballads, cheating songs, tunes that herald Saturday night’s debauchery and Sunday morning’s redemption. There are bring-you-to-your knees, heartbreak songs and songs that embrace both fleeting and […]
This week’s crop of new music finds Luke Combs and Bailey Zimmerman pairing up on a hard-charging anthem about grit and determination. Elsewhere, Trisha Yearwood offers up new music, from her forthcoming first album in six years, while HARDY, Rebecca Lynn Howard, Jedd Hughes and Mason Via also issue meshes of country, rock, blues and/or bluegrass on new songs.
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Bailey Zimmerman feat. Luke Combs, “Backup Plan”
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Zimmerman just logged a Billboard Hot 100 top 5 hit with his BigXThaPlug collaboration “All the Way,” and he quickly follows by teaming with fellow country hitmaker Luke Combs — this time on a hard-charging, motivational anthem about tuning out naysayers in favor for chasing one’s own ambitions. Combs’s full-bodied vocal is a natural for this type of commanding track, while Zimmerman cranks up the vocal energy to another level. The two filmed the video for “Backup Plan” live at Stagecoach Country Music Festival in California, when Zimmerman made a guest appearance during Combs’ Sunday evening set.
Trisha Yearwood, “Bringing the Angels”
Three-time Grammy winner Yearwood is set to return with her first album in six years with the July 18 release of The Mirror, which also features Yearwood as a writer on all of the set’s songs. She offers a stellar preview on that album with this bluesy-rock fueled number, as careening guitars and soulful gospel choir vocals aid in giving a vigorous reminder of Yearwood’s emotional and vocal firepower, as she calls on the support of a higher power as she rails against haters and doubters. Yearwood wrote “Bringing the Angels” with her sister Beth Bernard, as well as writers Leslie Satcher and Bridgette Tatum.
HARDY, “Girl With a Gun”
From his newly released EP Country! comes this ballad that finds HARDY singing about allaying the fears of a lover concerned that his night out with a group of friends could lead to infidelity–but he’s quick to bring a reminder of his undying devotion, plus, he’s aware his lover knows her way around a firearm and cheating could lead to deadly consequences. “You really think I’d teach you to shoot it/ If I was gonna be the reason you’d use it,” he sings, bringing a track that manages to be both the EP’s most tender — yet ominous — song, while also highlighting HARDY’s signature way with making a lyric both powerful and unexpected.
Rebecca Lynn Howard, “I’m Not Who You Think I Am”
The title track to Howard’s first album in 15 years, it showcases that her vocal prowess hasn’t diminished, and that her songwriting has only grown more nuanced and fearless. She delves into redemption (“A Good Place to Turn Around”), pleas for societal change (the twangy jamband track “Mess Down Here”), and offers boot-stomping declarations of a lover willing to fight (“Hoedown”), while elsewhere lending her voice to the full-throttle twang of “Flowerbed.” Howard is known for her powerful vocals on early hits such as the ballad “Forgive,” but on this set, she delivers an array of country-rock bangers, twangy bluegrass-tilted tracks and deeply introspective tunes with aplomb.
Jedd Hughes, “Kill My Blues”
Two decades ago, Hughes made his debut in Nashville circles with a polished, bluegrass-inflected project that demonstrated his skills as a triple threat singer-songwriter-guitarist. Since then, he’s proven an in-demand studio and touring musician and an ace artist in his own right. “Kill My Blues” is featured on Hughes’ new album Night Shades, and an older co-write with revered artist Guy Clark. The pristine production and layered instrumentals kick this bluesy-rocker up a notch, and proves Hughes’s expressive singing as well as his towering instrumental talents.
Mason Via feat. Ronnie Bowman and Junior Sisk, “Oh Lordy Me”
Via has forged several sterling stints in bluegrass and Americana circles, including work as the youngest member of Old Crow Medicine Show, and writing songs for Del McCoury Band’s album Almost Proud as well as Molly Tuttle’s City of Gold. Via continues etching his own musical path with his new project, which includes a stellar collaboration with bluegrass titans Ronnie Bowman and Junior Sisk on “Oh Lordy Me,” a piece that simultaneously nods to bluegrass tradition while feeling progressive and boundary-less. Fiddle, mandolin, banjo and the singers’ bright harmonies wrap around this celebration of rural living, from taking in the mountain air and lush scenery, to taking pride on one’s station in life, regardless of financial position.
Everybody’s had the blues.
Merle Haggard‘s observation was true in the 1970s, and it still resonates in 2025 in country music as the genre welcomes a new wave of blues-tinged artists.
Valory released Preston Cooper‘s first radio single — “Weak,” bolstered by Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar tones and Hammond B-3 — to broadcasters via PlayMPE on April 23. RECORDS Nashville took Texas singer-songwriter Ty Myers to radio on April 10 with “Ends of the Earth,” a spacious, almost churchy ballad. And Big Loud’s Alabama-born Kashus Culpepper has steadily rolled out tracks over the last year with videos that feel akin to the Mississippi Delta circa 1945. Culpepper’s catalog invites comparisons to Keb’ Mo’ and Leon Bridges, and his latest track — “Southern Man,” released March 27 — features sweaty slide guitar from bluesy Americana figure Marcus King.
“I think the blues is the root to every genre out there,” Ohio-bred Cooper says. “You always have to have a rhythm, you know. You always have to have a beat. And I think blues starts that for all genres.”
The rise of the blues makes sense in a genre like country that appeals primarily to a working-class audience. The nation has experienced years of division, and economic uncertainties are turning the screws even tighter on the average pocketbook. Consumers are already singing the blues.
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“Blues connects with the human emotion,” Culpepper reasons. “It’s our deepest emotions, it’s pain and sometimes love. And I think blues is always going to be around. I think it’s always going to recirculate and come back around.”
The blues grew directly from pain. Black workers in the mid-1800s — both slaves and free men — were primarily limited to difficult jobs with no possibility of upward mobility, and they used music to keep a consistent pace at their labor and express their misery. W.C. Handy, crafting such titles as “The St. Louis Blues” and “The John Henry Blues,” established the genre’s commercial potential in the early 1900s, and Mamie Smith‘s 1920 recording “Crazy Blues” became the first blues recorded by a Black woman. New York record executives assumed that only African Americans would appreciate the music and established a “race” records market. When country was subsequently committed to disc, it was frequently referred to as “the white man’s blues.”
While the labels segregated the music in their promotional efforts, the sound itself wasn’t that different. The songs recorded by the father of country music, Jimmie Rodgers, in the 1920s and 1930s overlapped in sound with the music of Robert Johnson in the 1930s.
“I love Robert Johnson and Hank Williams,” Culpepper says. “I think at the core, both of them [were about] great storytelling, raw emotion, the real man’s music talking about real emotions. You could have a song talking about the bar, and that’s great. They both had songs [about] being with a lover, or just hanging out, or going down a road and feeling great, or a song about just feeling so down low that you don’t even want to be on this Earth.”
Country’s blues influence was particularly evident in Western swing, and it continued to pop up in the music of Willie Nelson (especially in his song “Night Life”); in Southern rock, which would influence such country acts as Travis Tritt, Hank Williams Jr., Confederate Railroad and The Cadillac Three; and in the Texas soul of Lee Roy Parnell.
Much has been made of Chris Stapleton‘s incorporation of outlaw country and R&B over the last decade, but the new acts all say the blues component of his music had an impact on them.
“A lot of people who are going down the path that I am — you know, country, but also adding a little bit of the old blues and soul influences — would not be able to do what we do without Stapleton,” Myers says. “That artistic flair that he added to country music expanded the lines a little bit, made the box a little bigger.”
Indeed, The Red Clay Strays — which are nominated for two honors at this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards — incorporate a blues thread in their rootsy country sound, and Stephen Wilson Jr.‘s performance of the national anthem before the NFL draft on April 24 in Green Bay, Wis., was a rough-cut, gnarly, acoustic country-blues.
While the sound reflects the current sociopolitical mood, it’s also a reaction to the increasing influence of technology on 21st-century life. Many Americans spend more than half their waking hours tied to an iPhone, a computer and/or a TV. With those impersonal devices commanding people’s attention, it’s natural for consumers to gravitate toward music that more closely reflects humanity and all its imperfections.
“Kids my age, we’re starting to like vintage stuff,” Myers, 17, says. “Old cars, old shoes, old clothes, old fashion — even old lingo is coming back. And especially old music. I think we’ve realized that they did shit better in the ’60s and ’70s. That’s why not only is blues and soul coming back, but also old country. Look at Zach Top. I mean, that’s old, straightforward country, and it makes my heart happy that it’s coming back.”
One of the reasons the blues seem to hang around is that the hard times they address are always present, and the listener is reminded that their heartbreak and heaviness are not unique. Knowing someone else shares their pain frequently helps revive their spirit.
“Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you,” B.B. King once said. “I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.”
That’s why Culpepper came to appreciate the blues. He heard King, as well as Jimi Hendrix and Albert King, in his household, right alongside Kenny Rogers and Bob Seger. He hopes that, as stylistic walls drop and once-segregated music recombines, his generation of blues-based country artists will provide an emotional tonic for music fans the way that his predecessors influenced him.
“I got an old soul,” Culpepper says, “and I hope that my music is an inspiration for young, upcoming musicians to continue to put that blues and that old rock stuff in new music. That’s my whole [thing]: to be an inspiration.”
Even as he’s signed to one of Nashville’s biggest labels, Eric Church has amassed more than a little experience over the past nearly two decades in pushing back against the typical Music Row way of doing things, and thus, bursting the confines of how and when artists are expected to create and release albums, approach touring and build a fanbase.
Early in his career, Church was already stacking his albums with songs such as “These Boots” and “Sinners Like Me” that became fan-favorites, regardless of whether they became radio hits. Albums including Sinners Like Me and Carolina spawned hits that broke ever-higher through the ranks on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart, and by third album Chief, he earned a double-header of Country Airplay No. 1s with “Drink in My Hand” and “Springsteen.” He’s also been quick to pivot when needed to bring music to his fans the way he wants — like after he was let go from an opening slot on Rascal Flatts’ tour in 2006, when he booked a series of club shows in the same cities, on the same nights as the Flatts tour would play, and dubbed it the “Me and Myself Tour.”
Not content with the status quo, he’s shaken things up with songs such as the marijuana-centered “Smoke a Little Smoke,” and music videos for “Lightning” and “Homeboy” that were filmed the former Tennessee State Prison. He took his 2015 album Mr. Understood directly to fans first, with a surprise release to members of his fanclub. And more recently, he’s displayed his artistic freedom onstage at freewheeling residencies and/or shows at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, as well as at own Chief’s bar in downtown Nashville, and during festivals such as CMA Fest and Stagecoach.
So, it’s no surprise that many songs on Evangeline Vs. The Machine album, out today (May 2), center on the power of music as a healer, encourager, energy lifter, emotional solace and infinite creative source. However, the muses behind the steely-eyed defiance that vibrates through the album run far deeper and wider than the Nashville industry’s machinations. Inspired by the collaborative approach of New Orleans jazz, Church approached the new album with the all-encompassing, spontaneous nature of a live show, teaming again with producer Jay Joyce and bolstering his core blend of country, rock and soul with a choir, horns and full-bodied strings.
What his succinct, eight-song album lacks in length, it more than makes up for in depth of creativity and intention, with songs that stretch well beyond country music’s typical lyrical trifecta of relationships, trucks and alcohol. Evangeline Vs. The Machine finds Church writing and recording songs inspired by his own discomfort with being creatively bound, as well as by the natural disaster of Hurricane Helene and by the tragedy of the Covenant School shooting that took place in 2023.
Here, Billboard ranks the eight songs on his new project.
“Storm in Their Blood”
SiriusXM has teamed up with Morgan Wallen to launch the exclusive SiriusXM channel Morgan Wallen Radio. The limited-run channel launches Thursday (May 1) and runs through May 31, coinciding with the upcoming release of Wallen’s new album I’m the Problem on May 16. Morgan Wallen Radio is available to subscribers in their cars on channel […]
Lainey Wilson is set to make her feature film debut, Variety reports. The country star is set to appear in the upcoming film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s book Reminders of Him, with the movie set to release on Feb. 13, 2026. The Universal film, directed by Vanessa Caswill, will also reportedly include actors Nicholas Duvernay, […]
Megan Moroney and Kenny Chesney were tourmates last year on Chesney’s Sun Goes Down Tour, and now the two country artists are set to release a collaboration, “You Had to Be There,” on May 9.
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Moroney revealed the title and an audio clip of the upcoming collaboration on her social media accounts, and included what seemed to be more of the song’s lyrics, captioning the photos, “7 years later got a different point of view.” She also shared a carousel of photos, including one shot of her ticket purchase from a Chesney show at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta that she attended in 2018, followed by photos of Moroney performing on Chesney’s tour last year.
The “Out Last Night” singer commented on Moroney’s Instagram post, writing, “As far as I know, this is the first song anyone has written for me. Thank you, Megan. I love ya,” and adding blue heart and palm tree emojis.
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During Chesney’s Sun Goes Down Tour, the two previously collaborated on a version of Moroney’s “Am I Okay?” and outside of tour life, the two singers seem to have forged a tight-knit friendship, with Moroney even being the one to introduce Chesney to the realm of TikTok.
Later this year, Chesney will be inducted as one of the newest members of the Country Music Hall of Fame, alongside music executive Tony Brown, and the late June Carter Cash. Chesney has long been a champion of uplifting female artists, previously welcoming Kelsea Ballerini to open shows on his I Go Back Tour in 2023; the two Knoxville-area natives also recorded the song “Half of My Hometown,” which won musical event of the year and video of the year at the Country Music Association Awards.
Meanwhile, Moroney is nominated for female artist of the year and for album of the year (for Am I Okay?) at the upcoming Academy of Country Music Awards. She was also honored during Billboard‘s annual Women in Music event earlier this year.
See Moroney’s announcement below: