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Want to ruin a friendship? Just tell your bestie that you don’t like the person they’re dating.
Most people learn that lesson the hard way somewhere in their teens or 20s. And Broken Bow artist Lanie Gardner, by writing “Buzzkill” about a guy’s difficult girlfriend, has discovered that saying it in a song can create the same negative outcome.

“I guess he still had some sort of feelings for this girl, so before it ever came out, it ended a friendship with him,” Gardner recalls.

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Oddly enough, the guy misread the song’s story. “Once he left that girl, the new girl – he thought it was about her,” Gardner continues. “When he left that [new] girl, it kind of revived a friendship. But it was just funny how that song has caused some ripples in real life.”

“Buzzkill” is the product of a writing session on Jan. 30, 2024, at the East Nashville home of writer-producers Katie Cecil and Chris Ganoudis. It was only the second time they’d collaborated; their first co-write had produced an emotionally dramatic piece, and they wanted to explore something different in their follow-up session. As they settled in with conversation, Gardner confessed her annoyance about a woman whose attachment to another friend had become an intrusion on her crew.

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“Literally, we would all be having fun, you know, out and drinking, and she would come around and she would start fights and mess with him the whole day,” Gardner says. “I just remember thinking, ‘Man, what a buzzkill.’”

Gardner hadn’t intended to build a song around the situation, but when she introduced that “buzzkill” phrase into the conversation, it made an immediate impression. “I was like, ‘Let me write that down,’” Cecil says. “You know, sometimes you kind of catch the title in the middle of someone’s venting session.”

The scenario had comedic possibilities, so Ganoudis developed a fast-paced mix of acoustic guitar rhythms and programmed 808 bass drum. It felt a little like rockabilly and a lot like the energy of KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” and the track set an atmosphere that encouraged cheeky observation. The woman is portrayed derisively in the song’s opening salvos as a “Barbie doll, show stopper, beauty queen” and a condescending “Miss Hollywood takin’ over Tennessee.” Cecil and Ganoudis relocated from California about four years ago, and exaggerating about the women in the story came naturally.

“For lyrical purposes, you kind of have to make things the most dramatic version of themselves, to make it fun to sing and to drive the point home,” Cecil says. “So we were comparing this girl to the most insufferable L.A.-type girl you might come across who’s moved to Nashville but clearly just doesn’t fit in.”

Unlike Gardner and the “Buzzkill” woman, Gardner and Cecil worked well together, hunkering down on the song’s spirited lyrics. Ganoudis pulled on headphones and focused on the track separately, building the verses in a minor key and the chorus in a parallel major.

“You can’t sing the verse melodies over the chorus, or chorus melodies over the verse,” Ganoudis says.That brighter-sounding chorus allowed for more acerbic talk, and the protagonist insists on giving her friend an honest assessment of his girl: “They ain’t gonna say it but you bet your ass I will/ Yeah, buddy, she’s a buzzkill.”

“It’s not good to hate on people,” Gardner observes, “but it’s sometimes good to maybe call certain actions out.”

When they finished writing “Buzzkill,” Ganoudis supplied a track with plenty of energy, created by a spare number of instruments. But those sounds were routinely fattened, making the day’s production sound larger. “I’m really kind of minimalist in in my approach a lot of the times,” Ganoudis notes. “It’s just maximizing each one of those parts, so having less parts that do more, so that the bass is saturated in a way to make it take up the room that I want it to take up.”

Gardner laid down a vocal for it, caught up in the story’s surly sarcasm. “We did go back in and tighten some things up, but we were just such in a zone with ‘Buzzkill’ the day we wrote it, we didn’t have to recut the vocals again,” Gardner says.

Ganoudis took his time finishing the demo, turning it on Feb. 12 once he felt it was good enough to compete with anything else Gardner might be considering.

“When the labels are hearing it and the management’s hearing it, that’s a reflection of what we do,” Cecil explains. “That’s always good to get it sounding where we feel super confident that it will be a contender for a release.”

Ganoudis filled “Buzzkill” out further, playing nearly all the instruments on his own, while creating a framework with some intentional, built-in contrast.

“It’s kind of like a middle-up, middle-down approach,” he says. “The middle-down frequency spectrum of the track is pretty pop, you know. It’s got 808, it’s got a sample kick [drum] – like, there’s no live drummer on this thing. But then the top up is pretty honky tonk. That’s all live, you know. There’s no programming on the top up, with the guitars, and there’s some steel and all that.”

Ganoudis hired guitarist Gideon Boley to rip a fierce solo in the middle of the production, and Gardner returned to stack some tight harmonies on top of her original vocal. She threw in a bundle of ad-libs, too, including an off-the-cuff “one more for the people in the back” that adds to the glibness of the performance.

“That’s honestly one of my favorite parts of the song,” Cecil says. “I was like, ‘We gotta put that in there.’”SiriusXM picked it up, German choreographer Sascha Wolf developed a linedance for it, and Jonathan Craig produced a pool-hall video, released Feb. 3, that plays up the out-of-place snobbery of the buzzkill girlfriend. And just in case country broadcasters decide “Buzzkill” can aid their undying desire for more uptempo singles, Ganoudis fashioned a radio edit that replaces the “ass” reference in the chorus with a sneaky “whoop!”

Meanwhile, the friendship that “Buzzkill” killed appears to have survived, in part because the friend’s second relationship did not.

“All of a sudden,” Gardner says with a laugh, “we’re friends again.”

Country singer-songwriter Lainey Wilson and her boyfriend Devlin “Duck” Hodges are engaged. On Feb. 12, Wilson and Hodges both shared a carousel of photos on Instagram, with Wilson showing off her engagement ring. They captioned the photos “4x4xU forever,” a nod to both their relationship and Wilson’s current top five Billboard Country Airplay hit “4x4xU.” […]

Country singer-songwriter Rory Feek’s daughter Hopie recently shared an update about their family, sharing in a video on Instagram that the results of a 23andMe DNA test revealed that Feek — who raised Hopie and her sister Heidi — is not Hopie’s biological father.

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“I’ve always felt a little bit different — and now I know why,” Hopie, 36, said in the video. “I took a 23andMe test and I got the results I never knew I needed,” she added, showing a photo of herself with a man she had recently met. “Turns out this is my dad — not the one everyone knows — and his name is B.C.” Hopie noted that upon meeting B.C., he “immediately loved me and was so excited to call me his daughter.” Hopie expressed gratefulness for “the new people who I have in my life and the new family who love me for who I am.”

Feek raised Hopie and her sister Heidi as a single parent following his split with their mother, Tamara Gilmer. Feek went on to marry Joey Martin in 2002; together, they also formed the musical duo Joey + Rory, competing on the CMT musical competition Can You Duet?, and earning Billboard Hot Country Songs entries including “Cheater, Cheater.” Joey and Rory welcomed daughter Indiana in 2014. Joey died in 2016 at age 40, following a battle with cancer.

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A few days after Hopie revealed the familial news in the Instagram video, on Feb. 11 Feek shared his own thoughts about the revelation in a blog post titled “A Different Dad,” published on his website. Feek noted that Hopie revealed the news to him in a meeting near where Joey is buried.

“I’m not sure what I thought Hopie was going to say, but I was not expecting to hear that,” he said in his post. “I just listened. Not quite sure that this was really happening–processing it the best I could.”

Feek also noted that the news did not completely surprise him, recalling a period of time just after Hopie’s birth, when he suspected that Hopie was not his. In his blog post, Feek wrote about recalling that the doctor had told him Hopie was born several weeks past her due date, which Feek had thought did not align with the timeline of when he had returned home from a six-month military deployment. In his blog post, Feek had also noted that at one point during his split from his ex-wife, he had asked her directly if Hopie was his child, and says that he’d been assured that Hopie was his.

“I told Hopie that I guess a part of me knew. But more than that, I told her I didn’t care. That this news and this blood test doesn’t change anything for me. ‘I love you as my daughter and I always will,’” he wrote. He also shared the “hurt” he has for Hopie, writing, “Hopie has such a tender heart, filled with child-like wonder and light, even in the darkest of days. It’s heartbreaking that she has had to deal with such an incredible amount of pain and loss in her relatively short life.”

That same day, Hopie wrote a response message on Instagram, expressing frustration and disappointment with Feek’s comments. “When I had the conversation with Rory, my one request was for him to be kind and not shame my mom. Today, he shared her private history in his blog, which is extremely disappointing. I shared my story because I couldn’t keep it all to myself anymore. I’m really not a public person, but because Rory is, my private life becomes content for his fans (who are often unkind online).”

Hopie also expressed displeasure and regret in having previously shared with Rory about her sexuality, noting that she felt Feek had used that information in order to sell books, such as his 2018 book Once Upon a Farm.

“From now on, I just wish my stories could be my own to tell and share,” Hopie wrote on Instagram. “I want to move forward and find happiness with the people who love me, far away from this online hate.”

Zach Bryan is upping the ante on his touring career with a super-sized concert this fall. On Sept. 27, the country superstar will play the inaugural concert at the University of Michigan’s recently-built Michigan Stadium, which is now the largest stadium in the United States. Bryan will be joined on the bill by John Mayer, […]

Fans will have options to see Country Music Hall of Famer George Strait and 11-time Grammy winner Chris Stapleton on the road this summer, as the two have extended their run of stadium shows, adding five concerts for 2025.

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“Burn It Down” hitmaker Parker McCollum will be the special guest on four newly added shows, slated for Philadelphia (set for May 10); Pittsburgh, Pa. (May 31); Buffalo, N.Y. (June 14); and Foxborough, Mass., (June 21), while Little Big Town will be the special guest on a newly added show on July 19 in Inglewood, Calif.

“I keep trying to slow down a bit but you keep calling me back,” Strait said in a statement. “Please don’t ever stop. I still love it just as much as I always have. Thank you for an amazing year last yearand I can’t wait to see you for a few more again this year. Chris will be back and glad to haveLittle Big Town with us in L.A. For the other cities, we’ve added Parker M. to the show whichwill be outstanding. Can’t wait to see you!!”

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Tickets go on sale Friday, Feb. 21, at 10 a.m. local time via Strait’s website. American Expresswill also offer card members access to Amex presale tickets, available for purchase startingThursday, Feb. 20, before the general public onsale.

No doubt, these upcoming shows will see Strait infuse his setlist with some songs from his most recent album, Cowboys & Dreamers. The album also features the Stapleton collaboration “Honky Tonk Hall of Fame.” Meanwhile, Stapleton is fresh off of his latest Grammy win; he picked up best country solo performance for “It Takes a Woman.”

See the full listing of the five new shows below:

George Strait w/ Chris Stapleton and special guest Parker McCollum:

May 10: Philadelphia, Pa. @ Lincoln Financial Field

May 31: Pittsburgh, Pa. @ Acrisure Stadium

June 14: Buffalo, N.Y. @ Highmark Stadium

June 21: Foxborough, Mass. @ Gillette Stadium

George Strait w/ Chris Stapleton & special guest Little Big Town:

July 19: Inglewood, Calif. @ SoFi Stadium

With his gritty vocal acoustic musical leanings, Alabama native Kashus Culpepper merges the throug lines braided throughout country, folk, blues, soul and gospel music on his slate of raw musical constructions such as “After Me?” and his latest, “Jenni.”

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For Culpepper, who signed with Big Loud Records (home to Morgan Wallen and Charles Wesley Godwin) in 2024, that intertwining is natural, given his musical roots embedded in a small-town church in Alexander City, Alabama, where his first musical influence was church leader Deacon McGee.

“He would start all the hymns out at my church, and he had this crazy voice — almost like Howlin’ Wolf, really raspy — and did these Stevie Wonder-like melodies,” Culpepper tells Billboard. “He’s passed on now, but he has been a huge part of my musical influences. I mean, he’s an artist to me, because of the way he sang and the feeling he gave all of the songs he would sing.”

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It wasn’t until after high school when Culpepper would solidify his own musical inclinations — though he’s the first to admit that making a living through music, his voice and his songs has been a shift for the 27-year-old.

“I’ve been coming up as a blue-collar guy. All my jobs have been very labor-intensive,” he recalls. “But to come to Nashville where everyone’s writing songs every day, recording and being creative, that was something I had to get used to.”

Culpepper was a state champion wrestler in high school and soon found work as an EMT and a firefighter, before joining the Navy and working as a carpenter (construction battalion). In 2020, at the height of a COVID-19 pandemic-caused pause, Culpepper picked up a guitar and began learning cover songs to entertain his fellow Navy troops while they were deployed in Rota, Spain.

“We couldn’t do much, couldn’t work and we couldn’t leave the base, so I started playing guitar,” Culpepper recalls.

By the time Culpepper returned stateside, he began working for a cement company, but his passion for music was already coming into focus. He played open mic nights around the Mississippi coast, before spending nearly a year as part of a local Southern rock band.

“They wanted somebody who could do Lynyrd Skynyrd but could also do older soulful stuff — B.B. King, Tracy Chapman,” Culpepper says. “I didn’t think I was going to go anywhere with music; I just thought it was a good time.”

As Culpepper continued refining his musical skills, the desire to experiment with different sounds led him to step out on his own with the Kashus Culpepper Band. “I wanted to add saxophone and jazz to those country records and those great storytelling songs,” he recalls.

2023 proved a pivotal year for Culpepper, on both creative and business fronts. He was performing at one of Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville locations on the southern coast, when an audience request became the catalyst for Culpepper to begin writing his own material.

“Someone came up and asked me to play a Jimmy Buffett song, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll play it.’ But after I finished my set and was packing up my car, I thought, ‘I wish people would come up to me and ask if I can sing my own song.’ So, I realized I wanted to write songs. That same day, I left the coast and came back home for a few weeks and started writing.”

During that three-week timespan, Culpepper’s younger sister encouraged him to start posting on social media; he started posting a mix of original songs and cover songs, such as his version of Tyler Childers and the Food Stamps’ “Messed Up Kid.”

“That was the beginning blocks of everything that was going on. That got me in a lot of rooms and a lot of eyes on my music,” Culpepper says.

Culpepper relocated to Nashville, and in November 2023, released a snippet of the bluesy post-breakup track “After Me?” on TikTok; that snippet has earned over 3 million views. By mid-2024, he had inked a label deal with Big Loud Records and a publishing deal with Big Loud Publishing/Warner Chappell Music. He followed with songs lilke “Who Hurt You,” and his latest, “Jenni.”

“Big Loud picked me up when no one really knew who I was. [Big Loud CEO] Seth [England], [Big Loud partner/producer] Joey [Moi], all of those guys, they didn’t have to pick me up when I was so fresh on the scene. I loved all the artists they had, between Ernest and HARDY, Morgan and Steven Wilson Jr., and I saw they had artists like Charles Wesley Godwin. I was just excited to be around these artists that are so creative.”

Culpepper has continued to stack up career milestones over the past year, making his Grand Ole Opry debut in December. The CAA-aligned singer-songwriter will be opening shows on Leon Bridges’ The Leon Tour beginning in May, in addition to leading his own headlining shows this year.

Billboard caught up with Culpepper, our staff’s Country Rookie of the Month for February, to discuss his career journey, as well as the people and moments that have inspired him and his career goals.

“After Me?” was your first breakthrough. What inspired that song?

I couldn’t sleep one night and started writing in my journal, about these old memories I had from a girl that I talked to way back when. I think I saw something online that she was doing and I got this old blues melody in my head — I had listened to a lot of Muddy Waters the night before, just all this blues stuff. I showed my buddy Mark [co-writer Mark Chandler] the voice memo I had. I [realized] it was really out there, kind of a Temptations, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” — that type of vulnerable feeling.

You wrote “Jenni” after performing “Revival” with Zach Bryan at Buckeye Country Fest in Ohio. What is the story behind that song?

I saw this girl and got inspired, because with “Revival,” it’s so folk, and Americana — it’s almost like a rock song when you see Zach play it. I got inspired by that, and then seeing that girl — she had a huge beer in her hand. I don’t even know how I picked her out from the crowd. She seemed so carefree.

Do you have plans to release a full project?

I’m working on music. I think a lot of the features and a lot of the stuff that I’m doing with writing, I think a lot of people are going to be very surprised with what I have that’s going on.

You are opening shows for Leon Bridges coming up. How does that feel?

I’m so excited about that. My whole family is so excited about it. I’ve been listening to him for so long; I love all his music and he’s a great guy.

What artist would you love to collaborate with?

Right now, I would love to collaborate with Olivia Dean. She’s from the U.K. She’s so good—a mix between R&B, pop and jazz stuff.

What is one album you could listen to forever?

House of Balloons [Mixtape] by the Weeknd — the moodiness of it, the vulnerability of all the songs, the vibe of it, it’s top-tier with that record.

What podcasts are you into?

I’ve been listening to a lot of Two Girls, One Ghost. They talk about horror and hauntings. Between that and [This Past Weekend W/] Theo Von and Joe Rogan [Experience], I’m all over the place.

Musically, what is on your bucket list?

One day I want to do Red Rocks, and I’m excited about all the music coming out and collaborations with artists that I love.

This year’s Stagecoach Country Music Festival will feature an eclectic slate of acts leading its Palomino Stage lineup this year, when the festival returns to the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., on April 25-27.

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Lana Del Rey, Nelly and Sammy Hagar will headline the stage over the course of the three nights, with Rey heading up the Friday (April 25) lineup, followed by Nelly on Saturday and Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famer Hagar on Sunday.

A promo poster for the fest notes that Del Rey’s Friday night performance will be “a very special country set,” while Nelly’s Saturday performance will celebrate 25 years since the release of his signature song “Country Grammar.”

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Also on the Friday night bill are Whiskey Myers, Sierra Ferrell, Nikki Lane, Drake Milligan, Tanner Usrey and Noeline Hofmann.

Del Rey is set to release the country-influenced project The Right Person Will Stay in May. Ferrell picked up four wins at this year’s Grammys, taking home four trophies: best Americana album (Trail of Flowers), best American roots song (“American Dreaming”), best Americana performance (“American Dreaming”) and best American roots performance (“Lighthouse”). Hofmann recently teamed up with Zach Bryan for the song “Purple Gas,” which reached No. 69 on the Billboard Hot 100 last year. Meanwhile, Whiskey Myers recently announced they will team with Tedeschi Trucks Band for a co-headlining tour this year.

Alongside Nelly, Saturday night’s lineup will feature Koe Wetzel, Dylan Gossett, Tommy James & the Shondells, Crystal Gayle, Myles Kennedy and Kashus Culpepper. Wetzel recently notched a multiweek Billboard Country Airplay No. 1 with the Jessie Murph collaboration “High Road’ while the Big Loud Texas/Mercury Records-signed Dylan Gossett is known for songs including “Coal.” Meanwhile, Gayle has earned more than a dozen Hot Country Songs chart-toppers over the years, including signature songs such as 1977’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” and 1978’s “Talking in Your Sleep.”

The three-day Palomino stage lineup will conclude on Sunday with Hagar as well as performances from “Slide” hitmakers Goo Goo Dolls, as well as eight-time Country Airplay No. 1 hitmaker Tracy Lawrence, and performances from Treaty Oak Revival, The Bacon Brothers, Angel White and Waylon Wyatt.

This year’s main stage headliners will be Jelly Roll, Luke Combs and Zach Bryan, who made his own Palomino Stage debut in 2022. Other artists who have played the Palomino Stage over the years include Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, George Jones, John Prine, Jerry Lee Lewis, Smokey Robinson, Emmylou Harris, Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers and Charley Pride.

See the full lineup poster for Stagecoach’s Palomino Stage below:

Palomino Lineup Poster

Courtesy Photo

Hardy will bring his amalgam of country and Southern hard rock to fans on his upcoming headlining Jim Bob World Tour, which is visiting arenas and amphitheaters across the U.S. through September, in addition to festival shows in North America as well as his first headlining shows in Europe. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts […]

This week’s crop of new music features songs from mainstream country hitmakers, rising artists and surging alt-country successes. This week’s songs highlight a slate of collaborations. Singer, songwriter and host of Apple Music’s “Today’s Country” Kelleigh Bannen teams with Lady A’s Charles Kelley for the song “Nothin’s On,” while MacKenzie Carpenter teams with trio Midland for “I Wish You Would.” Also, Aubry Rodriguez, daughter of country star Johnny Rodriguez, teams with Vinny Tovar on a remake of Rodriguez’s classic “Pass Me By.”

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Check out all of these and more in Billboard’s roundup of some of the top releases in country, bluegrass and Americana of the week below:

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Kelleigh Bannen and Charles Kelley, “Nothin’ On”

Bannen offers a potent reminder of her musical talent as she teams with Kelley for this moody, pop-leaning, post-breakup slow burn of two ex-lovers who can’t quite move on, despite ample temptations and efforts to do so. Their pitch-perfect harmonies and angst-filled vocals elevate the yearning and emotional tug-of-war the song’s characters are navigating, with Kelley’s ever-soulful voice pairing well with Bannen’s warm, pristine vocal. Bannen wrote “Nothin’ On” with Claire Douglas and Will Bowen, with production by Logan Wall.

Charles Wesley Godwin, “It’s The Little Things”

Godwin’s attuned songwriting and gruff-yet-honeyed voice broke through on albums including How The Mighty Fall and Family Ties. On his latest song, Godwin sings about the struggle to refrain from pining over big, make-or-break moments–or as he sings, “the big pay, the big show”–and learning to focus on the smaller moments that lean toward peace more than prideful gain, and harboring those moments with just as much appreciation. This solo write from Godwin, produced by Al Torrence, will be featured on his upcoming seven-song EP, Lonely Mountain Town, out Feb. 28 on Big Loud.

Vinny Tovar and Aubry Rodriguez, “Pass Me By (If You’re Only Passing Through)”

Aubry Rodriguez, daughter of country music star Johnny Rodriguez, teams with Vinny Tovar (“Gator Boots,” “Leaving With My Heart”) for a fiddle-drenched remake of Rodriguez’s 1972 classic “Pass Me By (If You’re Only Passing Through).” Their voices blend gloriously on this fresh yet stone-cold country rendering of the song, which highlights the enduring heritage of Latino country music. The video for the song, filmed at San Antonio venue The Lonesome Rose, also features a cameo from Johnny Rodriguez.

Mackenzie Carpenter feat. Midland, “I Wish You Would”

The collabs continue with this sensual pairing between Carpenter and Midland lead singer Mark Wystrach. The song centers around two people who find the sparks of a potential romance in a dingy, late-night dive bar. Their vocal chemistry and mutual affinity for a retro-country sound is undeniable, and this tale of an evening spent drinking, singing karaoke and hoping this dive-bar connection could turn into more serves as a perfect sonic setting. Carpenter wrote the song with Jonathan Hutcherson, Jamie Moore and Chris Tompkins, and the song is set to be featured on Carpenter’s debut album Hey Country Queen, which will be released in March.

Angel White, “Running in Place”

White crafts a powerful track centering on the intertwining of identity, family, love, broken truths, and lineage, as White sings potently and vulnerably about processing hard familial truths. At once soulful, country and introspective, this song marks one of White’s best to date, and one that highlights his rugged, engaging voice. Written by White and Dwight A. Baker, with production by Baker, this marks a powerful preview to White’s upcoming March album, Ghost of the West: The Album.

Belle Frantz, “Do Ya”

Mississippi native Frantz has made a name for herself through lending her rich, resonant voice to cover versions of ballads made popular by Reba McEntire and Loretta Lynn. Here, she offers up a new song, written by Frantz, Brandon Hood and Bart Butler, as part of the soundtrack to the hit series Landman. An uptempo, ’90s country-inflected track chockfull of pickup lines and paired with Frantz’s bold, Southern twang, it proves she can handle flirty, uptempo fare just as adeptly as she sings those classic ballads.

Time, it’s been said, goes by faster as people age.
But in country music, an entire lifetime can transpire in a scant three minutes. In George Birge‘s new “It Won’t Be Long” (No. 58, Country Airplay), the storyline follows the singer from a first-meeting kiss in the parking lot to a starter home, kids and a recognition of his impending senior years. In Russell Dickerson‘s “Bones” (No. 43), the protagonist sees the full sweep of a lifelong relationship, from the first glance to his future burial with his wedding ring wrapped tightly around his finger. And in Jordan Davis‘ “Next Thing You Know,” a 2023 Country Music Association (CMA) Award nominee for song of the year, a young man marries, raises some kids and lets the song — and, presumably, his life — figuratively fade to black in the end.

All of those titles put country music’s storytelling tradition on steroids, relating the life cycle of one human, or of two people’s relationship, in a compact plot. And they were all co-written by the same guy, Chase McGill, who has a special affinity for “life songs,” as he — and several other writers — call them. Since those three-minute biographies have only a small amount of space to hit the highlights, a key to making them work is to pick moments that everyone understands and paint them vividly.

“No one is so special that they’re the only person in the world that’s been through something,” McGill reasons. “If you write it like you know it and make it real, as special as you might be, someone else has been through it, too.”

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One of the strengths that has fueled country’s current uptick is the genre’s ability to tell stories. Throughout the decades, country’s narratives have included Reba McEntire‘s “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” Marty Robbin‘s “El Paso,” Luke Combs‘ “Where the Wild Things Are,” Kenny Rogers‘ “The Gambler” and HARDY‘s collaboration with Lainey Wilson, “wait in the truck.”

Those plots typically detail a short time frame, maybe a few years.

But a life song maximizes that storytelling, covering all — or most — of the passage from cradle to grave, or the whole of a relationship or of one generation. 

A life song is “the ultimate challenge,” LANCO‘s Brandon Lancaster says. “To me, that’s always kind of been like the Everest of country music, if you can get to the summit and be like, ‘Wow, look at this mountaintop we just climbed in three minutes.’ “

People associate those kinds of songs with country music because they’ve seemingly always been there. In fact, while story songs were embedded in the genre from its beginning, it appears that the life song was cemented with The Browns‘ “The Three Bells,” a 1959 hit that topped both the pop and country charts. It conveyed the timeline of fictitious Jimmy Brown, using a chapel bell to mark key moments and create a template for the life song.

“Birth, marriage, death — it’s precisely that,” says songwriter Bobby Braddock (“He Stopped Loving Her Today,” “Time Marches On”).

Life songs would emerge sporadically after “The Three Bells.” Loretta Lynn‘s “Coal Miner’s Daughter”; Cal Smith‘s “Country Bumpkin”; the David Houston & Tammy Wynette  duet, “My Elusive Dreams”; and George Jones‘collaboration with Wynette on “Golden Ring” — about the journey of a wedding ring, also penned by Braddock — are all strong examples.

Kathy Mattea‘s 1989 release “Where’ve You Been,” written by husband Jon Vezner with Don Henry, seemingly ushered in the golden era of life songs after winning the CMA Award for song of the year. The ’90s featured a large number of those sweeping plotlines: Wynonna‘s “She Is His Only Need,” George Strait‘s”Check Yes or No,” Lorrie Morgan‘s”Something in Red,” Patty Loveless‘ “How Can I Help You Say Goodbye,” Tim McGraw‘s “Don’t Take the Girl” and the Braddock-penned Tracy Lawrence hit “Time Marches On.”

“It’s pretty much an entire lifetime encapsulated into about two minutes and 40 seconds,” Braddock remembers of “Time Marches On.” “That was kind of a short record to be about somebody’s life.”

Typically, the verses in those songs do the heavy biographical lifting, offering narrative details, while the chorus and/or a bridge often deliver an overarching philosophy. A repetitive hook — usually in the chorus, but sometimes embedded in the verses — keeps the story cohesive. And singable. 

“The most brilliant examples of that [repetition] can be found with comedians,” says artist-writer Skip Ewing, who co-wrote a couple of 1990s life songs: Bryan White‘s”Rebecca Lynn” and Collin Raye‘s “Love, Me.” “We love it when a comedian has a joke, it’s funny, and a little bit later on in the show, they’ll somehow bring that back into play and it connects the dots. And they might even do it a third time.”

“Love, Me,” a 1992 CMA song of the year nominee, used a letter nailed to a tree to connect the dots between a youthful verse-one elopement and the woman’s death-bed moments in verse two. The singer reveals himself to be their 15-year-old grandchild, giving the listener a sense of the couple’s decades together. But all the interim events in the story of their relationship are missing. That actually allows the listener to participate, filling in the life song’s blanks with their own experience.

“A lot of times it’s what we didn’t say,” Ewing notes. “You don’t have to tell someone much for their own mind to begin to put the story together.”

Life songs have been less prominent since the ’90s, though some certainly broke through, including Brooks & Dunn‘s “Red Dirt Road” and “Believe.” And LANCO’s Lancaster developed a greater understanding of country when he heard Randy Travis‘ 2003 single “Three Wooden Crosses” for the first time as a teen.

“I remember when that song ended,” Lancaster says, “feeling like I had just watched a three-hour movie, like I had just really gone through this journey and realizing it was in three minutes and really appreciating how that’s possible.”

LANCO’s new single — “We Grew Up Together,” released Jan. 27 — extends the current wave of life songs, taking on a larger time frame in its plot than the group tackled in its biggest hit to date, “Greatest Love Story.” Added to the current and recent recordings by Birge, Davis and Dickerson, life songs seem to be resurging as part of an ongoing ’90s country revival that counters some of the genre’s sound in the previous decade. 

“The 20-teens capitalized on this very momentary thing — ‘Right now; let’s party right now,’ ” Lancaster says. “I do think that it’s a good time [for life songs] because I think that you’re starting to see more that falls in the category of storytelling.”

Ultimately, the story that life songs tell most often is a reminder that life is short and each moment should be lived fully. McGill embodies that message even outside of his songs. His daughters are fully immersed in gymnastics, and he is devoted to them, regularly attending their practices as they live through an age that only lasts so long.

“I bought my own stadium chair and take it to gymnastics every night, and I sit in a folding chair four nights a week,” he says. “I know that I’m in the sweet spot of my life.”

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