Country
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Morgan Wallen, who hails from East Tennessee, has made a $500,000 donation to the Red Cross for Hurricane Helene relief through his Morgan Wallen Foundation. Parts of Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina were decimated by the storm that hit on Sept. 27, with more than 100 people already reported dead and many towns […]
Emmylou Harris will receive the ASPCA Henry Bergh Award at the 2024 Humane Awards, which will be held at a luncheon in New York City on Thursday, Oct. 10. The award, given to an individual or institution for their commitment to animal welfare, is named after the founder of the American Society for the Prevention […]
Supremely gifted songwriter, singer and actor Kris Kristofferson died Saturday (Sept. 28) at his home in Maui, Hawaii, at age 88.
Born Kristoffer Kristofferson in Brownsville, Texas in June 1936; he family soon moved to California. Kristofferson’s short stories were published in The Atlantic Monthly and soon after, he became a Rhodes Scholar who studied at Oxford University in England. His life also included time as a Golden Gloves boxer, and an Army ranger who also flew helicopters (and famously once landed a helicopter on Johnny Cash’s lawn in order to get Cash to listen to a demo tape), an A-list actor, a writer and a creator equally inspired by the works of William Blake as Bob Dylan. In the Army, Kristofferson rose to the rank of captain, but when he was commissioned to teach English at West Point, he abandoned that opportunity in order to head to Nashville to pursue songwriting.
He began working as a janitor at Nashville’s Columbia Studios, which allowed him to listen in on sessions including Dylan’s 1966 Blonde on Blonde album. His nuanced, elegant lyricism style led to Kristofferson earning multiple No. 1s as a writer of songs made famous by other artists, including Ray Price, Johnny Cash, Roger Miller and Sammi Smith. In 1970, he issued his eponymous first album, Kristofferson, which included his own versions of the hits “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Help Me Make It Through The Night” and “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” all of which he originally penned.
He also earned his own No. 1 country hit with “Why Me,” and another as part of the country supergroup The Highwaymen, with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
As an actor, he starred in films and television series including Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, A Star Is Born (in a Golden Globe-nominated performance opposite Barbra Streisand), Blade (opposite Wesley Snipes), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Stagecoach, Convoy, Songwriter and Fire Down Below.
Kristofferson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004 — and a decade later, earned the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Below, we look at 11 songs or albums that Kristofferson had a hand in as an artist or songwriter that reached No. 1 on various Billboard charts.
“Why Me”
When Warner Records signed Zach Bryan in 2021, it didn’t initially seem a particularly momentous move. But the Oklahoma rock/country singer has since become one of the biggest stars — country or otherwise — to emerge in recent years, selling out arenas and scoring No. 1 albums on both the Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums charts. And in hindsight, his signing signaled a watershed moment.
Bryan wasn’t the first country-leaning act signed by a major coastal label, but his massive success has proven that an act no longer necessarily needs the usual Nashville methods, including country radio, to break through. “The marketplace has provided an avenue for these artists who are working outside the traditional system of the Nashville-driven machine,” says Tom Corson, Warner Records’ co-chair and COO.
Three years later, the reverberations continue as Nashville labels face increasing competition from their coastal counterparts while country streaming numbers continue to soar. With the trend showing no sign of abating, Nashville record companies are also dealing with how Los Angeles and New York-based labels are driving up signing costs.
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The result is the breakdown of previously recognized genre lines and a plethora of opportunities for new acts. It has also left Nashville labels re-examining how business has been done for dozens of years and re-thinking some established practices.
As one Nashville label executive tells Billboard, “I can’t figure out if this is an existential crisis or not.”
THE BEFORE TIMES
Prior to the pandemic, Nashville labels generally had a lane to themselves when it came to signing country artists, with their relationships at country radio giving them almost exclusive access within the genre. But once COVID hit and touring slammed to a halt, labels became laser-focused on data and analytics as the only available metrics to gauge an act’s success. “There was no such thing as seeing artists play live, having them come into the office,” says Ben Kline, who last week stepped down as co-chair/co-president of Warner Music Nashville after a decade with the company. “All the indicators were on hold except for one: the digital numbers that people saw.”
And the numbers were good: The country audience was surging due to the mainstream success of acts like Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs. New York and Los Angeles labels began signing country-leaning acts with strong streaming numbers and high TikTok engagement rate, including Warren Zeiders (Warner Records), Koe Wetzel (Columbia), BRELAND (Atlantic), and, more recently, Dasha (Warner Records) and Wyatt Flores (Island).
“It’s the Russian oligarchs coming in and buying half of London,” says one Nashville executive.
“Any time something explodes, everyone’s going to say, “Let’s go invest,’” says another Nashville executive. “It’s like there’s oil down there — let’s start drilling.”
It was more than numbers; it was also that acts like Bryan are “moving culture,” says Warner Records co-chairman/ CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck, who adds there was also a healthy dose of common sense involved. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that country has been a genre that’s been on its way to having a moment for a couple of years now.”
As country soared — consumption rose 20% in 2023 over 2022 in the U.S. and is up another 5.9% this year, according to Luminate — hip-hop’s share of the market began to wane and coastal labels needed new music that could replace that revenue, making expanding into country all the more appealing. “It makes sense if you are running a record label; you’re constantly looking at how to grow your business and market share particularly for [publicly traded] Universal and Warner Music Group,” says a Nashville executive.
This isn’t the first time country music has exploded: In 1980, the movie Urban Cowboy caused a major craze and when “hat acts” like Garth Brooks, Clint Black and Alan Jackson arrived in late ‘80s and early ‘90s, country soared in popularity. But this time is different because there are fewer gatekeepers.
“In those days, there would be curiosity from the coastal labels, but it was such a tight community and country radio played such a gatekeeper role, the barriers to entry were higher,” says Jon Loba, BMG president of frontline recordings for North America, who continues to oversee the Nashville division. “Now, when to an extent you can go around those, it makes it easier for the coasts to run in.”
However, Ian Cripps, senior vp of A&R at Atlantic, home to country artists including BRELAND, Sam Barber and Mason Ramsey, as well as the successful country-dominated Twisters soundtrack, says the coastal labels’ creep into country isn’t that calculated. “I don’t think there was a conscious decision made that we need to target more signings in the country space,” he says. “It’s just there’s a lot of great artists in country music right now, a lot of great storytellers and our job is to find the best songs, best artists.”
TIES THAT BIND
The deals come in many forms and are driven by different goals. Country’s global outreach is growing and some artists sign with a coastal label because they feel the label has a greater international footprint than a country one. Luminate surveyed a 12-week period covering June through early September for the past four years and found that on-demand audio streaming of country music outside the U.S. has been steadily rising each year, from 22.5% in 2020 to 30.4% in 2024. (The 2024 numbers include Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion.)
After Megan Moroney released viral hit “Tennessee Orange” independently in 2022, pop and country labels began sniffing around. The international streaming numbers on the song made Moroney’s co-manager Juli Griffith decide that the rising star should partner with both a country and a pop label, selecting Sony Nashville and Columbia Records.
“I love our Nashville label, but I felt like we needed a bigger reach, and I still do,” Griffith says. “We work with both sides daily.” Columbia handles streaming for Moroney, including country playlisting with DSPs, and the international push, while Sony Nashville oversees country radio promotion and several other functions.
Griffith says it’s “not easy” to make sure nothing falls between the cracks and advises that any artist signed to two labels “has friends inside those teams [who will] warn you of any pitfall before it happens.”
“No doubt there were bumps in the road bringing these two companies together, but in the end, we figured it out and we’re having really good success with it,” says Sony Music Nashville chairman/CEO Randy Goodman.
Similarly, Bailey Zimmerman signed to Warner Music Nashville, but because of Elektra’s experience in the digital space and internationally, the sister labels partnered to develop the budding superstar.
Warner Music Nashville and Warner Records also linked to sign country sibling act The Castellows together. Since then, Warner Music Nashville, which previously reported to outgoing Warner Music Group CEO of recorded music Max Lousada, has shifted under Warner Records, and now reports through Corson and Bay-Schuck. On Sept. 24, Warner Music Nashville announced that Kline would be leaving with Elektra’s Gregg Nadel coming in as co-chair/co president alongside Cris Lacy.
One of the savviest labels in partnering with Nashville imprints is New York-based Republic Records (and its Mercury imprint). Republic paired with Big Loud four years ago to distribute Morgan Wallen, Lily Rose and Dylan Gossett, and earlier this year, Mercury/Republic expanded the deal to distribute all of Big Loud’s roster. Additionally, Miranda Lambert switched from Sony Music Nashville to Republic, with country radio promotion and marketing efforts handled by Big Loud. Republic has also partnered with BMG Nashville for Jelly Roll’s next album, out Oct. 11.
Other times, coastal labels sign the act solely, then hire a Nashville counterpart to approach country radio. Columbia signed Wetzel in 2020, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that it partnered with RECORDS Nashville to take him to country radio for the first time with this summer’s “High Road.”
Bay-Schuck suggests that often Nashville labels weren’t initially chasing some artists the coastal labels have signed because they didn’t fit into the traditional mainstream country mold, though Nashville labels are now opening up their rosters to a broader range of acts. “Warren [Zeiders] was an artist that we signed directly [in part] because the way he was moving felt like a pop or rap artist — his activity online, the frequency with which he posted, the frequency with which he was teasing music — that was behavior not really seen at that point by traditional country artists,” he says.
Zeiders, whose “Pretty Little Poison” topped Billboard’s Country Airplay chart earlier this year, says he deliberately didn’t sign with a Nashville label in 2022. “I want[ed] to be bigger than just what country music is,” he says.
Still, he says signing outside of an established country label “put a certain target on my back in the early process because there was so much, ‘Why didn’t you sign in Nashville? What’s wrong with Nashville?’ That kind of conversation. Now it’s become so much more of a normal process.” He also praises how Warner Records and Warner Music Nashville have worked together, especially with the Nashville label working his music to country radio. He now feels he is “just as much of a priority in Nashville as other Nashville-signed Warner artists.”
SHOW ME THE MONEY
Coastal labels are driving up the cost of label deals, often offering more than $1 million to sign an act, while Nashville labels still tend to offer south of that with a few exceptions, sources say.
When coastal labels see “any traction by any artists on TikTok or Instagram or anything, they’re throwing out ridiculous numbers to them,” says one manager who has acts signed to both coastal and Nashville labels.
“It’s convenient [for an artist] to say, ‘Oh I really like their digital team’; the reality is, if a check is five times bigger, the other stuff tends not to matter as much,” says a Nashville executive. “The prices have gone up without question. It makes the margin for error even more thin. The coastal labels have certainly changed the economics.”
Nashville A&R budgets are smaller than coastal label budgets, “and that is one reason [Nashville labels] are scared,” says a coastal executive. “Those coastal labels that are now buying their way into this genre are overpaying for deals. Country artists’ deals are now becoming as pricey as pop artists and rappers and that is making it difficult for Nashville labels.”
A Nashville label exec says given the success country acts are having, country labels are increasingly able to convince their bosses to occasionally match a coastal label offer. “At the end of the day, my boss is going to say you’ve got a certain amount of money in your net talent budget. Do you want to spend it all on this one act?” (As perhaps a taste of the coastal labels’ medicine, most of the country labels have started rock imprints, though none have yet yielded the kind of success the coastal labels have experienced with their country acts).
Now, coastal labels are putting boots on the ground in Nashville.
In June, Warner hired Kelly Bolton as vp of A&R as its first full time hire in Nashville. Bolton, who was senior vp of A&R for Tape Room Music, won’t be the last, predicts Bay-Schuck, who opened Interscope’s Nashville office in 2014 when he was president of A&R there. Additionally, Republic has reportedly hired former Warner Music Nashville and Spotify executive Mary Catherine Kinney, with potential other hires in the rumor mill. Capitol is also working with Shaina Botwin as a consultant in Nashville.
CHANGING TIMES
With no real competition for years other than among themselves, Nashville labels had perhaps grown set in their ways and a little slow to embrace change, while outsiders viewed the Music City labels as provincial.
“We’ve always had to fight to get people’s attention,” Goodman says. “Maybe it’s our cross to bear, but I think people have certain perceptions of Nashville labels holding on to certain ways of marketing or developing projects that are not even considered significant in other genres, so maybe part of it is we allowed this to happen because we weren’t being as progressive or aggressive as we needed to be.”
“Whether it was in the transition to CDs, the transition to iTunes, the transition to streaming or otherwise, we tend to be a couple years behind,” Kline says. “In the space of data and digital, we had a little bit of catching up to do and the increased competition forced that timeline to get sped up even more so. The smart labels in town have invested in those very areas. I don’t think anyone in Nashville is naive to what differentiation the coastal labels sell versus what we sell. It’s incumbent upon us each to determine how we counter that.”
To put it bluntly, “You’ve had it your way for a long time and now people are trying to eat your lunch, so go to a different place for lunch,” Corson says of Nashville labels. “There’s so much good music out there. Figure it out. Get your hustle on. We’ve all had to do it. If you stand still, you’re behind.” He adds that Nashville labels have stepped up their game. “Just because we had a head start in what we needed to do from an A&R perspective with data, social media and virality, the bicoastal labels were ahead of a lot of practices in Nashville, and they’re caught up now,” he says.
Throughout the growth spurt, the Nashville music business remains a tight-knit, insular community that prides itself on operating by its own rules, where a publisher puts a song on hold for an artist sometimes for months just with a handshake, songwriters are put on pedestals and labels spend years developing acts. (Nashville’s called a “10-year town” for the time it takes from arrival to breakthrough for an artist.) For decades, those tenets drew artists and songwriters to Nashville looking for a sense of community.
“My biggest fear is losing that,” Loba says. “We are a lifestyle, culture and community. It’s the fear of many of us that we end up in a pop-type disposable cycle, because ultimately that’s not good for anyone.”
Though some Nashville executives cynically believe that the coastal labels will lose interest in signing country artists when the current country bubble bursts, both Bay-Schuck and Goodman say that ultimately the coastal labels’ involvement is a healthy thing for however long it lasts.
“I think rather than anybody feeling threatened about somebody encroaching on their territory, this is an opportunity to make a really special genre and amazingly special crop of artists be appreciated and consumed in a way that they never have before,” Bay-Schuck says. “I don’t know what the negative is about country music becoming more ubiquitous than it ever has before.”
“The bottom line is it’s about this music that we make here and, thank God, the world is now paying attention to it,” Goodman says. “What [Nashville] should be doing is saying, ‘This is an amazing, historical, beautiful moment. How do we embrace it as best we can?’”
Additional reporting by Jessica Nicholson.
Two-time CMA Awards entertainer of the year winner Luke Bryan, NFL luminary Peyton Manning and reigning CMA Awards entertainer of the year Lainey Wilson are set to co-host the 58th annual CMA Awards.
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Bryan is a four-time CMA Awards host this year, while NFL legend Manning is a three-time CMA Awards host and they will be joined by first-time host Wilson on the live broadcast from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Nov. 20 on ABC; the show will be available the next day on Hulu.
Bryan, a two-time CMA Awards entertainer of the year winner who just released his new album Mind of a Country Boy, previously told Billboard that, “just a lover of the genre and the people, the artists and the night” are what keeps him coming back as a CMA Awards host. “To be asked to host the CMAs for the first time was a dream come true, and something I never thought I’d be able to achieve. Going from a kid watching the CMAs at home with my family to being a host is pretty surreal. I walk out on that stage right before we deliver the monologue and it’s always a pinch myself moment and I’m always just honored to represent country music the best way I can.”
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“I could not be more excited to host the CMA Awards this year with Luke and Peyton,” Wilson said in a press release. “It’s such an incredible honor and something I’ve always dreamed of doing. We’re planning a really great show for y’all, so make sure to watch on November 20!”
“I am honored to be back hosting the CMA Awards again this year,” Manning added. “The past two years have been a lot of fun, and I know Lainey is going to bring a special flare. Hopefully she can help me keep Luke in line! Either way, I’m excited for an incredible night of celebration and country music.”
Bryan told Billboard of Wilson joining as a co-host, “Peyton and I have had a great run, and obviously Lainey is as hot as a firecracker in the world of country music, and we’ll be excited to watch her hosting abilities unfold in front of our eyes, and really love her as a person and am just excited to work with her on stuff and be there. So I know she’s running around busy as can be, so we’re glad to have her for a few days. And I know Peyton’s excited about it, too.”
Wilson is the reigning CMA Awards entertainer of the year, and is in the running to win the same category this year.
When she co-hosts the awards show, Wilson will become the first person to host or co-host the CMA Awards in the same year that he or she was nominated for entertainer of the year since Carrie Underwood, who co-hosted and was nominated for the top award in both 2016 and 2019.
Sonny James, who co-hosted the first CMA Awards in 1967, was an entertainer of the year nominee that year. In the intervening years, 10 other stars have also doubled up in this way: Kenny Rogers (1979), Barbara Mandrell (1980-82), Willie Nelson (1983 and 1986), Randy Travis (1990), Reba McEntire (1991-92), Vince Gill (1992-98), Brooks & Dunn (2004 and 2006), Brad Paisley (2008-12), Underwood and Wilson.
Leading this year’s CMA Awards nominees are Morgan Wallen (with seven nominations), followed by Cody Johnson and Chris Stapleton with five nominations each. Wilson and Post Malone have four nomination apiece, while Louis Bell, Luke Combs, Charlie Handsome, Hoskins, Jelly Roll, Megan Moroney and Kacey Musgraves have three nominations each.
Performers and presenters for the CMA Awards will be announced in the coming weeks.
Watch Bryan, Manning and Wilson in a promotional clip for the CMA Awards below:
Following news the death of Kris Kristofferson at the age of 88 on Sept. 28, tributes have poured in from some of the biggest names in the music industry, honoring the legendary songwriter and actor whose influence spanned decades.
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Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Eric Church, and more have shared personal reflections on the man they admired, loved, and called a friend.
Dolly shared a close friendship with Kristofferson, with the pair performing duets such as “From Here to the Moon and Back” and “Put It Off Until Tomorrow” over the years.
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“What a great loss,” Dolly said. “What a great writer. What a great actor. What a great friend. I will always love you.”
Country star Reba McEntire said, “What a gentleman, kind soul, and a lover of words. I am so glad I got to meet him and be around him. One of my favorite people. Rest in peace, Kris.”
Travis Tritt, who appeared in the spaghetti Western TV movie Outlaw Country alongside Kristofferson wrote, “Sad to hear of Kris Kristofferson’s passing. He was an inspiration to me and I was fortunate to get to know him on the set of Outlaw Justice that we filmed in Spain in 1998. My heartfelt condolences go out to Kris’s wife, Lisa and all of his family, friends and fans.”
For songwriter Diane Warren, Kristofferson was the epitome of a multi-talented artist.
She wrote, “Brilliant songwriter, Rhodes scholar, great actor, not to mention criminally handsome,” she noted in her tribute. “How often do U get all that in one human? Write in Power forever Kris Kristofferson. We are losing too many greats and we just lost another one.”
Country star Eric Church shared his admiration for Kristofferson as both a role model and a friend. “The ultimate life well lived. Thank you for being a beacon of light in a darkening world. You were my hero and my role model. And even then, you managed to exceed my expectations when you became my friend.”
“So long Captain. Till we meet again.”
Rosanne Cash, singer and daughter of legend Johnny Cash, said: “Here was a man. A man I knew most of my life. A piece of my heart and family history. I expected he’d leave the planet fairly soon, but it doesn’t change the magnitude of the loss.”
Cash’s words hold even more weight considering one of Kristofferson’s final public performances was with her. The two performed a heartfelt duet of “Lovin’ You Was Easier” at Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday celebration in April 2023.
She continued, “And yet we will always have him— his enormous legacy, his resonant spirit, the lasting power of his authenticity, his staggering gifts as a poet— in word, on screen, in his being. For the last several decades, there was no Kris without Lisa and her beauty and steadfastness is a constant inspiration. I send you all my love, Lisa.”
“Travel safe, dear brother. I will always love you.”
Barbra Streisand, who co-starred with Kristofferson in the 1976 version of A Star Is Born, also paid tribute to him earlier, recalling the first time she saw him perform at L.A.’s Troubadour. Their on-screen chemistry in A Star Is Born helped cement both actors’ status in Hollywood, with the film’s soundtrack—featuring their duet “Evergreen”—becoming a No. 1 hit on the Billboard 200.
Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and A-list Hollywood actor, has died.
Kristofferson died at his home in Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday (Sept. 28), spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88.
McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause was given. He was 88.
Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas, native wrote such classics as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”
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He also starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in director Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 A Star Is Born and acted alongside Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s Blade in 1998.
Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.
“There’s no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said during a November 2009 award ceremony for Kristofferson held by BMI. “Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”
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As an actor, he played the leading man opposite Barbara Streisand and Ellen Burstyn, but also had a fondness for shoot-out Westerns and cowboy dramas.
He was a Golden Gloves boxer and football player in college, received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England and turned down an appointment to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville. Hoping to break into the industry, he worked as a part-time janitor at Columbia Records’ Music Row studio in 1966 when Dylan recorded tracks for the seminal Blonde on Blonde double album.
At times, the legend of Kristofferson was larger than real life. Cash liked to tell a mostly exaggerated story of how Kristofferson, a former U.S. Army pilot, landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape of “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” with a beer in one hand. Over the years in interviews, Kristofferson said that with all respect to Cash, while he did land a helicopter at Cash’s house, the Man in Black wasn’t even home at the time, the demo tape was a song that no one ever actually cut — and he certainly couldn’t fly a helicopter holding a beer.
In a 2006 interview with The Associated Press, he said he might not have had a career without Cash.
“Shaking his hand when I was still in the Army backstage at the Grand Ole Opry was the moment I’d decided I’d come back,” Kristofferson said. “It was electric. He kind of took me under his wing before he cut any of my songs. He cut my first record that was record of the year. He put me on stage the first time.”
One of his most recorded songs, “Me and Bobby McGee,” was written based on a recommendation from Monument Records founder Fred Foster. Foster had a song title in his head called “Me and Bobby McKee,” named after a female secretary in his building. Kristofferson said in an interview in the magazine, Performing Songwriter that he was inspired to write the lyrics about a man and woman on the road together after watching the Frederico Fellini film La Strada.
Joplin, who had a close relationship with Kristofferson, changed the lyrics to make Bobby McGee a man and cut her version just days before she died in 1970 from a drug overdose. The recording became a posthumous No. 1 hit for Joplin.
Hits that Kristofferson recorded include “Why Me,” “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do),” “Watch Closely Now,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” “A Song I’d Like to Sing” and “Jesus Was a Capricorn.”
In 1973, he married fellow songwriter Rita Coolidge and together they had a successful duet career that earned them two Grammy awards. They divorced in 1980.
He retired from performing and recording in 2021, making only occasional guest appearances on stage.
Jelly Roll brought a pair of new tracks during his musical guest debut on the season 50 premiere of Saturday Night Live. The 39-year-old country singer and rapper brought positive energy to Studio 8H on Sept. 28, performing new songs “Liar” and “Winning Streak,” both of which will appear on his upcoming album, Beautifully Broken, […]
On Sept. 28, 2002, Diamond Rio’s “Beautiful Mess” began a two-week run at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, marking the group’s fourth leader.
The song was written by Sonny LeMaire (of Exile), Clay Mills and Shane Minor. It was released as the lead single from Diamond Rio’s album Completely, which also generated the act’s fifth and most recent No. 1 single, “I Believe.”
In April 1990, Diamond Rio (formerly known as The Grizzly River Boys, then The Tennessee River Boys), signed with Arista Records Nashville. The group then was comprised of lead vocalist Marty Roe, Gene Johnson, Jimmy Olander, Brian Prout, Dan Truman and Dana Williams.
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In June 1991, Diamond Rio’s debut Hot Country Songs entry, “Meet in the Middle,” hit No. 1 – making the act the first group to reign with a rookie single. The band has notched 19 career top 10s, including its other leaders “How Your Love Makes Me Feel” in 1997 and “One More Day” in 2001. The group has tallied 29 top 40 entries, through the No. 30 hit “God Only Cries” in 2006.
Said Oleander to Billboard in 2014 of Diamond Rio’s early ‘90s breakthrough, “I see these guys in these fantastic coiffed mullets and I remember the idealism that we had — ‘We’re going to do this. We’re going to reinvent that’ — and all that stuff. I’d do the same all over again.”
In 2022, Diamond Rio underwent its first lineup change in 33 years, as drummer Prout retired and was replaced by Micah Schweinsberg (formerly of gospel act The Crabb Family). Later that year, vocalist/mandolinist Johnson announced his departure from the group to focus his efforts in bluegrass.
Currently on the road, Diamond Rio makes its next stop in Wharton, Texas, on Sept. 29.
Here’s how nostalgic Brad Paisley is: “I find myself before an amazing event is even finished thinking, ‘Oh man, this is really gonna be a bummer when it’s over!’,” he says.
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So it should come as no surprise that the country star decided to look back at a historic chapter in his life and career when creating “Truck Still Works,” his new single that drops today on EMI Music. The song serves as a companion of sorts to 1994’s charming, uplifting “Mud on the Tires,” which became one of his biggest hits.
The catchy, mid-tempo tune, which Paisley premiered on the People’s Choice Country Awards Thursday night (Sept. 26) as a medley with “Mud on the Tires,” questions if he and his female companion can turn a truck that’s been sitting dormant for years into a wayback machine that can transport them back to an earlier, care-free time. As the lyrics ask, they can “see if them miles of corn still got that shade of green” or “find out if that dogwood limb is still there to hang our shirts.” “It’s no more complicated than the nostalgia of it,” Paisley says of the song. “We all want to recapture certain aspects of life.”
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When “Truck Still Works” co-writers Rodney Clawson, Will Bundy and Hunter Phelps first approached Paisley and DuBois, who co-wrote “Mud on the Tires,” about revisiting that song in some manner, the trio expressed apprehension about stepping on the Paisley/DuBois classic. However, Paisley says, “Chris and I were like, ‘Oh no! Lean in!’ This is truly a sequel.”
Brad Paisley ‘Truck Still Works’
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It felt right and good to revisit that time again, Paisley says. “I look back on the Mud on the Tires era as an album and a time period where everything did sort of launch in a bigger way for me. ‘Mud on the Tires’ was a call to action, a metaphor, it felt like a lifestyle.” For Paisley, the title track became his fourth No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and the album’s fourth Top 5 hit and further catapulted his career. To this day, Paisley ends his shows with “Mud on the Tires.” “If I don’t do it, people want their money back,” he says. “I can’t imagine my identity as an artist without that, so it’s really fun to kind of lean into this.”
Once they “leaned in,” the five co-writers had a blast planting Easter eggs in “Truck Still Works” that hark back to “Mud on the Tires, ” while still creating a song that felt “entirely new,” Paisley says. In addition to the lyrical references, Paisley even threw in musical reminders, such as using similar guitar patterns and chord inversions.
Those musical cues were enough for ardent fans, including Jelly Roll and Post Malone, to guess the song was a “Mud on the Tires” sequel based on a small snippet Paisley posted on Instagram and X earlier this week. “It’s fun to think back when Jelly was a young’un, he might have even bought ‘Mud on the Tires,’” Paisley says.
The throwbacks extend to the single artwork, which features the truck that Paisley had when “Mud on the Tires” came out and serves as his farm truck now.
The song intentionally doesn’t answer if the truck does, indeed, still work, leaving it up to the listener’s imagination. “That wouldn’t be cool,” he says, to bring the song back to reality. “It’s still the metaphor of it, the idea of can you recapture that thing when everything’s [now] different,” he says.
The song shifts sonic gears for Paisley who last September released Son of the Mountains: The First Four Tracks, an EP of a quartet of songs in part inspired by his growing up in West Virginia. The album tackled such serious subjects as the opioid crisis, which has hit his home state particularly hard, on “The Medicine Will.” It also looked at the ways we are all alike no matter where we’re from with “Same Here,” which featured a spoken word passage by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
That album is now on hold. “I ended up getting really excited about a few of these things that I started to write, and we came up with an entirely new project,” he says.
Given the weightiness of some of the topics on Son of the Mountains, Paisley wanted to take a break. “There’s a lot of it that’s very heavy. A lot of [the album] exists to deal with things and I don’t know if anybody really wants to deal with things right now. I don’t. And if I’m going to put the rest of that album out, I have to be willing to sort of discuss some very heavy things. I don’t know that I would even want to do that right now.”
Instead, he says the lighter fare on Truck Still Works is what “I think people really want to hear right now.”
The new album, which will likely come out in early 2025, will be his first full-length album since 2017 and his first since moving from Sony Nashville’s Arista imprint to Universal Music Group Nashville’s EMI Records. Paisley says “Truck” is a good indicator of the album’s direction.
“The project has some deeper things on it but, like the song itself, is really about creativity and nostalgia and you know the themes that you want to hear right now,” he says. “Sometimes, like in these times, it’s great to give people something they just want to turn up and takes them to a place where they feel good.”