Country
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It’s quite the picture: Lainey Wilson performs in a club with fewer than 100 seats and sings a song that’s so new she needs one of her fellow performers — Post Malone, of all people — to hold her cellphone so she can read the lyrics off the screen.
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That was the setting when Wilson took part in a songwriters-in-the-round event on June 17 at Nashville’s vaunted Bluebird Cafe. It was, she says, the first time she had performed “4x4xU” live.
“I didn’t even know the chords,” she recalls. “I was just making them up that night.”
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The song would make its way into the public sphere when Broken Bow released the track and its accompanying video to digital service providers on July 4, ahead of the Aug. 23 street date for her album Whirlwind. On Aug. 26, “4x4xU” officially went to radio via PlayMPE, continuing a trend she has unintentionally developed with prior singles “Heart Like a Truck” and “Wait in the Truck,” a collaboration with HARDY.
“For so long,” she says, “I was like, ‘I’m not going to write about trucks.’ That’s what everybody does. [But] every single one of my biggest songs is about a damn truck. I couldn’t help it, but I guess you just write what you know. And the truth is, trucks are a big part of my childhood and even with the way that I live now, I’m always up and down the road.”
Appropriately, Wilson wrote “4x4xU” on the road when she played Indianapolis’ Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Nov. 1, 2023, in conjunction with the 96th annual FFA Convention. The event cultivated some of her creative mindset for the day.
“I was excited to be at the FFA Convention,” she reflects. “My daddy started one of the very first FFAs at Louisiana Tech in Ruston. It just felt cool. It felt like, ‘Man, I want to kind of write a song about my people. I want to write a song about keeping my people close.’ ”
It was not the first thing on the menu. Co-writers Aaron Raitiere (“You Look Like You Love Me”) and Jon Decious helped her craft a cheeky light-funk piece, “Ring Finger,” first. Once that was completed, they found themselves with a small pre-concert window, and they were all game for a whirlwind attempt at something else.
“We didn’t have more than 30 or 40 minutes,” Decious says. “She had to go be a superstar, you know, in 50 minutes.”
Decious wasted no time — as they strummed guitars on the bus, he brought up the “4x4xU” hook he had developed during a brainstorming session.
“I spend, gosh, several hours a week just title-hunting, I call it, and that was one that I just kind of came across,” he says. “It sort of reminded me — like, I’m a big Prince fan, and you know how he would put numbers [in titles] and also, instead of writing out ‘you,’ he would just put the letter ‘U.’ ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ is a good example. That’s kind of cool, but I don’t see it too often in country.”
Wilson turned the “4x4xU” hook into a gently ascending melody, very close to the way Decious had imagined it, and the phrase became the opening line of the chorus. The next line, “From the bayou to Kentucky,” enhanced the truck’s travel vibe in a personal way.
“She’s from the bayou, and we’re from Kentucky,” Raitiere says. “We were putting all these little, little, little nuggets in there. Hopefully people hear it on the second listen or something.”
Those two lines had a subtle verbal tie — the “4×4 by you” sounds like the “bayou” — and they added a few more locations in the rest of the chorus. They changed those communities on the second verse, covering New York, Los Angeles and a couple of cities with quirky names.
“We just wanted to get them all over the place,” Raitiere says. “And then Timbuktu; I been putting Timbuktu in songs for a while. Kalamazoo rhymes with Timbuktu. Those just seem like weird words. I actually had somebody come up to me from Kalamazoo and say they were so proud to have Kalamazoo in another song.”
When they formed the opening verse, they instinctively took a cinematic approach. The plot’s lens focused first on the singer, riding shotgun in the moving vehicle, then on the guy in the driver’s seat, who has his “hands 10 and two on this heart of mine.” That’s one of those nuggets Raitiere cited, the steering-wheel numbers setting up the four-by-four to come.
They parked the car in verse two, dropping their speed “90 to nothing,” once more feeding more numbers into the text. By the time they reached the bridge, the plot seemingly left the vehicle, pointing the camera toward the sun, the stars and the moon.
“I love that contrast,” Decious says. “You know, four-by-fours, the idea of it is so down home and so tangible, but then the idea of space and time is very intangible. So I love the contrast of those. I think it was just an accident that we went there, a happy accident.”
When Wilson brought “4x4xU” to producer Jay Joyce (Eric Church, Miranda Lambert), the track was layered during tracking at the Neon Cross Studio with multiple keyboards, including soulful electric piano and churchy organ sounds. The bridge received special treatment with a revised set of more ambitious chords and a fermata — an extended hold as pieces of electronica create otherworldly atmospherics.
“Jay does this a lot,” Wilson says. “He kind of takes you to outer space. He’ll kind of take you somewhere up in the clouds, and then when you’re coming back into that chorus, it’s almost like he brings you back down to Earth. When you can get both of those feelings — when you can feel grounded and rooted, like your feet are on the ground but also feel like your head is in the clouds — to me, there’s something really special about being able to feel both in a song.”
One other unusual moment in “4x4xU” occurs in the last half of verse two, with the band breaking into double time, directly contrasting with the “slow motion” lyric.
“That was my one production note,” Wilson says. “I was like, ‘What about if we kind of dug in right here and got a little sexy on it?’ And Jay was down for it.”
The fan base reacted strongly to “4x4xU,” and it continues its steady upward movement on the charts, reaching No. 28 in its sixth week on the Country Airplay list dated Oct. 19 and No. 32 in its fifth week on the corresponding Hot Country Songs. Just as importantly, it has a key role in Wilson’s concerts.
“I still felt like we were missing something that was a big moment, a put-your-hands-in-the-air, sway-back-and-forth kind of thing,” she says. “Truthfully, it’s all about the live show.”
There’s a very good reason that Henry Winkler is considered to be one of the nicest guys in show biz. The eternally sunshiny 78-year-old Happy Days veteran always brings the good cheer to his talk show appearances, that is when he’s not taking time to send fan notes to fellow artists he’s inspired by.
During a visit to Live with Kelly and Mark on Tuesday (Oct. 15), Winkler was predictably enthusiastic about one of his recent kind letters eliciting an equally generous response when he shared how happy he was to get a thank you video from Jelly Roll.
“Oh my gosh, it was the most amazing thing that it came from you and that he answered,” Winkler told Ripa about getting an equally sweet reply from the “I Am Not Okay” that the singer sent to the daytime talk show host. Winkler explained to the studio audience that he often writes what he calls “fan notes” to artists he admires. “And I wrote one to Jelly Roll, ‘Dear Mr. Roll,’” he explained. “And I never thought I would hear back and all of a sudden I got a video from Kelly of Mr. Roll thanking me!”
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Ripa responded that being a conduit of the mutual admiration society was “the most exciting thing that has ever not happened to me… it was for you, so it had nothing to do with me. “It was great,” Winkler said before Ripa cued up the tape.
“Hey Mr. Winkler, it’s Jelly Roll,” the singer said in the clip scrolled on Ripa’s device. “I’m just sending my love. I have been hoping to see you ‘cause I got a note and they said it was from you. I didn’t believe it and this is my publicist — she hates being embarrassed but now she is — and she told me it was you, she confirmed and I cannot tell you how much that meant to me.”
Jelly promised to send Winkler a picture of the letter when he gets back home. “I hope you don’t mind, I framed it. I hung it up on my wall where I have like hand written lyrics from Craig Morgan, all the stuff that’s really been special in my career. Thank you, I’m absolutely honored Mr. Winkler. I can’t wait to see you and hopefully give you a hug man. I’m a big hugger, I’ll squeeze you.”
During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last week, Winkler first revealed that he’d sent the letter to the country star. “I really believe that when I see something that I think is wonderful you’ve got to let the person know,” he told the late night host, who has been on the receiving end of some of those nice notes. When asked who the most recent recipient was, Winkler said it was Jelly Roll, following an appearance on Kimmel’s show.
“I wrote him a letter, ‘Dear Mr. Roll,’ and all of a sudden I got a video back on my phone… it was amazing,” Winkler said. “I think that he is so filled with emotion.”
Watch Winkler kvell about his Mr. Roll moment below.
UPDATE: This story was updated on Tuesday (Oct. 15) with livestream details.
When Luke Combs and Eric Church saw the destruction brought by September’s Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina where they both grew up, they had the same reaction as the rest of America.
“It was disbelief,” Church tells Billboard on Oct. 8. “These are areas that I knew and then I saw the photos and I didn’t recognize these areas. My family spends half the year in Banner Elk. That’s as much home as Nashville is. It was just this shock of I know what I’m supposed to be looking at, but that doesn’t look anything like what it looked like a week ago. I don’t think I’ve come to grips with it yet.”
Combs, who went to college at Appalachian State University in the mountain town of Boone, had the same reaction. The morning after the hurricane hit, “As soon as both of us woke up, we were just inundated with calls and texts and pictures and images from the areas,” he says. “I called Eric and was like, ‘Hey, let’s figure out how to do a show. I don’t know when, I don’t know where. We’ll worry about that later, but let’s just pool our resources.’”
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The result is Concert for Carolina, a benefit for Hurricane Helene relief the pair announced on Oct. 7 that will take place Oct. 26 at North Carolina’s Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium. The pair will be joined by North Carolina native son James Taylor as well as bluegrass superstar Billy Strings. Since the official announcement, a number of other artists have joined the bill, including Keith Urban, Sheryl Crow, Bailey Zimmerman and North Carolina natives The Avett Brothers, Scotty McCreery, Chase Rice and Parmalee.
Additionally, after the show quickly sold out, the concert will now be livestreamed worldwide via Veeps. The livestream will be free for those impacted by Hurricane Helene, as Concert for Carolina and Veeps have used geotargeting to ensure that those in the affected areas will not be charged. For those not directly impacted, the livestream will cost $24.99 with an option for additional donations available. All money raised from the livestream will go to the charities selected by Combs and Church.
While Combs’ immediate instinct was to go to the area and help, he quickly pivoted and thought, “‘Let’s do what we do best and help in the way that is best suited to my abilities and Eric’s abilities’ and I think we’re doing that.” While Church has similarly not visited the area yet because of their ties to Banner Elk, his wife and a team have boots on the ground and have been helping organize relief efforts.
The pair immediately thought of asking Taylor to join them for Oct. 26. “Growing up in North Carolina, ‘Going to Carolina in My Mind’ is a song that every time I would leave the state, no matter where I was in the world, reminded me of the state,” Church says. “I said [to Luke], ‘We’ve got to get James on this.’ So, I set out to make it my mission. It was not the easiest mission I’ve ever done.’”
Church eventually got the contact for Taylor’s day-to-day manager from Joe Walsh. “I called her myself and we had about a 20-minute conversation, and I basically said, “ ‘Carolina in My Mind’ is going to be played that night in the stadium either by him or me, and I hope it’s him.’”
Combs reached out to Strings. “Me and Billy have known each other for some years now and he just had his first child and he’s got a million things going on, but I know that that area of the country is near and dear to him,” he says. “His fan base is heavily rooted in that part of the world, and he was just excited to be able to help out.”
All proceeds from the event will be split evenly between Combs’ charitable endeavors and Church’s Chief Cares Foundation to administer to organizations they choose to support relief efforts across the Carolinas and the Southeast.
Combs and Church aren’t saying how much they hope to raise, but add that all the artists are playing for free, with Combs donating his production, and they hope more corporations will also come aboard providing services and donations. “The key is this is not going to be a one-, two-, three- month build. It’s going to be a yearslong build,” Church says. “This is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. We have to have plans in place organizationally that we can help assist over the next 12, 24 or even 48 months.”
Concert for Carolina will be hosted by ESPN’s Marty Smith and Barstool Sports’ Caleb Pressley and presented by Explore Asheville and the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority. Tickets went on sale Thursday (Oct. 10) at 10 a.m. E.T. on the Concert for Carolina website and quickly sold out. The website also says a raffle and auction are coming soon.
Additionally, Church released new song “Darkest Hour” on Oct. 4, and is signing over all of his publishing royalties from the song to the people of North Carolina affected by the disaster.
After three successful years of her Reflection: The Las Vegas Residency, Carrie Underwood is set to wind down her residency next year, with the eight-time Grammy winner to take her final bow as part of the residency on the Resorts World Theatre stage with a trio of shows on April 9, 11 and 12, 2025. […]
Kelsea Ballerini has been in therapy since she was 12 years old, but she wasn’t always so open to the idea of working on her mental health.
The country superstar say down for a wide-ranging cover story for Women’s Health, where she revealed that she first went to therapy as mandated by the court after her parents’ divorce as a pre-teen. “I was young, and I was sad and confused, and I didn’t want to talk to a stranger that someone else was making me talk to,” she revealed of her hesitancy towards therapy, which continued a few years later when she was once again mandated to attend counseling after witnessing a shooting at her Knoxville high school. “Being a Virgo, being very strong-willed, especially when it comes to things that are tender, like mental health, I need to feel like it’s my decision.”
That’s why, when she turned 24, she decided to take her me tal health in her own hands and experience therapy the way she wanted to. “I’d been on the road for four years, and I was exhausted. I was married [Morgan Evans], and I was looking around at all my friends who have 9-to-5 jobs and still live in my hometown, and I was realizing I felt really removed, really different,” she recalled. “I was starting to have questions like, ‘What is driving me? Is missing Mom’s birthday worth it? Am I okay? And am I happy?’ I couldn’t answer these fundamental questions I should have been able to answer, so I got back into therapy, by my choice, and fell in love with it.”
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Ballerini added of a healing, day-long therapy session she experienced, “My therapist asked me to bring in letters, journals, and pictures from my childhood that are significant to me. I went in having no idea what I wanted to talk about. I just wanted to dig deeper. We started in the morning, and it lasted seven hours. [By the end], I was exhausted, but I had a better understanding of a lot of things. I had the time to really untangle them.”
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Now, she’s moving forward in a positive way. “I’m happy, and I’m in control of that happiness,” she says. “I feel grateful to have the people in my life that I do and to be able to put out a record on this level and play the rooms that I’ve always wanted to and also go home to my dogs.”
Ballerini is set to release her upcoming fifth studio album, Patterns, on Oct. 25.
Lainey Wilson will perform at the halftime show of the Dallas Cowboys’ Thanksgiving Day game against the New York Giants on Nov. 28 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
The game, which will air on Fox, will also serve as the official kick-off of the Salvation Army’s 134th Red Kettle Campaign. A Cowboy tradition for 28 years, the halftime show highlights the start of the Red Kettle holiday season, and since the launch of the Red Kettle Kickoff, the Salvation Army has raised more than $3 billion.
Lainey Wilson
NFL
Wilson, who will be joined by an unnamed special guest, is expected to perform songs from her new album Whirlwind, which debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 in August, as well as some seasonal favorites.
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“It’s an honor to follow in the footsteps of legendary performers like my friend Dolly Parton, The Jonas Brothers, and Reba, of course, to kick off The Salvation Army’s iconic Red Kettle Campaign,” Wilson said in a statement. “Join me at the Red Kettle this Christmas season because we truly can do more good when we come together to serve those in need in our communities.”
In a video posted to her and the Cowboys’ social media sites, Wilson pretended to train to be an honorary Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. Wearing Dallas Cowboys blue bellbottoms, she practiced a routine with the cheerleaders, breathlessly asking if she was the first person to attempt that in bell bottoms.
“Performers like Lainey Wilson represent the next generation of role models for so many,” added Charlotte Jones, chief brand officer and co-owner of the Dallas Cowboys and former national advisory board chairperson for The Salvation Army. “We are so thankful to have her energy and enthusiasm on our national stage this year to highlight the Red Kettle Kickoff and the importance of giving back to those who need it most.”
Parton played the Thanksgiving halftime show last year. That game, which featured the Cowboys playing the Washington Commanders, drew 42 million viewers.
Jelly Roll hasn’t had the easiest road to success, but he hopes to heal the hurt he might have caused along the way.
In a vulnerable, in-depth interview with Jay Shetty on the latter’s On Purpose With Jay Shetty podcast, the “Need a Favor” singer opened up about wanting to reach out to the people he robbed over weed when he was a teenager. Jelly was subsequently charged as an adult with aggravated robbery and was facing a potential 20-year sentence, though he ultimately served over a year for the charge, followed by more than seven years of probation.
“I really want to have a conversation with them. I’ve thought about reaching out,” he told Shetty. “This has been 24 years ago now. I just don’t know how that would even start, or, you know, how I would go about it because sometimes I wonder if they might have even seen me in passing or are aware of my success. I wonder if they’ve even correlated. I mean, I’ve obviously dramatically changed. I was 15, dude, you know what I mean? I couldn’t grow facial hair at all. I hardly hit puberty. I still had my high voice when I did that robbery. So, I’ve thought about that a ton and they’re definitely on my list.”
He added that he would apologize, take accountability and ask for forgiveness. “I had no business taking from anybody,” Jelly explained. “Just the entitlement that I had, that the world owed me enough that I could come take your stuff. It’s just what a horrible, horrible way to look at life and people. What a horrible way to interact with the Earth.”
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The Grammy-nominated star continued, “I hope that they would see that I’ve made it my life’s mission to change and to change people because that’s what I’m representing the most in what I do. I think people cheer for me because they see a little bit of me in them, or they see their cousin — I’m a family member, they relate, and I speak for an unspoken group of people, and I hope they would know that. […] I’m trying to diligently prove myself that I’ve not only changed but also I took the platform serious and that it’s making me change more every day. I hope they would forgive me.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Jelly opened up about how he doesn’t relate at all to the person he once was. “I look back at those years, and I’m so embarrassed to talk about them,” he revealed. “I was still a bad person in my early thirties, but I mean, I was a really horrible kid all the way into my mid-twenties. People are always like, you’re the nicest dude I’ve ever met. I’m like, I’m so glad y’all haven’t met nobody that knew me 20 years ago.”
He added, “I took zero accountability for anything in my life. I was the kid that if you asked what happened, I immediately started with everything but me. And it took years for me to break that, like years of work, solid work to just like break that. It also has taken years of work for me to even forgive that kid.”
Watch Jelly Roll’s full On Purpose With Jay Shetty interview below.
Brantley Gilbert was pulled off the stage Friday night in Tupelo, Mississippi, for his baby’s birth — on his tour bus. Gilbert’s wife, Amber, went into labor during the Oct. 11 concert and delivered the couple’s third child on the bus.
“So last night might have been the craziest night of my life,” the country singer revealed in a post on Instagram the next day (Saturday, Oct. 12). “Watching such an amazing woman do such an amazing thing is something I’ll never forget.”
Gilbert’s update included a video that captured the wild birth story, beginning with the singer’s rush from the stage just after the concert started. He’s currently on the road for his Off the Rails Tour.
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The proud parents shared a glimpse at the newborn in their first photos with the baby, which were added to the video, and the phone call Gilbert had with his mom: “How are you?” she asked, to which he replied, “Not as good as you are about to be. You got a new grandbaby.”
“She’s a freaking savage,” he said of Amber.
Gilbert, who just released his new album Tattoos last month, went back inside and finished the show, but not before relishing in cheers from the crowd when he announced, “We got a baby!”
The “Over When We’re Sober” singer added a note of gratitude in his Instagram post: “Thank you to our road family for rallying around us, Brittany Thornton for helping us bring this little dude into the world, Tupelo, Mississippi for showing us mad love and support, and most of all… Amber Gilbert, for letting me love you and showing me EXACTLY how incredibly strong a woman can be. I love you.”
Brantley and Amber announced they were expecting on Mother’s Day. The new addition to the family joins two big siblings, Barrett and Braylen.
Watch the recap of what happened in Tupelo, and see the couple’s sweet newborn, below.
Post Malone’s “Pour Me a Drink,” featuring Blake Shelton, tops Billboard’s Country Airplay survey (dated Oct. 19) for a second week. The team-up advanced by 12% to 31.3 million audience impressions Oct. 4-10, according to Luminate. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The song, which Malone co-wrote, became […]
Over the past year and a half, Jelly Roll has ascended to selling out arenas across the country and earning five No. 1 hits on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart, as well as Grammy nominations and the Country Music Association’s new artist of the year award — and, in another signifier of his career rise, he’s nominated for the CMA’s coveted entertainer of the year honor at the upcoming ceremony on Nov. 20. He is also up for male vocalist of the year and album of the year for his debut country album (Whitsitt Chapel).
But perhaps most importantly, the Antioch, Tennessee, native has forged a reputation as a quick-witted singer-songwriter who traded his criminal past and previous career as a rapper for a mantel as a country-rock music purveyor and exemplar of redemptive change, an artist whose songs offer a vessel of elevation for those with checkered pasts, regrets, current struggles and hopes for a brighter day. Meanwhile, the preacher-fervor in Jelly Roll’s gravel-filled vocal delivery and onstage banter offers listeners an encourager and champion that those aspirations can become reality.
He continues that mission on his just-released new album, Beautifully Broken, a sprawling 22-song set that finds him doubling down on his message of redemptive arcs, starting with the image set forth of a man visiting an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Beautifully Broken‘s opening song “Winning Streak.” Along the way, he touches on the emotional impact of his life-changing success, pens skillful love songs, and gets vulnerable in the hopes he has for his family. Over the past year or so, it seems Jelly Roll has collaborated with the bulk of major country artists in some way; on this set, he nods to his rock and rap roots, through collaborations with MGK, Ilsey and Wiz Khalifa.
Though his 2023-released, 13-track Whitsitt Chapel just missed the crowning spot on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart (and debuted at No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard 200), he seems poised to best those numbers with his new album.
One song from the album, “Get By,” has already been chosen as ESPN’s college football anthem for the 2024-25 season. Meanwhile, Jelly Roll has been bringing his redemptive songs to audiences across the country (including coveted performance venues such as Madison Square Garden) on his headlining Beautifully Broken Tour, which runs through November. With this album, he seems set to have plenty more life-giving songs to add to his live shows.
Below, we rank all 22 songs on Beautifully Broken.
“Unpretty”