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Keith Urban notches his 11th top 10 on Top Country Albums as his new LP High debuts at No. 10 on the Oct. 5-dated ranking with 17,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States Sept. 20-26, according to Luminate. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The […]
Lana Del Rey is going country with her upcoming album Lasso, and she’s bringing her trusty collaborator Jack Antonoff along for the ride. In a new interview with Time, confirmed he’s saddling up for Lana’s latest project. “We have… yeah,” he said. “[It’s] a story for another time,” he said, staying tight-lipped on further details […]
Eleven-time Grammy winner and Americana music luminary Brandi Carlile is among those paying tribute to the late singer-songwriter, actor and political activist Kris Kristofferson, who died Saturday, Sept. 28 at age 88.
“Just sitting in a hotel cafe and crying into my coffee today…” Carlile said in an Instagram post published on Monday (Sept. 30). “Yesterday I didn’t know how to talk about the passing of Kris Kristofferson. My feelings about it can’t be contained in these kinds of micro expressions. I do know we need them, and that engaging in the celebration of someone’s life over social media and on these tiny screens is righteous and necessary … it’s emotionally galvanizing for our community and it helps us all to process the loss of a great, great man. But I have to admit, it is hard to grieve this here. I’m missing my friends today.”
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Kristofferson previously appeared in the 2012 music video for Carlile’s song “That Wasn’t Me,” and Carlile was part of Kristofferson’s backing band in 2016. “I had the profound pleasure and honor of being in Kris’s band for a little while. The [Hanseroth] twins and I will never forget that shine we stood in when we played music next to him,” she said in her post. “Kris believed in me a long time ago when he agreed to act in my tiny little music video about addiction and forgiveness… for free by the way. He never told me why he did it and I never asked.”
She added that she would “never forget his chuckle and the twinkle in his eye when I asked him if he thought The Highwomen was a good idea…” The 2019 album The Highwomen (from Carlile, Amanda Shires, Maren Morris and Natalie Hemby) was inspired by the country supergroup The Highwaymen, which featured Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
Carlile and Kristofferson also collaborated on the song “A Case of You,” featured on the Joni Mitchell-honoring live album Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration. In her statement, Carlile said that the rocker and his wife Lisa “literally brought me to Joni” and “changed my life in countless ways over the last fifteen years.”
Closing her post, Carlile added that “I will never forget him and I’ll never forget a single shot of whisky with him,” before offering her condolences to the singer’s family. “What a ride, Kristoffersons! I hope you know we all love you so … and we are so grateful for the years you gave us with your once-in-a-lifetime man.”
Carlile is one of many artists honoring Kristofferson’s multitude of talents and multi-faceted career, alongside Dolly Parton, Eric Church, Reba McEntire and others.
Read Carlile’s full tribute to Kristofferson below.
When Bryce Leatherwood repeatedly outlasted the other competitors each week to win NBC’s The Voice in fall 2022, he experienced music as a raw competition.
As he moves into the next chapter of his music career, Leatherwood is still aware of the scads of artists all vying for the same brass ring, and his first radio single, “Hung Up on You,” is designed specifically to make an impression in a busy music marketplace.
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“The biggest part in today’s country is you got to stand out some way,” he says. “You got to differentiate yourself from the pack.”
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“Hung Up on You” definitely separates itself. The chorus features an edgy, anthemic melody, while the production sports a funky bass part at its open, a squealing guitar near its close and tons of growling, uneasy sounds in the middle. In the process, “Hung Up” fulfills Leatherwood’s competitive intentions.
“The whole time we were in the studio, building it out with the musicians, I was just like, ‘Be as off the wall as you can. Do what you want to do. Do the wildest stuff,’ ” he recalls. “As we got into post-production, I was just like, ‘Crank the guitars up, crank that bass up. Make it just punch.’ And it does.”
“Hung Up on You” has existed for a decade. Brandon Lay, then signed to Universal Music Nashville, had a co-write canceled, but Warner Chappell Nashville got him into a room with Neil Medley (“Made for You”) and former Dirt Drifters guitarist Jeff Middleton (“Drowns the Whiskey”) at Liz Rose Music.
“Thank God you’re here,” Medley said when Lay arrived. “We were about to write a ballad.”
Nearly every artist is looking for something uptempo, and all three writers turned their attention to that pursuit. Lay, it turned out, had part of the hook, and his comrades were able to figure out what to do with it.
“I had half of that title,” Lay says. “I was ‘hungover, hung up’ on something, and then they were like, ‘Hung up on you.’ I kind of was missing the forest for the trees, but I had a general idea of the title.”
Middleton dialed up a phat, scrappy bassline he had been playing with and topped that dark sound with some R&B-infused keyboards. They introduced the story with a vivid line, “Stumbled in with the rooster crowing,” that speaks to a long night of partying. The verse continues with more partying as two people stumble down the hallway to a rolling cadence.
“Brandon Lay’s lyrics are so wordy,” Medley says. “I think he listened to a lot more rap or whatever than I did, but I’ve always loved his phrasing. I would assume that the verses are just littered with Brandon Lay-isms. He’s so good at those lyric phrasings and the meter of everything.”
“The choruses,” Middleton adds, “are a little more settled in country songwriter kind of things.”
Those choruses emphasize the melodic part of the quotient with some longer-held notes as the hangover becomes a greater focus: “Keep the shaaaades down, keep the daaaaay out.” A little more rhythmic phrasing ensues “till the haaaaze clears,” and the stanza finally arrives at its “Hungover, hung up on you” hook.
Verse two started with another line, “Woke up with the room still spinning,” that shows some time has transpired. It continues the hungover theme while underscoring that the buzz from the evening is about the two people as much as it’s about the vices they might have employed.
Middleton guided a long bridge, slowing down the mood a bit before they pick up again at the final chorus. It mimics — perhaps unintentionally — the stop-and-start flow between the song’s two characters, whose relationship is not entirely defined. “I’ve always thought of it as kind of a random hookup,” Lay says. “But it could go either way. I guess that’s open for interpretation.”
Lay sang on the fuzzed-up demo with his voice electronically altered. He turned it in to the label and it got some attention, but not enough that it became a single. It was the heart of the bro-country era, and the funk core and long bridge of “Hung Up on You” were likely a little outside the box for the time. “It kind of fell into that Eric Church kind of lane,” Medley says. “And I guess Eric was the only one doing Eric.”
A few other acts cut it but didn’t release it, and before Lay left the label, he recorded it once more with producer Jonathan Singleton (Luke Combs, Riley Green). That version stayed in the Universal vault.Leatherwood moved to Nashville in January 2023, shortly after he won The Voice, and heard “Hung Up” within his first couple of months in town. He was sold on the spot.
“It definitely had that funky vibe to it,” he says. “I think it inspired what the final product was in a big way, but it was definitely not what the record turned out to be.”
Producer Will Bundy (Ella Langley, Graham Barham) oversaw the session at Nashville’s Sound Emporium, with Billy Justineau on Wurlitzer, Evan Hutchings handling drums, Ilya Toshinskiy strumming acoustic, Derek Wells playing seering electric guitar and Mike Johnson manning pedal steel. “That always helps just bring it back in country land,” Bundy says of the steel.
Jimmie Lee Sloas ran his bass through a fuzz pedal, approximating the tone on the demo. “Buckley [Miller], who engineered it with me, he whizzed up a big fuzz on that bass and just made it sort of nasty and made that sort of the backbone of the song, which I feel like is a high risk, high reward,” Bundy says. “It’s definitely different, but it’s cool to see people love it.”
The writers were pleasantly surprised when they learned their 10-year-old song had been cut and even more pleased to discover it was Leatherwood’s first radio single, which Mercury Nashville/Republic released via PlayMPE on Sept. 5. Imitating the demo, Leatherwood’s cut has his voice electronically altered during the verses, though it shifts to its natural tone as the haze clears in the chorus.
“I love the way Bryce sings it,” Middleton says. “It feels country, even with all that stuff going on. He’s a country singer, and that song pushes the boundary a little bit.”
Leatherwood performed “Hung Up On You” during his Grand Ole Opry debut on Sept. 14, and he hopes to keep singing it for years to come. It definitely gives him a chance to be noticed. “There’s nothing like it,” he says. “I think it’s go big or go home. If you go to country radio, you don’t want to leave any stone unturned, and I think this song leaves no stones unturned.”
Leslie Fram, CMT’s highly respected senior vp of music strategy and talent, is among the staffers who have left the Nashville-based country music and lifestyle programming network as part of the broad staff cuts taking place at Paramount Global.
Fram, Billboard‘s 2021 Country Power Players executive of the year, oversaw all musical integration within the brand, including original programming, CMT.com and music video airplay across all CMT platforms. Her last day was Monday (Sept. 30).
In a letter released exclusively to Billboard, Fram looks back with understandable pride at the multiple milestones she and her team, many of whom have also departed the company, achieved over her 13 years at the company, including the CMT Music Awards debuting on CBS, resurrecting franchises such as CMT Giants and Storytellers, and creating or continuing specials like CMT Campfire Sessions and its signature CMT Crossroads.
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Fram, who was an ardent supporter of all country artists — but especially burgeoning acts and women — was an outspoken advocate for diversity and inclusion and continuously strove to create ways to highlight women artists and artists of color on CMT in a genre dominated by white male acts.
“Among my proudest achievements has been our decade+ support of women with CMT’s ‘Next Women of Country,’ a program that has helped promote and elevate over 100 female artists on all platforms, and our efforts to move the format forward in areas of inclusion and diversity,” she writes.
“Over the years, the team worked tirelessly to grow these types of opportunities when in 2015, we created an all-female ‘Next Women of Country’ tour to give these artists a stage to play on – introducing newcomers like Kelsea Ballerini and supporting headlining acts like Martina McBride, Sara Evans & Jennifer Nettles.”
Fram, who will host the Save the Music event in Nashville on Oct. 15, ends the missive on a positive note: “Cheering on those who remain and those who have left — only great things ahead. With the ever-changing media landscape let’s remember to take care of each other!”
Read the full letter below:
To My Dear CMT Family, Friends, Colleagues,
Thirteen years ago this month, I had the extraordinary opportunity to become SVP/Music & Talent at CMT and work with my longtime friend and mentor Brian Philips (President of CMT at the time). The transition from rock radio to country music television turned out to be a pivotal moment in my career, allowing me and the brand’s resident experts to build CMT’s next great chapter. We went on to create an even bigger music brand, continuing to amplify the format’s superstars and legends while giving voice to the next generation.
Over the years, we’ve accomplished so many milestones as a team. From celebrating the ‘CMT Music Awards’ debut on CBS, bringing back historic franchises like ‘CMT Giants’ where we honored such legends as Kenny Rogers, Vince Gill and Alabama, and resurrecting the iconic ‘Storytellers’ format to creating new music programming and specials like ‘CMT Campfire Sessions,’ ‘CMT Summer Camp’ and ‘CMT Smashing Glass’ honoring Tanya Tucker & Patti LaBelle, these are once-in-a-lifetime experiences I will always treasure!
And it wouldn’t be CMT without a deep bow to the award-winning series, ‘CMT Crossroads.’ My first experience with the franchise was with Vince Gill & Sting at NYC’s Hammerstein Ballroom, and I immediately was overwhelmed by the musical magnitude of these shows. We went on to bring together such extraordinary pairings as Stevie Nicks & Lady A, Katy Perry & Kacey Musgraves, Alicia Keys & Maren Morris, Halsey & Kelsea Ballerini, Shawn Mendes & Zac Brown, Nickelback & Hardy, and so many more. I am eternally grateful for the expertise and genius of my colleagues, Executive Producers Margaret Comeaux and John Hamlin, without whom ‘Crossroads’ and so much more, would not be possible.
Among my proudest achievements has been our decade+ support of women with CMT’s ‘Next Women of Country,’ a program that has helped promote and elevate over 100 female artists on all platforms, and our efforts to move the format forward in areas of inclusion and diversity.
Over the years, the team worked tirelessly to grow these types of opportunities when in 2015, we created an all-female ‘Next Women of Country’ tour to give these artists a stage to play on – introducing newcomers like Kelsea Ballerini and supporting headlining acts like Martina McBride, Sara Evans & Jennifer Nettles.
All along, we would constantly ask ourselves, ‘how can we do even better?’
We soon founded an initiative called CMT ‘Equal Play’ – 50/50, male/female parity across all CMT video hours. With this momentum, we strongly encouraged the industry to play, sign and support more women and to make equally bold moves to help cement a format-wide commitment to women and equality. This concept ultimately grew to become the ‘CMT Equal Play Award,’ in recognition of artists who advocate for diverse and underrepresented voices in the industry, bestowed upon such luminaries as Jennifer Nettles, Linda Martell and Shania Twain.
We also partnered with Cameo Carlson, President & CEO at mtheory to create CMT ‘Equal Access’ to better support artists from underrepresented communities. I’m proud to say that this effort closely mirrors the visionary leadership of Marva Smalls, EVP of Public Affairs/Global Inclusion at Paramount, our partners in ‘Equal Access.’ This program has allowed us to work with both artists and management professionals, helping us diversify the talent pipeline in country music.
Looking back over my career at CMT, I have so much gratitude for amazing leaders like Van Toffler, Bob Bakish & Bruce Gillmer to name a few. Thank you for your vision and support.
To my incredible team, Donna Duncan, Stacey Cato, Jordan Walker, Katrina Cooper, Jordan Hatton, Abbi Roth, Bryana Cielo and my brilliant counterpart, Margaret Comeaux, John Hamlin, Heather Graffagnino, Jackie Barba, Jim Craig, Cynthia Mangrum, Jodi Carmichael, Melissa Goldberg, Ali Marszalkowski, Quinn Brown, Cody Alan, Shanna Strassberg, Andy Luther (and the IT Team) and so many more, we will always be a family and team. Your friendship and support have been my guiding light. I will cherish all our collective challenges and wins.
To my Paramount and MTV colleagues past and present, it’s been my complete honor to work and learn from you.
To the OG CMT’ers – the late great Chet Flippo, Suzanne Norman, Martin Clayton, Anthony Barton, Lisa Chader, Lucia Folk, Cindy McLean Finke, Jim Raley, Jackie Jones, Lewis Bogach, John-Miller Monzon, Shane Caldwell, Tessa Jordan, Jennifer Danielson, Jen Hoogerhyde (Morrison), Alina Thompson and so many more – in the words of Dolly ‘I will always love you!’
And finally, to this magical Nashville community and its brilliant artists, you have given and shared so much. I will always be grateful for your friendship and support, and I know that you will continue to collaborate with this undeniable brand for years to come.
Cheering on those who remain and those who have left-only great things ahead. With the ever-changing media landscape let’s remember to take care of each other! Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Leslie Fram
lesliefram@me.com
Rascal Flatts are hitting the road in 2025, five years after announcing, and then cancelling, their final tour due to the pandemic.
The multi-platinum country trio’s 21-date Life is a Highway tour kicks off Feb. 13 at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana. Lauren Alaina and Chris Lane are the opening acts.
“In 2020, we announced the farewell tour after being on the road extensively for 20 years,” the band said in a statement. “To put it simply, we needed a break. Then COVID hit and our plans came to a screeching halt, like the rest of the world. Since then, we’ve been able to revisit our unique and special experience as a band and we’re ready to get out on the road again. It’s hard to believe that next year will be the 25th anniversary of Rascal Flatts, and that felt like the perfect time to get back in front of the fans who have given us so much.”
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Rascal Flatts—vocalist Gary LeVox, multi-instrumentalist Jay DeMarcus and guitarist Joe Don Rooney—got fans buzzing Monday (Sept. 30) when they posted a video to their Instagram account featuring the three individually walking through stage doors as if headed to rehearsal with the message, “Life’s a road that you travel on.”
The group originally announced the Rascal Flatts Farewell: Life Is a Highway Tour during an appearance in January 2020 on CBS This Morning, saying it was the perfect way to celebrate their then 20th anniversary.
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“We make music and that’s what we do,” Jay DeMarcus told CBS This Morning in 2020. “We may do it again someday collectively. We’re not going to sign some pact that says we’re never going to tour again … we all still do love each other, but we do make music, and we will probably make some music individually, collectively.”
Founded in 2000, the band scored such hits as “Prayin’ for Daylight,” “Bless the Broken Road” and “What Hurts the Most,” landing 14 No. 1s on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. They won the CMA Awards’ vocal group of the year award six years in a row from 2003 to 2008.
No word on if the band plans to record new music or extend the tour beyond the initial 21 dates.
Tickets go on sale Friday (Oct. 4) at 10 AM local time.
LIFE IS A HIGHWAY TOUR Official Dates:
Feb. 13 Evansville, IN- Ford Center
Feb. 14 Charleston, WV- Charleston Coliseum
Feb. 15 Grand Rapids, MI- Van Andel Arena
Feb. 22 Durant, OK- Choctaw Grand Theater
Feb. 27 Sioux Falls, SD- Denny Sanford Premier Center
Feb. 28 Green Bay, WI- Resch Center
March 1 Moline, IL- Vibrant Arena
March 6 Columbus, OH- Nationwide Arena
March 7 Toledo, OH- Huntington Center
March 8 Youngstown, OH- Covelli Centre
March 13 Manchester, NH- SNHU Arena
March 14 Uncasville, CT- Mohegan Sun Arena
March 15 Allentown, PA- PPL Center
March 20 Huntsville, AL- Von Braun Center Propst Arena*
March 22 Savannah, GA- Enmarket Arena
March 27 Ft. Worth, TX- Dickies Arena
March 28 Lafayette, LA- CAJUNDOME
March 29 Little Rock, AR- Simmons Bank Arena
April 3 Estero, FL- Hertz Arena
April 4 Orlando, FL- Kia Center
April 5 Jacksonville, FL- Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena
Jelly Roll capped off an epic weekend with a stirring performance of his collaborative single with MGK, “Lonely Road,” on The Tonight Show on Monday night (Sept. 30). After headlining Madison Square Garden, then performing on Saturday Night Live‘s 50th season opener and headlining the Global Citizen Festival, Jelly put a button on a career quadfecta by teaming up with Machine Gun and the song’s producer, Travis Barker, for an inspired run through the song that interpolates John Denver’s beloved 1971 “Take Me Home, Country Roads” single.
KellyRoll (as the duo have dubbed themselves) began the performance singing the song’s aching refrain a cappella while standing on either side of a flaming garbage can backed by three soulful back-up singers. “Lonely road, take me home/ To the place that we went wrong/ Where’d you go now, it’s been a ghost town/ And I’m still here, all alone,” they sang in unison before Kelly called Barker to the stage and busted into his rap verse.
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The Blink-182 drummer tapped out the song’s clip-clop rhythm on the lip of the can before scooting over to a proper drum kit as Jelly and Kelly meandered to host Jimmy Fallon’s desk set to make themselves comfortable. Seated in the guest spot on the couch, Jelly Roll crooned, “I use alcohol to fill that hole/ Will our home ever be the same?,” as MGK tapped out the rhythm on Fallon’s desk.
The performance ended with the two men standing on either side of Barker, with always humble Jelly thanking Fallon and the viewers at home for “allowing us into your living rooms tonight.”
Before the set, Jelly made his first visit to the Tonight Show couch, admitting that he was so nervous that he may have “tinkled” himself a bit. “I won’t know until I do a full assessment,” he joked. He then admitted that he likely “double-tinkled” himself being in a sketch on SNL, the sadly cut-for-time hilarious House of the Dragon spoof “Blonde Dragon People,” where he played Lord of the Rings‘ Samwise Gamgee to Andy Samberg’s Legolas, for some reason.
“I was more nervous for the sketch, obviously,” he told Fallon. “Because I’m already a fish out of water in the music business. And I’m a double-fish out of water when I was there… I’m just whaled out!” And, just days after Machine Gun addressed his former beef with Jelly at the 2024 People’s Choice Country Awards — where he said, “Jelly, I love you. We went from 10 years ago, hating each other, to elevating each other” — Jelly Roll told Fallon, “I just love him to death. We’ve known each other a long time and we started on rocky roads and made amends.”
Jelly Roll’s upcoming album, Beautifully Broken, is due out on Oct. 11.
Watch Jelly Roll on the Tonight Show below.
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”
