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Artificial Intelligence is one of the buzziest — and most rapidly changing — areas of the music business today. A year after the fake-Drake song signaled the technology’s potential applications (and dangers), industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill, like RIAA’s Tom Clees, are working to create guard rails to protect musicians — and maybe even get them paid.
Meanwhile, entrepreneurs like Soundful’s Diaa El All and BandLab’s Meng Ru Kuok (who oversees the platform as founder and CEO of its parent company, Caldecott Music Group) are showing naysayers that AI can enhance human creativity rather than just replacing it. Technology and policy experts alike have promoted the use of ethical training data and partnered with groups like Fairly Trained and the Human Artistry Coalition to set a positive example for other entrants into the AI realm.
What is your biggest career moment with AI?
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Diaa El All: I’m proud of starting our product Soundful Collabs. We found a way to do it with the artists’ participation in an ethical way and that we’re not infringing on any of their actual copyrighted music. With Collabs, we make custom AI models that understand someone’s production techniques and allow fans to create beats inspired by those techniques.
Meng Ru Kuok: Being the first creation platform to support the Human Artistry Coalition was a meaningful one. We put our necks out there as a tech company where people would expect us to actually be against regulation of AI. We don’t think of ourselves as a tech company. We’re a music company that represents and helps creators. Protecting them in the future is so important to us.
Tom Clees: I’ve been extremely proud to see that our ideas are coming through in legislation like the No AI Fraud Act in the House [and] the No Fakes Act in the Senate.
The term “AI” represents all kinds of products and companies. What do you consider the biggest misconception around the technology?
Clees: There are so many people who work on these issues on Capitol Hill who have only ever been told that it’s impossible to train these AI platforms and do it while respecting copyright and doing it fairly, or that it couldn’t ever work at scale. (To El All and Kuok.) A lot of them don’t know enough about what you guys are doing in AI. We need to get [you both] to Washington now.
Kuok: One of the misconceptions that I educate [others about] the most, which is counterintuitive to the AI conversation, is that AI is the only way to empower people. AI is going to have a fundamental impact, but we’re taking for granted that people have access to laptops, to studio equipment, to afford guitars — but most places in the world, that isn’t the case. There are billions of people who still don’t have access to making music.
El All: A lot of companies say, “It can’t be done that way.” But there is a way to make technological advancement while protecting the artists’ rights. Meng has done it, we’ve done it, there’s a bunch of other platforms who have, too. AI is a solution, but not for everything. It’s supposed to be the human plus the technology that equals the outcome. We’re here to augment human creativity and give you another tool for your toolbox.
What predictions do you have for the future of AI and music?
Clees: I see a world where so many more people are becoming creators. They are empowered by the technologies that you guys have created. I see the relationship between the artist and fan becoming so much more collaborative.
Kuok: I’m very optimistic that everything’s going to be OK, despite obviously the need for daily pessimism to [inspire the] push for the right regulation and policy around AI. I do believe that there’s going to be even better music made in the future because you’re empowering people who didn’t necessarily have some functionality or tools. In a world where there’s so much distribution and so much content, it enhances the need for differentiation more, so that people will actually stand up and rise to the top or get even better at what they do. It’s a more competitive environment, which is scary … but I think you’re going to see successful musicians from every corner of the world.
El All: I predict that AI tools will help bring fans closer to the artists and producers they look up to. It will give accessibility to more people to be creative. If we give them access to more tools like Soundful and BandLab and protect them also, we could create a completely new creative generation.
This story will appear in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When Republic Records offered Tyler Arnold a full-time assistant role five months into his six-month internship with the label in 2014, taking it was “a no-brainer” — even if it meant dropping out of Northeastern University one year before graduating. “This is my dream,” Arnold recalls thinking. “I have to go for it.”
Arnold quickly became an A&R executive extraordinaire: His first signing to the label, in 2015, was a young Post Malone (“I signed him on my 23rd birthday,” Arnold recalls); his second was superproducer Metro Boomin in late 2016. By 2020, Arnold was Republic’s executive vp of A&R. “I really loved discovering music in high school and college, finding new artists and seeing them grow,” he says. “I also wanted to work really closely with the artists, and I felt like A&R, if you do it right, there’s such a personal connection that you can build.”
Today, the fast-rising executive is applying that same mentality as president of Mercury Records, the Republic division that relaunched in April 2022 with major names like Post and Noah Kahan and strategic partnerships with Big Loud (Morgan Wallen) and Imperial Music (Bo Burnham). And though Arnold says he wasn’t sure he was ready to head a label, “I wanted to grow as an executive.” (Along with Republic co-founders Monte and Avery Lipman, Arnold credits Big Loud partner/CEO Seth England for encouraging him to take his current role.)
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Given Republic’s existing infrastructure, Arnold, 31, says he didn’t have to worry as much about key departments like radio, commerce and international. As a result, he and GM Ben Adelson (a fellow Republic vet) had runway to try something new. “I asked a lot of my artists what they felt was missing, or I asked managers who had artists at other labels, and tried to create solutions to what the modern record label might look like,” Arnold says. “We really dove into creating a label that is fully led by A&R, creative and marketing.”
Tyler Arnold
Michael Tyrone Delaney
In just two years, Mercury has become an undeniable force. In its first year alone, the label scored a major success with Kahan’s Stick Season; the album’s extended deluxe version, Stick Season (Forever), featured artists including Kacey Musgraves, Hozier and Post. By the end of 2023, Kahan had secured a best new artist Grammy nomination. Meanwhile, Wallen’s 2023 album, One Thing at a Time, finished as the No. 1 year-end Billboard 200 album; in March, Big Loud announced a multiyear distribution deal with Mercury Records/Republic for all releases, including artists like HARDY and ERNEST.
As for Post, the star has already released a pair of projects on Mercury (2022’s twelve carat toothache and 2023’s Austin) and is teasing a third on the way — a country album. In April, he made his Stagecoach debut, performing a set of country covers, and the following night, he joined headliner Wallen to unveil their much-anticipated duet, “I Had Some Help”; the song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 upon its May release, marking Post’s sixth topper on the chart (and Wallen’s second). (The single is the latest in an impressive 2024 collaborative run for Post, who has already appeared on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department; the latter’s “Fortnight” scored him another Hot 100 No. 1.) “It has been a dream of mine for Post and Morgan to work together for years,” Arnold says, “and to see that come to fruition, it was truly a goose bumps moment.
“When we make a commitment to an artist, we’re hoping we work with them for the next 10 to 15 years and beyond,” he continues. “That’s the goal for us. It’s not knocking off hit songs. It’s building real careers.”
It’s also building lifelong bonds: Post welcomed his daughter two years ago, and Arnold recently became a first-time father. “We swap photos and videos and we definitely talk about it,” Arnold says. “My relationship with [Post] is one of the most special things I’ve gotten out of my career, just because of how far we’ve come and how close we still are — and continue to get. I think it’s rare to have that continuity.
“At the end of the day, I’m still an A&R,” he adds. “It reflects how we want to build Mercury. We’ve been lucky to work with some of the biggest and most influential artists over the last decade across all genres, and we want to extend that. [This role] allows me to still be a kid in a candy store, but also have more autonomy.”
This story will appear in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
It’s a sunny May afternoon in Miami’s lush Coral Gables neighborhood, and Camila Cabello greets me at her family’s one-story home accompanied by a small menagerie: four dogs — including her golden retriever, Tarzan, and German shepherd, Thunder — along with her rescued cockatoo, Percy.
Cabello is home “to recharge” amid a hectic few days that included time in California and will soon take her to New York for the Met Gala. But today, with her messy pigtails, Daisy Duke shorts and silver flip-flops, Cabello looks more like a college girl on break than a major pop star about to release her fourth solo album — a fearless artistic statement coming June 28 titled C,XOXO. Her father washes the driveway, her mother offers me cafecito, and her aunt plays with the dogs.
Cabello will receive the Global Impact award at Billboard’s Latin Women in Music, produced by and airing on Telemundo on June 9.
“Let’s go to lunch — I’ll drive!” Cabello exclaims as she grabs her tote. The 27-year-old got her license just two years ago and learned to drive during the pandemic; as we hop into her white Tesla — nicknamed “Tessie” — she admits that getting behind the wheel (with a good album or podcast on the stereo) is her favorite form of stress relief. She takes us to Pura Vida, one of her favorite local health spots, where we sit down outside with summer chicken bowls. “Girl, it’s this Met Gala coming up… I can’t wait to stuff my face after,” she jokes.
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With her still fairly new platinum blonde tresses (a fresh ’do she debuted on social media in February), Cabello largely goes incognito; some passersby seem to recognize her but are perhaps too shy to approach. Just one screams, “Camila, I love you!” — a reminder that while Cabello might periodically crash at her parents’ house, she’s still a global superstar. But while she jokes that her new look has the side benefit of granting her some anonymity in public, she explains that it has a deeper meaning.
“The voice that I found with my new album has this big baddie energy vibe,” she explains animatedly. “Part of that spirit is taking risks, not giving a f–k and doing whatever you want. I think the blonde was me staying true to that feeling. With the hair, it was like, ‘How do I tell people, visually, that this is my new era?’ Sometimes you need the physicality to let them know, ‘Oh, this is a new thing, a new character.’ ”
CD1974 courtesy of Retail Pharmacy top, SHAY earrings and rings.
Erica Hernández
On March 27, Cabello unleashed the first taste of what C,XOXO might bring: the Playboi Carti-featuring “I Luv It,” co-produced by Spanish hit-maker El Guincho (Rosalía) and Jasper Harris (Jack Harlow, Doja Cat). “I Luv It” samples Gucci Mane (“Lemonade”), interpolates a 2011 Rihanna loosie (“Cockiness [Love It]”) — and has a hyperpop aesthetic that marked a significant departure from the more conventional pop (and more recently Latin-influenced) sound that made Cabello a household name, first as a member of Fifth Harmony, then as a solo artist.
The unexpected track was also significant for another reason: It was Cabello’s first Interscope Records release after leaving Epic Records, her label home of nearly a decade where she had been since Fifth Harmony’s debut and released her first three solo albums — Camila, Romance and Familia — between 2018 and 2022.
Reactions to “I Luv It” on social media were mixed, and the song debuted and peaked at No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100. Still, the song (and its somewhat unhinged vibes) piqued interest in Cabello’s next musical chapter. “The unpredictability of it is so different for me,” she says. “It’s such a kick-the-door-down moment, sonically, that it makes me feel strong and powerful. At least for me, in this stage of my life, it would feel so unfulfilling to just have a song that was big but felt like something that I’ve already done before. That brings me no joy. I would rather have a song that’s weird and be new territory to me.”
While the strangeness of “I Luv It” encapsulates Cabello’s new era, it was a different track that truly set the tone for the C,XOXO sessions. “At first, we played around with different genres, trying to find the sonic world the album lives in,” she explains. “ ‘Chanel No. 5’ really cracked open the album. For me, as a writer, that was the voice I wanted for the album: coy, cheeky and kind of devious.”
Gucci jacket, SHAY earrings, Harlot Hands rings.
Erica Hernández
On “Chanel No. 5,” Cabello sings between trippy piano interludes, her falsetto distorted, about being a “cute girl with a sick mind.” At one point she even raps — she has recently taken inspiration from “c–ty, cocky girl rap” like Flo Milli and Baby Tate, she explains.
“We realized we hit this key transition in the process,” says Harris, who co-produced the album, of the track. “That’s the first song we knew was very C,XOXO, and creating every song forward, we would ask if it felt as true as ‘Chanel.’ It was our north star.” (“Chanel No. 5” will be released pre-album drop as a fan track.)
Cabello, El Guincho and Harris devoted most of 2023 to working on the album — in New York, Los Angeles and the Bahamas but primarily Miami — and along the way, she had another creative epiphany: Her previous sets all had a why, a when and a who at their center, but never a where. C,XOXO would: It’s a love letter to Miami.
Cabello wasn’t always a Miami girl, but her journey here — a city full of sounds and culture enriched by immigrants — was a big part of what ultimately made her one.
Born in Havana, Cuba, she moved to Mexico City with her parents at age 6 and ultimately arrived in Miami with her mother (her father joined almost two years later). Her mom, who had been an architect in Cuba, worked in the shoe department at Marshalls; her dad washed cars at Dolphin Mall. Today, they run a successful contracting company called Soka Construction (named after Camila and her younger sister, Sofia).
In ninth grade, Cabello auditioned for The X Factor, where she eventually joined contestants Ally Brooke, Normani, Lauren Jauregui and Dinah Jane to form Fifth Harmony. With Cabello in the fold, the girl group — one of the most commercially successful ever — went platinum with its first two albums, in 2015 and 2016, and notched a top five Hot 100 hit with the Ty Dolla $ign-featuring “Work From Home.”
Erica Hernández
Amid Fifth Harmony’s success, Cabello started exploring opportunities outside the group. In 2015, she teamed with Shawn Mendes for “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” which cracked the top 20 of the Hot 100; the following year, she released “Bad Things” with Machine Gun Kelly, which went to No. 4. In December 2016, Fifth Harmony announced Cabello’s departure from the group on social media. “After 4 and a half years of being together, we have been informed via her representatives that Camila has decided to leave Fifth Harmony,” the other four members stated. “We wish her well.”
Cabello quickly flourished on her own: Her first three solo albums all reached the top 10 of the Billboard 200, and she has logged 21 Hot 100 entries as a solo artist, plus picked up two Latin Grammys. All the while, she continued notching star collaborations, like “Hey Ma,” an early-2017 teamup with Pitbull and J Balvin from the Fate of the Furious soundtrack. But her solo career really took off in August of that year with the Young Thug-featuring “Havana,” which climbed to No. 1 on the Hot 100 the following January. Her second Hot 100 chart-topper followed two years later: the steamy duet “Señorita” alongside Mendes, with whom she was in a much-photographed, two-year relationship.
Still, Cabello hasn’t yet delivered her lasting, full-length statement — the one that strongly defines her creative ethos and is entirely her own. Her latest album, 2022’s Familia, scored a top 40 hit with the Ed Sheeran-featuring “Bam Bam,” but it was Cabello’s lowest-charting solo project. (Her feature film Cinderella the previous year — a splashy starring role that could’ve further boosted her profile — received, at best, middling reviews.) In September 2022, Cabello left Epic to sign with Interscope — home to young stars like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, who have become some of the biggest names in pop music by unapologetically establishing strong musical identities. With C,XOXO, Cabello is poised to potentially do the same.
“This was the first time she had the chance to decide on her own record label,” says Cabello’s longtime manager, Roger Gold of Gold Music Management. “[Epic was] wonderful and super supportive, but there’s a difference between being signed to a label without your own selection process and making decisions and then really getting to do that for the first time. It was a big deal for her to find people who deeply wanted to work with her, respected her and understood her. [Interscope] truly makes us feel like we’re the only artist on the label sometimes.”
“She’s the kind of artist who doesn’t compromise,” says Michelle An, Interscope Geffen A&M president and head of creative strategy. “It sounded like Camila wanted a label team that really gets into the weeds of everything. What are the big looks with the [digital service provider] partners? What is the strategy with radio? How are we implementing it internationally? She’s the boss of the boardroom, and she can tell us how she feels and how she wants to market. She’s really embracing the fact that she has a big team that operates like a boutique.”
No Sesso dress, SHAY earrings.
Erica Hernández
That level of label support, Gold says, allowed Cabello to treat C,XOXO as the kind of creative departure she had never explored before. “She’s feeling very confident in her womanhood, owning her own power,” he says, “and feeling like this is her time to bravely say the things she wants to say.” It may have been a sonic jolt and, to some fans, an outlier, but “I Luv It” was no red herring.
On C,XOXO, Cabello’s musical hallmarks remain — her hypnotic falsetto, her vulnerable ballads, her heartfelt songwriting — but in an entirely different sonic context that now blends hip-hop, Afrobeats, R&B, reggaetón and electronic music. They’re the sounds of Miami itself, vividly evoking the scenes of the city: driving past the clubs on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach or through bustling, artsy Wynwood on a busy weekend.
“So much of the inspiration for this album was driving, listening to music, rolling the windows down and hearing what people in the city are listening to,” Cabello says. “The voice she was using as a writer felt very much like the city itself,” El Guincho adds. “I thought it was a very interesting angle to have Camila represent her city strongly in a pop album context, which are usually very displaced and decentralized.”
Because the album was made almost entirely in Miami, Cabello says she looked at the city “with binoculars and extra-close attention. Sonically, it feels like it’s a Miami art piece.” For her palette, Cabello drew on a diverse group of collaborators to add unique colors, including Carti, Lil Nas X, The-Dream, fellow Floridians City Girls and BLP Kosher — and, most notably, Drake. That much-discussed (and paparazzi-snapped) jet ski adventure Drake and Cabello took in the Turks and Caicos Islands last year? They were finishing up a track together.
“He’s the f–king GOAT, so it felt like shooting for the stars,” Cabello recalls of initially approaching the Canadian rapper by sliding into his Instagram DMs. “I showed him the album when I felt comfortable enough and he really liked it. [The feature] came out of a nontransactional place. He had this idea of a song called ‘Hot Uptown,’ and it just felt like I was in the city. I was in Miami.”
ABLONDI dress
Erica Hernández
The flirtatious, Caribbean-infused track (which until their Turks meetup was, according to Harris, the only album cut created with a remote collaborator) isn’t Drake’s only C,XOXO appearance. On the nearly two-minute-long interlude “Uuugly,” sequenced immediately after “Hot Uptown,” he sings over soft synth beats and Cabello’s ghostly backing vocals. According to Harris, the interlude was Drake’s idea: “He wanted to do one more thing for the album.”
“Why does he have his own song? Because selfishly, I just want to hear Drake on my own album,” Cabello says with a laugh. “I love that for me — it’s like that rebellious mood. Who says I can’t do that? It’s Drake talking his sh-t.”
Another ballsy move for Cabello: This is the first time she has written all her lyrics and lyrical melodies for an album, taking full responsibility for the ideas and concepts behind them. “She’s fast, curious, has great instincts for melody, is strong with her opinions but also open for them to be challenged. She’s pretty much a freestyler with great first takes,” El Guincho says. The producer “really believed in me to take on the writing,” Cabello says. “That felt good and important to me. It makes me feel different when the whole body of work is purer, my thoughts and my taste in words. I think that’s why it sounds so cohesive, because it really feels like me.”
Today, at Pura Vida, Cabello pulls out her phone and opens a Pinterest board she created last fall. It has movie stills from Spring Breakers, girls wearing balaclava masks, long manicured nails, BMX bikes, photos of the city at night — all conjuring the quintessential DGAF Miami girl energy that Cabello telegraphs on the cover of C,XOXO, which features the sweaty-haired star with heavily mascaraed, just-out-the-club lashes, licking an electric blue lollipop, her tongue stained with its fluorescent color.
“She had specific memories of Miami and growing up there,” An says. “She described driving through the tunnels, with [their] very specific yellow lighting that you don’t see anywhere else. She described a specific hue of blue at the beaches and was focused on blue hour. The blonde hair was also a big deal. The party culture. She spent a lot of time trying to get us to understand the visual world of Miami.”
Erica Hernández
As she honed the album’s voice and vision, Cabello started dressing differently, always wearing lip gloss, fully embracing her bold new persona. “It was important for me on this album to feel that way,” she explains. “Pop music is so uncomplicated — it’s very one-toned. In a weird way, this album shows these chaotic, sometimes toxic scenarios, and I think we as humans are like that — we’re messy, complicated, super twisted.”
“There’s a lot of people that want you to be formulaic in this business,” Gold says. “There’s pressure in general to not rock the boat too much: If something isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Camila is not that type of artist.”
With C,XOXO finished, Cabello has some time to unwind and focus on herself. She finally started watching Breaking Bad; she’s currently into cold plunges; and she’s maximizing the time that she spends in chancletas (flip-flops).
“It’s when I feel the freest. I just want my toes to be free,” she confesses with a smirk. “I hate heels, I hate sneakers, I just want to be in chancletas all the time. This is actually the first time that I’ve gone to an interview in chancletas, and I feel that this album has given me the permission to do that.”
C,XOXO also allowed her to embrace her personal relationships. Simply being able to hang out with her friends at home enriched the creative process, she says: “That energy of being with your friends and that girl gang vibe felt so sick to me.”
That vibe particularly comes through on “Dade County Dreaming,” the final track she recorded for C,XOXO. Inspired by its namesake county, the collaboration with Miami hip-hop duo City Girls (who Cabello connected with through her sound engineer) captures the essence of both the album and who Cabello is today: a city girl herself, having fun and living life. The hard-hitting track — with its ’90s freestyle undertones, haunting piano lines and geographic name drops — was, Cabello says, “the missing piece on the album [because] City Girls represent Miami so hard.”
Erica Hernández
Just weeks ahead of releasing C,XOXO, Cabello tells me she doesn’t have any expectations. “Many things can happen, and they are out of my control,” she says. But she’s ready to face the feedback with the clarity and maturity she has cultivated in the 12 years since her Fifth Harmony debut.
“[When I was starting out], I wish I knew that not everybody is going to like me, and it has nothing to do with me,” she admits. “That affected me a lot in the beginning. When you’re that young all you want is acceptance and love, and you can’t understand when people don’t like you. You take it so personally, and it makes you feel like you’re doing something wrong. Once you get older, you realize that people’s reactions have nothing to do with you, and you don’t have to take it so personally and be affected by it. I’m way more at peace with it today.”
On an ordinary day, she’ll go to the beach, read a book, invite her friends to her condo in Sunny Isles for dinner, sip a Bacardi and sparkling water, put on a cute outfit and go dancing at Swan, a chic Euro-style spot in the luxurious Miami Design District, or Dirty Rabbit, an edgy Wynwood dance club. After a night out, she’ll make a mandatory stop at the 24-hour Pinecrest Bakery for some croquetas. Even if she’s tired, she pushes herself to go out and won’t hold back from dancing with a cute guy if she feels a vibe. “I’m living the Sex and the City life, but Miami,” she says with a laugh. But really, it’s the C,XOXO life.
“To me, it’s about going out more, going to more parties and just being a bit more fearless and rebellious,” she muses. “Before, I would go out and not care about what I looked like. If I felt kind of ugly, it was whatever — but now, I always want to feel pretty for myself. It’s about really enjoying life, and I always think to myself, that’s what sensuality is all about. It’s a sensory thing: enjoying the food you eat, enjoying putting on a few outfits in the mirror, enjoying the senses of being alive. It’s about taking in that baddie energy.”
This story will appear in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Good Neighbours’ “Home” has been one of the biggest viral success stories of 2024 so far. Here’s how the duo made it happen.
Foundation
Before they were Good Neighbours, Scott Verrill and Oli Fox were literal neighbors in an East London studio space last year, intrigued by each other’s solo work bleeding through the metal windows. “We could constantly hear what each of us was playing,” Fox recalls, “and on a spare morning, we did a bit of free writing together.”
Those sessions hinged on shared influences — Verrill and Fox both draw from late-2000s indie–pop mainstays like MGMT and Passion Pit — and “Keep It Up,” one of the first songs the duo wrote together with its booming drums and yelped vocal hooks, formed a mission statement of sorts while the pair worked through demos in late 2023.
Discovery
In January, Good Neighbours recorded the oversize chorus of “Home,” a bleeding-heart, whistle-packed anthem, and decided to float the refrain on TikTok without finishing the rest of the song. “It started out pretty quickly — a few thousand plays — and we got excited and said, ‘If it hits 25,000, we’ll get a pint!’ ” Fox says.
Within a few hours, the “Home” clip had crossed the 1 million mark, and major labels were reaching out to the duo’s manager, Joe Etchells of Various Artists, who signed the act in September 2023. “Home” was quickly fleshed out to a full song, debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in February and has earned 77 million streams through April 25, according to Luminate. Instead of grabbing that celebratory drink, Verrill and Fox got their worlds upended: “We’re constantly looking at each other and going, ‘This is insane,’ ” Fox says.
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Future
Last week, Good Neighbours announced a global joint venture with Capitol Records and Polydor Records. And after lining up headlining shows in the United Kingdom and Europe for the spring and festival gigs for the summer, Good Neighbours released “Keep It Up” in April as their second single and are finishing more material to be released later this year.
“We wrote a bunch of new demos in January, and we’ve got like 10 from last year — some of which are probably better than ‘Home,’ which is really nice,” Fox says. Still, after recording separately for years before joining forces, Verrill and Fox understand how rare a breakthrough like “Home” can be in the modern music industry. “The whole thing has been such a happy accident,” Verrill says. “We’re still trying to process it.”
This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
With Sparkling gold cowboy boots that double as disco balls, a corner dedicated to Dolly Parton and vintage storefront signage that recalls the spirit of Westerns filmed in Pioneertown, Calif., it’s easy to see why someone at the country music-inspired Desert 5 Spot in Los Angeles would want to document all of its intricacies. Yet the owners of the multifaceted entertainment venue would prefer that guests abstain.
When Ten Five Hospitality managing partner Dan Daley and his team opened the rooftop bar in December 2021, they envisioned a location where guests could stay in the moment. “It was this pullback to an era when not everything was viewed through the medium of a screen,” Daley says. “We wanted the exact opposite of that manufactured feeling when you get into another space and feel like, ‘This feels fake because it’s almost too perfect.’ ”
The interior of Desert 5 Spot in Los Angeles.
Desert 5 Spot
In June, Desert 5 Spot will open a roughly 200-capacity second location, traveling cross-country to Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. The venue will bring with it much of its style, such as the hand-selected furniture from antique sales and thrift shops across the West, various forms of its Boho desert-inspired chic and the affably named Dolly’s Corner. Like its predecessor, Desert 5 Spot N.Y. will prioritize the live-music experience with performances from rising artists, DJ sets and an in-house band — though plenty of established country and rock’n’roll talents are bound to show up. (In L.A., Kane Brown, Green Day, Dasha and Noah Cyrus have all performed, while others including Lainey Wilson and John Mayer have swung by the venue.) Plus, it’ll offer an array of weekly programming featuring line dancing and two-stepping classes, tarot card reading, a vintage trading post and more. Daley adds that there will be a regular Sunday-night party exclusive to the Williamsburg location, though keeps specifics under wraps. As for food and drinks: “L.A.-approved tacos,” he says with a grin. “We’re going to sling some of the best tacos in New York.”
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The venue’s East Coast debut follows a year in which the top song and album were both country releases (Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” and One Thing at a Time, respectively). The genre’s popularity has sustained in 2024, with pop stars like Beyoncé, Post Malone and Lana Del Rey either releasing blockbuster country projects or teasing forthcoming efforts. Daley expects the venue to embody the aura that has fueled the trend. “The ethos of country music is rawness, it’s authentic; it’s messy, but it’s real emotion,” he says. “I think that’s why the genre is speaking to all different types of people now. It’s part of this cultural reversal in terms of, ‘Let’s get back to real human connection,’ which at the end of the day is what country music is really about.”
Daley reveals the partners are eyeing other markets and considering further expansion, but the focus now is on New York. Still, it hasn’t precluded them from growing in other ways: At the Stagecoach festival in April, Desert 5 Spot hosted a pop-up featuring performances from Shaboozey and Nikki Lane over the weekend and attracting attendees including Leon Bridges, Diplo and Del Rey. But as the brand continues to grow, Daley stresses that its core message to guests remains the same. “Our goal is for you to [leave] our venue and say, ‘That was one of the best times in a really long time.’ ”
This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
“We were pretty prepared for this moment,” says Shaboozey, lounging on the floor of a Los Angeles recording studio. While putting the finishing touches on his forthcoming album, Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going (due out May 31), the fast-rising country artist is — perhaps for the first time — reflecting on how he arrived at this point in his career. Not only has the buzzy 29-year-old been working in music for nearly a decade, but a recent assist from Beyoncé helped spark a career-shifting breakout moment of his own.
After appearing as a featured guest on a pair of songs on the icon’s chart-topping and record-breaking Cowboy Carter (“Spaghettii” with Linda Martell and “Sweet * Honey * Buckiin”), Shaboozey released a solo single: the jaunty country-rap anthem “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which interpolates J-Kwon’s 2004 smash “Tipsy” — and, just three weeks later, broke records of its own.
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Even though his Bey-assisted breakout was unveiled first, Shaboozey suspects his solo track was the reason he was featured on Cowboy Carter at all. “Someone at Parkwood or in Beyoncé’s camp heard [“A Bar Song”] from me playing it live and was like, ‘We have to bring him in the studio,’ ” Shaboozey recalls. “Then the Beyoncé [album] came out, and we were like, ‘Oh, it’s time. Drop it.’ ”
After rising from No. 6 to rule Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart dated May 4, Shaboozey and Beyoncé became the first Black artists to score back-to-back leaders in the chart’s 66-year history with “Texas Hold ’Em” and “A Bar Song.” His hit also debuted atop the all-genre Digital Song Sales list and has peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking his first solo entry on the chart. “A Bar Song” has also exploded on TikTok (soundtracking more than 150,000 posts in a few weeks) and has collected 64.9 million official on-demand streams through April 25, according to Luminate.
“I had been wanting to flip a 2000s song for a while,” Shaboozey says, noting Petey Pablo’s “Raise Up” was also in the running. “I just said, ‘Everybody at the bar getting tipsy,’ and then we were like, ‘Oh, sh-t!’ The producer picked up the guitar and started playing the chords, and then we started writing, just having fun and being creative.”
Shaboozey photographed on April 18, 2024 at Dover Studio in Los Angeles.
Sage East
Shaboozey photographed on April 18, 2024 at Dover Studio in Los Angeles.
Sage East
According to Shaboozey, J-Kwon is “more excited” about the song than he is. The two have been texting ever since the first sample clearance request, during which the St. Louis rapper assured Shaboozey that his song was “outta here.” (Upon its release in 2004, J-Kwon’s “Tipsy” reached No. 2 on the Hot 100.) “Feeling like you did the song you’re flipping justice and then getting that co-sign, not everybody gets that,” Shaboozey gushes.
An artist who cartwheels across country, hip-hop, rock and R&B, Shaboozey is a product of the melting pot that is Virginia. Born Collins Chibueze in the northern part of the state to Nigerian parents, his earliest musical memory is listening to Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up,” along with a healthy dose of Kenny Rogers and Garth Brooks that his father would play. In 2015, Shaboozey experienced his first viral moment with “Jeff Gordon,” an independently released piano-inflected trap banger he says was “a whole moment in DMV music” that he conceived after sourcing a Gordon racing jacket and delving into NASCAR’s fashion aesthetics. Two years later, another quasi-viral song, “Winning Streak,” helped Shaboozey score a record deal with Republic, which released his 2018 debut album, Lady Wrangler.
In 2020, he scored a manager in Abas Pauti, whom he met through mutual friends. “After talking through our lives and hearing the music,” Pauti recalls, “I knew that I needed to be around and support in any way I could.” (Shaboozey is now co-managed by Range Media’s Jared Cotter.) Shaboozey released his second album, 2022’s Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die, on indie label EMPIRE, saying his team there has “been down for the ride… it’s like a family.”
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Since Cowboys Live Forever, Shaboozey has enjoyed a string of wins that set the stage for his breakout 2024. Late last year, he released “Let It Burn,” the lead single from Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going. It quickly gained ample traction online, even drawing attention from Timbaland and Diplo. And it was during those early months of his album campaign that Shaboozey received what became a life-changing call: a request to co-write with Beyoncé. “What I loved about [the] Beyoncé album is the inspiration and the influence that she had are probably the same as mine,” he says. “We’re studyingthe same things.”
Evocative follow-up track “Annabelle” maintained momentum while Shaboozey’s live performance of “Vegas” for music discovery platform COLORS, posted in March just weeks before Cowboy Carter arrived, has since amassed 1.3 million YouTube views.
Now, as he finishes his third album — which he teases will include “crazy surprises featurewise” — while also opening on tour for pop artist Jessie Murph, Shaboozey is a front-runner to dominate the summer. But he’s already thinking well beyond this moment. Ahead, he hopes to share one other thing with Queen Bey: “I want the Grammy.”
Shaboozey photographed on April 18, 2024 at Dover Studio in Los Angeles.
Sage East
Shaboozey photographed on April 18, 2024 at Dover Studio in Los Angeles.
Sage East
This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The War and Treaty will make you believe.
Whether playing to industry insiders at Clive Davis’ exclusive Grammy Awards preparty, attendees at the Country Music Association Awards or Newport Jazz festivalgoers, precedent suggests just about everyone in any given audience will be on their feet by the time the husband-and-wife act finish one of their explosive, emotive, genre-bending and deeply spiritual sets.
“The fans will walk up to us afterward and say, ‘I don’t know what I just experienced, but something happened to me while I was listening to you,’ ” says Tanya Trotter, the duo’s better half. Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN) CEO Cindy Mabe became one of those fans the first time she saw The War and Treaty, in 2022. “I was filming them and crying all at the same time,” she remembers. “I went home just talking about this band.” That same day, Mabe signed the act to its first major-label deal. Since then, this year’s Country Power Players Groundbreaker has continued broadening the genre with riveting and endless exuberance — even if country radio has yet to catch on.
Both Michael, 42, and Tanya, 50, started singing in church before they hit double digits; Michael has a video of himself singing “If Anybody Asks You Who I Am” standing on the congregation’s organ bench at just 3 years old. Those early experiences translated into a lifelong love of music-making and performing for both, though their path to The War and Treaty was far from linear. Tanya (née Blount) had a modest solo career in the 1990s following a cameo in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit singing alongside Lauryn Hill, including one track that cracked the Billboard Hot 100 in 1994; Cleveland native Michael dabbled in rapping, influenced by the success of local heroes Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, before eventually enlisting in the Army in 2003. While serving two tours in Iraq, he composed songs for his fallen comrades, even winning a “Military Idol” contest.
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The couple met shortly after Michael had returned stateside — fittingly, at an arts festival where he was trying to launch a solo career. Tanya had long since stepped away from music and was working as a worship leader; the couple married and had a son, Legend (yes, named for John), in 2011. They didn’t realize the potency of their combined voices until several years later, though, while recording a demo of a song Michael had written for Tanya’s brother. A friend heard it and practically demanded they keep making music together.
Tonya and Michael Trotter photographed on April 15, 2024 at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
Robby Klein
That off-the-cuff duet in 2014 opened their eyes to a world of musical possibilities, but their path forward wasn’t easy or clear-cut. Michael still struggles with PTSD — at times so severely that he has said he contemplated suicide — and the couple also faced homelessness. Musically, they first found a home in Americana: In 2018, Thirty Tigers distributed their second album, Healing Tide, which featured a collaboration with Emmylou Harris, and they have won three Americana Music Awards. As the duo’s star kept rising, major country labels came calling, leading to the pair’s UMGN signing and subsequent major-label debut, 2023’s Lover’s Game, produced by Dave Cobb.
This past year, The War and Treaty were one of two country acts nominated in the Grammys’ best new artist category; the other was Jelly Roll, whom the Trotters consider a peer in making the genre more inclusive. “The space we occupied was really important,” Michael says. “The two artists representing the genre were not representative of that genre at all, if we’re being completely transparent. You got Jelly Roll, a tatted-face rapper who can sing a little bit, and Mike and Tanya, these Black, overweight, gospel-trained singers. Country music is actively trying to attack the narrative it has created, and I’m proud to be part of that change.”
Though they are self-described outliers on the still-too-homogeneous Music Row, the Trotters say their Nashville peers have strongly supported them. It started with Dierks Bentley — who invited them to join him onstage for their first country awards show performance in 2021 and included them on a live album shortly thereafter — and continued with Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert and Chris Stapleton, for whom the duo will open three dates in May. Zach Bryan asked the Trotters to sing with him on his self-titled album after hearing them at the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards, converted just like all the rest. The resulting song, “Hey Driver,” reached No. 14 on the Hot 100 — The War and Treaty’s highest chart entry to date — and the act will open Bryan’s three-night Los Angeles arena run in June, inevitably earning even more new fans.
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Michael and Tanya are relentlessly positive, but they won’t ignore the obvious. “How about Mickey Guyton?” Michael says. “It all begins with her saying, ‘This is what country music looks like, too.’ ” With Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter shining a new spotlight on country music’s long history of racial exclusion, the duo readily acknowledges the work that remains to correct that past. (Beyoncé reached out to the Trotters after Cowboy Carter’s release but did not seek to collaborate with them.) “Have we experienced it?” Tanya asks. “Of course we have. Do we see it in the crowds? Of course we do.”
But they insist on pushing forward. “We’ve been sort of a healing balm, and I won’t allow anyone to take that away from Tanya and I,” Michael says. “We’ve been taken out on the road not to check a box, but literally because we’ve impacted some of the most powerful artists in our genre today.”
“My purpose is to really broaden what country music is and has always been,” UMGN’s Mabe says. “Finding them was like finding a needle in a haystack. They are an evolution of a format… Absolutely, we will eventually end up [bringing them to] country radio.”
That impact has been made because of the way Michael and Tanya translate their gospel bona fides into potent, generous and agnostic performances. “When you think of a gospel sound, you’re thinking of that sense of urgency — regardless of what my message is,” Michael says. “That sense that I need you to understand what I’m saying, that’s what we’re after. When somebody taps into that good truth, it just comes out with that roar and that fire.” There’s no scorched earth in the Trotters’ wake, though, just the one thing they’re interested in evangelizing: love.
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Nate Smith is hunkered down in a Nashville studio working on his forthcoming second album — but the rising country-rocker can’t help but revisit his past. This is the same studio, he says, where he recordedhis independently released debut EP, 2020’s Reckless, which included his breakout hit, “Wildfire.” When the longing, twangy song went viral on TikTok, it helped Smith score management, publishing and record deals. But that almost never happened.
“I was able to record that because my sister’s husband loaned me $4,000 and we made a little investment deal,” recalls Smith over Zoom, eyes widening in lingering astonishment. “They took a huge risk… But they were able to make enough to put a down payment on their house from [my music].”
During his wildly successful past few years, Smith, 38, has hit numerous milestones: He released his self-titled debut album in April 2023, kicked off his biggest headlining tour yet at the start of 2024 and topped Billboard’s Country Airplay chart with “World on Fire” for 10 weeks in February, tying Morgan Wallen — for whom he’s currently opening stadiums — for the longest-leading No. 1 in the chart’s history. But despite all that, Smith is mostly just happy to “have a stable job” now. “I paid my car off yesterday. From music!” he exclaims. “I can pay my rent and I can buy Christmas presents. That, to me, is making it.”
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Smith learned to play guitar at 13 and became a worship leader at 16 in his hometown of Paradise, Calif., and as a young adult, he became a certified nursing assistant. But at 23, Smith moved to Nashville to fully pursue music. He scored a record deal with powerhouse Christian company Word Records and a publishing deal with Centricity Music, but without much success, so he moved back to Paradise in 2011.
He may have stayed, too, had it not been for the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. Smith and his family survived 2018’s Butte County Camp Fire, but he lost his home. “If I had stayed in that apartment another hour, I wouldn’t have lived,” he says. Two years later, Smith packed his car with his remaining belongings and headed out to Nashville for a second time — now with nothing left to lose.
Nate Smith
Emily Dorio
The Camp Fire prompted Smith to write “Wildfire,” about how a love interest can generate a less-destructive kind of heat. Smith’s managers, The Core Entertainment’s Kevin “Chief” Zaruk and Simon Tikhman, recall receiving the song early in the pandemic and soon after requesting a Zoom meeting with the unknown artist. “He had this bushy, wide-eyed personality of a guy who you know has been told ‘no’ every single step of the way and suddenly had a little momentum,” Tikhman says. “We just kind of fell in love with the guy and were flying to Nashville a week later to meet with him.” By summer 2020, The Core signed Smith to a management deal. A Sony/ATV publishing deal soon followed, as did a Sony Music Nashville record deal in 2021.
“If you look at an artist like Nate and his tough road to get where he is today, that’s the country story,” Tikhman continues. “They call Nashville the ‘10-year town…’ It has been a 20-year town for Nate.” Adds Zaruk: “The music business is so hard. To see that it can work and to see it happen to someone not in their 20s… He is an example of how hard work pays off.”
Today, Smith’s work ethic and his own strain of rock-infused country have helped him collect two Country Airplay No. 1s. An alt-rock disciple, he has injected edge into Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars,” revitalized Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” and often played Foo Fighters’ “My Hero,” which he calls his “ultimate favorite” song, during his live sets. Smith is also an EDM and pop fan; he recently met Marshmello and would love to collaborate. Sustained radio success, paired with growing mainstream interest in country music, has, Smith figures, provided him with “a lot of leverage.”
“We’re a little hillbilly genre over here, but [pop stars are] wanting to be a part of it, and Beyoncé coming in and some other folks… it’s exploding the genre,” he says. “They’re still trickling in; Post [Malone] hasn’t put his album out yet. There’s an opportunity right now… it’s definitely the time to go DM your favorite pop star.”
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Meanwhile, Smith and his management are working overtime to translate his current moment into a lasting career. “You can text Chief at 3 a.m., and he’s going to get back to you,” he says with a smile. “It’s kind of sickening, but we’re all like that.” He recently started a new protein-heavy diet and has given up drinking — for now. “The name of the game is don’t get sick and have endurance and be in shape,” Smith says. “This is an athletic thing, and I didn’t realize that… I love to party, but it’s just slowing me down.”
When Smith worries about losing momentum, his team reminds him where he was just a few years ago. “They always bring my perspective back,” he says, recalling Zaruk’s advice: “You were surviving before, working paycheck to paycheck and barely making ends meet. Now you’re living — we get to live.” Smith holds his freshly tattooed forearm to the camera, showing off some new ink that’s still healing: “Live. Don’t Exist.”
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Linda Martell’s granddaughter Marquia Thompson is running late to launch her 82-year-old grandmother’s Zoom interview with Billboard — but for a good reason.
In late March, Beyoncé featured Martell on two spoken-word segments on Cowboy Carter. Shortly after, the star posted a photo of herself wearing an official Martell T-shirt from the pioneering country artist’s website — and today, Thompson needed to run by the post office to mail some of the nearly 600 orders she has received since. Martell’s merchandise sales aren’t all that have been soaring. Her catalog streams also ballooned from a little under 5,000 from March 22 to 24 to 61,000 from March 29 to 31, according to Luminate — an 1,100% surge immediately following the album’s March 29 release.
The attention is long overdue. In 1969, Martell became the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry. At the time, she didn’t know she was making history, though she was very aware that there were no other “Black guys or Black girls there” onstage or off, she says. She also didn’t know that she would receive two standing ovations. “I was surprised,” she says with a laugh.
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Her breakthrough single, “Color Him Father,” peaked at No. 22 in September 1969 on the Hot Country Songs chart; it remained the highest-charting track on the tally by a Black woman for more than 50 years until Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em” reached No. 1 in February. And yet, until Beyoncé helped shine a light on them, Martell’s accomplishments had largely faded into obscurity.
“When I was actively pursuing country music 14 years ago, I Googled ‘Black female country singers’ and Linda Martell’s name came up,” says Mickey Guyton, who wasn’t previously aware of Martell. “She is truly the reason why I had the courage to sing country music.”
Martell released only one album, 1970’s Color Me Country, but it was a beauty. Her voice was clear and resonant with plenty of twang reflecting her South Carolina roots on the Shelby Singleton-produced set of traditional-leaning tunes. In addition to “Color Him Father,” two other tracks charted in the top 60. In its review at the time, Billboard wrote, “Linda impresses as a female Charley Pride. She has a terrific style and a true feeling for a country lyric.”
Linda Martell with her granddaughter Marquia Thompson (left) and daughter Tikethia Thompson.
Gavin McIntyre
But by 1974, fed up with label clashes, a legal battle with her manager and the ongoing racism she endured, Martell left Nashville.
“Linda Martell has always resonated with me personally because her story is so many of our stories, which is why I named my show after her,” says artist Rissi Palmer, who hosts Apple Music’s influential Color Me Country Radio program. “She didn’t ask for all the politics — she just wanted to sing. Period. I admire her grace under pressure, focus to stay the course and the way she advocated for herself against a manager and record producer who were interested in gimmicks and not creating a lasting career for her.”
More than a half-century later, Martell, who lives with her daughter and son-in-law outside of Columbia, S.C., looks back on those days as bittersweet. Sitting in her favorite spot — a gray reclining lounger in the living room — and wrapped in a black and red blanket, she is quick to respond and even quicker to laugh and smile, despite some of the painful memories that clearly still sting. She relies on Thompson, who serves as her de facto manager, to fill in some details.
Though she started out performing pop and R&B, Martell grew up listening to country music and had a natural affinity for its cadences. Her sharecropper father sang country songs around their Leesville, S.C., house, and the country station came in loudest on the family radio, around which they would listen to Grand Ole Opry broadcasts on Saturday nights.
Her future manager heard Martell sing a handful of country songs when she performed at an Air Force base, and she moved to Nashville, where producer Singleton signed her. Singing songs with good stories appealed to her, and Martell cut Color Me Country in one day. “That was easy,” she says. “I was singing always already, so it didn’t bother me. I had fun. It was great.”
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During that period, there were moments both good and bad. But mainly, Martell recalls, she felt lonely. “Black artists didn’t sing that kind of song,” she says of country music. Though she says she didn’t have issues with any of her fellow artists, no other acts, white or Black, encouraged her, with the exception of multi-instrumentalist and Hee Haw host Roy Clark. “He’d make you feel at home,” she remembers of her appearance on the variety show. “He would sit beside me and talk. It felt very natural.”
It was worse on the often-hostile road. Her late brother, Lee, was in her band and provided company, but the heckling from some audiences was painful. “Most of the time, you really didn’t pay attention because if you do, oh, it hurt,” she says. “But we heard it. Me and my brother wouldn’t [respond]. He’d say, ‘Well, they’re ignorant.’ We came to work, and we knew what to do and what to say. That’s all.”
After her first manager sued her (over his commission) and Singleton and his label switched their focus to Jeannie C. Riley (who had a huge hit with “Harper Valley, PTA”) but tried to prevent Martell from recording elsewhere, she eventually got “tired of it” and left Nashville.
Martell revisited R&B music and lived in California, Florida and the Bronx, where she and her then-boyfriend owned a record store. In the 1990s, she returned to South Carolina, where she drove a school bus and then worked in a classroom until she retired in her 60s. She now enjoys spending time with her five children, 13 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
As Beyoncé worked on Cowboy Carter, her team asked Thompson if Martell would be interested in appearing on it, then presented Martell with the script for her spoken interludes. Martell was already a big Beyoncé fan. “One thing my grandmother will notice is a young woman who can sing,” Thompson says. “I’m very, very glad” to be on the album, Martell says, adding that she appreciates the attention Beyoncé has brought to her music.
Linda Martell photographed on April 24, 2024 near Columbia, S.C.
Gavin McIntyre
But Martell had already been reflecting on her story before Beyoncé came calling. In 2020, Thompson began work on Bad Case of the Country Blues: The Linda Martell Story, a documentary about her grandmother featuring interviews with Palmer, songwriter-author Alice Randall and others. She plans to screen the nearly finished film locally this fall before a wider release. Thompson launched a GoFundMe to cover the final touches and hopefully release the doc independently in order to retain ownership.
Despite all the hardships and a career cut short through no fault of her own, Martell’s response is swift when asked whether she’s glad she made country music in the first place: She quickly nods yes. “It’s very nice,” she says. “I wouldn’t change nothing.”
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When Lainey Wilson played Australia for the first time in March, she made sure to meet the country’s animal ambassadors: She held a koala; she pet a kangaroo. But it wasn’t all furry fun.
“I got crapped on by a bird twice,” Wilson says in her thick Louisiana drawl, shaking her head in bemused disbelief. “In the exact same spot. I heard it was good fortune, so I was like, ‘Go ahead. Do what you got to do, bird.’ ”
But if there’s anyone who doesn’t need luck, it’s Wilson. With a perseverance and grit that’s reflected in her music, the ascendant 31-year-old country star has made her own. After she moved to Nashville in 2011, Wilson endured a decade of disheartening struggles — including seven American Idol rejections. But over the past two-and-a-half years, she has broken records and reached new milestones at a staggering pace — all without compromising her traditional country sound.
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When “Save Me,” her urgent duet with Jelly Roll, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in December, only six weeks had passed since her solo hit, the coming-of-age tale “Watermelon Moonshine,” had summited the list — the shortest stint between No. 1s for a female artist in the chart’s 34-year history. “Watermelon Moonshine” appeared on Wilson’s most recent album, 2022’s Bell Bottom Country (Broken Bow Records/BMG), which took home both the Academy of Country Music (ACM) and Country Music Association Awards for album of the year, as well as the Grammy for best country album — only the ninth record ever to complete that trifecta. And at November’s CMA Awards, Wilson became the first woman to win entertainer of the year since Taylor Swift in 2011 and the first artist since Garth Brooks in 1991 to win best new artist one year and entertainer of the year the next.
At times, the rush has been overwhelming. “I do feel like the 10 years of nothing happening slightly prepared me, but I don’t think you can ever really fully prepare yourself for everything coming at once, and you’re just trying to hold on for dear life,” Wilson says.
“Sometimes when you’re moving that fast, maybe artistically you’re not ready. But she spent 10 years honing her craft,” says Jon Loba, BMG’s president of frontline recordings for North America, who signed Wilson in 2018. “The music was there, the personality was there, the performance was there. So in a sense, that happened overnight, but it has been a long build. It’s just the awards and the recognition have all come in an accelerated fashion.”
Georges Chakra suit, House of Emmanuele earrings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
One line in particular from Wilson’s acceptance speech for female artist of the year at the ACM Awards last May encapsulates her personal credo: “If you’re going to be a dreamer, you better be a doer.” And Wilson is nothing if not a doer. On this late-March morning, she has flown 14 hours on a commercial flight from Sydney to Los Angeles, landing at LAX at 7:30 a.m. and coming straight to Pasadena for this interview and its associated all-day photo shoot, even showering on location instead of first stopping at her hotel.
Getting a caffeine jolt from an iced brown sugar oatmeal shaken espresso from Starbucks, she sits on a bench in the lush backyard as birds chirp. Clad in a cozy, loose-fitting sweatsuit, Wilson pulls her knees up against her chest to shield against the slight morning chill. She’s not wearing any makeup, her long blonde hair sticking out from under a ball cap, her bare feet still sunburned from sitting in a Sydney park.
Wilson’s relaxed vibe contrasts markedly with the electric buzz she says she’s still feeling from the reception she received in Australia. “All I could think about was little 9-year-old Lainey just wanting to write music about my life and how in the world could somebody on the other end of the world relate to it,” she reflects. “It just goes to show you that we’re all a lot more alike than you think.”
Growing up in tiny Baskin, La. (population 200), 9 was a big age for Wilson. It was when she wrote her first song, “Lucky Me,” while at a sleepover with a friend; when she got her first horse; when she went to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time, where she saw Bill Anderson, Crystal Gayle, Phil Vassar and Little Jimmy Dickens. “My daddy actually still has the ticket stub,” she says. “He put it in the lockbox.” And it was when she first knew that one day she would perform on that stage. “My sister was asleep on the church pew like she could care less,” she says. “I remember eating popcorn and thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this.’ ”
She worked her way through high school as a Hannah Montana impersonator, learning how to entertain audiences at places like St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis and realizing she was “born” to perform in the process. Wilson, who calls herself a “fifth-generation’s farmer’s daughter,” combined that desire with the whatever-it-takes work ethic she inherited from her father. “It definitely has to do with coming from a farming community, getting up and planting those seeds and watching them grow,” she says of the diligence she applies to her career. “I really do view it as ‘I’m a song farmer.’ I just try to take care of what I have, and I take a lot of pride in what we’ve grown.”
By 2011, Wilson had moved to Nashville, where her career as a singer-songwriter started germinating. But with a traditional sound out of step with the pop-dominated country in vogue, she had to survive years of setbacks before reaping her first rewards. She hit a low point in 2014: On her third year living in a camper trailer, career stagnant, the man she was dating impregnated another woman, and Wilson’s producer, who was letting her live in his studio parking lot, died. “It was a lot of dark moments in my life,” she recalls, “and I just felt not worthy.”
(Years later, she would draw on that challenging time when she collaborated with Jelly Roll on “Save Me” and its desperate yearning-for-salvation theme. “I love Lainey’s ability to be vulnerable, and I wondered if that would translate on the song,” Jelly Roll says. “Lainey has such an authentic voice [that] I felt if she could connect with the song, then she could share these lyrics from a woman’s point of view.”)
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Still, even amid those struggles, there were bright spots, like when her pal Luke Combs cut a song they co-wrote for an EP he released before he got signed. (Wilson, who considers herself first and foremost a songwriter, has also co-written songs cut by Chrissy Metz, Flatland Cavalry and Thompson Square, among others.) While working on her songwriting, she also started developing a signature country-hippie look, with bell bottoms and a wide-brimmed hat, and her sound, which combined traditional country with a slight rock edge. Around 2017 — the year she inked her Sony Music Publishing deal and a year before she signed with Broken Bow — she began tagging her social media content with #bellbottomcountry. “I just felt like during that time people were having a hard time getting it — everything from the way that I dress to the way that I sound,” Wilson says. So she came up with her own clear explanation: “country with a flare.”
Half-jokingly, Wilson says she succeeded by outlasting the gatekeepers. “I think we just kind of shoved it down their throat enough to where they’re like, ‘All right, she ain’t going away,’ ” she says.
In an era when women still struggle to get airplay on terrestrial country radio, that has been no small feat. As her popularity has grown, Wilson has flexed different facets of her artistry — and scored radio hits — by both releasing solo songs and featuring on duets with male artists. After “Things a Man Oughta Know” became her first Country Airplay No. 1 in September 2021, she featured on Cole Swindell’s “Never Say Never,” which reached No. 1 in April 2022. The following April, her “Heart Like a Truck” peaked at No. 2, as did “wait in the truck,” her collaboration with HARDY the same month. She then returned to the top spot with “Watermelon Moonshine” and “Save Me” in October and December, respectively.
“Honestly, there was not a grand strategy of alternating singles with collabs,” Loba says. “Quite simply, it has been those acts reaching out to Lainey with great songs she connected with, and the timing has fortunately worked out well.”
As Wilson’s career gained momentum, Loba says that — in addition to making sure her music was where it needed to be — her team focused on stressing Wilson’s authenticity, which was on ample display in her charming, gracious Grammy acceptance speech earlier this year. “She’s not copying anyone else,” Loba says. “At the end of the day, everyone can see her heart and is cheering for her.”
Lainey Wilson photographed on March 26, 2024 at Paradise Pasadena in Pasadena, Calif. Kelsey Randall shirt and pants, Double D Ranch boots, Brit West necklace and cuff, Minnie Lane earrings and Tenee Estelle Trading Co & Modern Myth Jewelry rings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Long-awaited success hasn’t diminished Wilson’s ambition — when asked if she wants to headline stadiums in five years, she answers three — but she is temporarily pulling back on the throttle just a little.
After spending only 15 nights in her own bed in 2022 and then playing 180 shows in 2023, she has trimmed her itinerary to a more manageable 80 concerts in 2024; following brief Australian and European runs earlier this year, she’ll mostly play North American festivals and headlining shows (other than opening for The Rolling Stones in Chicago on June 30) for the remainder of the year. “I feel like you can see the light at the end of the tunnel when you hear, ‘100 less,’ ” she says. But with new opportunities come fresh obligations.
“As this career grows, I feel like there’s a lot of other jobs that come along with it,” Wilson says. Her expanding list of brand partnerships includes Wrangler, American Greetings, Stanley, Tractor Supply and Coors — and she even appeared on the fifth and most recent season of Yellowstone in late 2022. (Wilson doesn’t know what her future on the show holds, but she would like to return if her schedule allows.) This summer, Wilson will open a three-story bar, Bell Bottoms Up, in Nashville’s entertainment district in partnership with TC Restaurant Group.
“She won’t say no, so we have to for her,” Loba says. “Since we signed her, she has not left a moment unscheduled. Every time I see her, the only question I [usually] have is ‘How are you?’ We both come from farm families. We’re not taught how to rest in farm families. From management to agency to label to publicist, I think we’re getting better at creating that space for her.”
“Last year was a hard year,” Wilson says. “It was the best year, and I don’t know if we’ll ever have a year like that again. But everybody was tired by the end of it — not just me, but my whole crew. Everything we’ve said we would do, we did it. And then bigger opportunities would come, and you can’t pass them up either.”
Roberto Cavalli shirt, pants and shoes, Charlie 1 Horse hat, Double D Ranch necklace.
Joelle Grace Taylor
And at a time when she could understandably be focused on her own material, she wants to leave space to work with other artists. With her appearance on “Wilted Rose” off The Black Crowes’ new Happiness Bastards, she became the first act to ever feature with the storied blues-rockers. The group’s Rich Robinson tells Billboard he and brother Chris reached out to Wilson because “her voice is so powerful. You can tell that she really feels what she is singing.”
Wilson says she would “love to collaborate with Victoria Monét,” especially after seeing her perform at Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy party in February. “She just turned it on,” Wilson continues. “At the Grammys, her [victory] speeches were from the heart. I was like, ‘I want to be her friend.’ ” And she hopes to work with new pal Lana Del Rey, though she hasn’t written for Del Rey’s country album that’s due later this year.
As the demands on her time increase, Wilson is leaning into time-honored practices to help her cope. In Australia, she started waking up an hour early to pray, journal and meditate. “I do sound a little hippie-dippy, but it works for me,” she says. “Just kind of starting my day with an attitude of gratitude.”
She vows to do the same when her WME-booked Country’s Cool Again tour starts May 31 in Nashville. “I have no choice because it has made me feel so good and grounded,” she says. When following that routine, “the shows have gone better. I feel more levelheaded. I got to treat myself like an athlete.”
Over the last two years, one word seems to keep coming up around Wilson.
“Whether I’m running into somebody and they’re saying, ‘Man, your life has been a whirlwind,’ or whether the word’s coming out of my mouth, or I open a book and see the word ‘whirlwind,’ it just seems to be surrounding me,” she says. “Whirlwinds cause turbulence that cause chaos. But at the end of the day, you figure out how to come back to the center.” Which is why it’s also the title of her third full-length Broken Bow album, out Aug. 23.
She describes Whirlwind as “the Western sister of Bell Bottom Country,” and lyrically more “introspective” than previous efforts: “I feel like it’s got a little bit more character [and] cinematic storytelling.” Wilson teamed again with producer Jay Joyce (who produced Bell Bottom Country and its predecessor, 2021’s Sayin’ What I’m Thinkin’), but in a sign of her increasing clout, her road band plays on Whirlwind instead of the cast of studio musicians who typically appear on country albums. “We’ve played close to 400 shows in the past two-and-a-half years. I knew they could do it,” Wilson explains. “I felt like that’s where the magic was going to come from this time.”
Dolce & Gabbana top, Norma Kamali pants, Charlie 1 Horse hat, Modern Myth hat band, Double D Ranch boots, Alexis Bittar bracelets, We Dream in Colour earrings, Minnie Lane, Modern Myth Jewelry, Boochier Jewelry and Established Jewlery rings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Wilson co-wrote all the songs on the album. While her sound still leans traditional and her voice has an old-fashioned twang, her lyrics usually avoid country’s common nostalgic bent and have separated her music from some of her contemporaries’. Longing for the imaginary good old days — whether in life or her music — isn’t her focus.
“It’s important for me to be proud of where I come from and the way that I was raised, but not dwell on it too much — because who really cares? Let’s take that and move forward with it,” she says. “That’s just how I like to view life. You just got to keep trucking along.”
While she has nothing against a light-hearted ditty — and has written a few herself, including “Hold My Halo” and “Straight Up Sideways”— as a songwriter, Wilson prioritizes depth. “I think about the songs that made me fall in love with country music and made a difference in my life,” she says, citing Brooks’ “The Thunder Rolls,” Keith Whitley’s “When You Say Nothing at All,” Reba McEntire’s “Fancy” and Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss’ “Whiskey Lullaby.” “I just think, ‘I’ve got to do that.’ Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a beer-drinking song, but even with that, I think you can dive a little deeper and get people to think a little bit.”
Listeners relate to the authenticity of Wilson’s writing, says her musical hero, Dolly Parton. “Even though Lainey is breathtakingly beautiful to look at, her true beauty comes from deep down where songs are born and written,” Parton tells Billboard. “People feel her heart and soul in what she writes because she knows what they know, feels what they feel and has the gift to present it in words. God bless her. He has and he will.”
The night after her Grammy win in February, Wilson was enjoying a celebratory dinner in Los Angeles with her manager, Red Light’s Mandelyn Monchick; Loba; and Broken Bow executive vp JoJamie Hahr when Loba mentioned his 6-year-old nephew was being picked on at school.
“Lainey goes, ‘I hate bullies. I’m going to go to his school and do show and tell and sing some songs and say what an amazing little guy he is… I can make a difference,’ ” Loba recalls. “She has just won [best country album], and the night after, she’s sitting there concerned about my nephew.”
Wilson is a people-pleaser by nature. Say something she agrees with and she looks straight at you, nods and says emphatically, “100%.” The effect is powerful — and that natural empathy has helped her connect with both fans and fellow artists. “Lainey is someone you can get in the foxhole with and get raw and real,” Jelly Roll says. “She is also a very grounded person, so if I’m ever overwhelmed, I know I can call her.”
Georges Chakra suit, Sam Edelman shoes, House of Emmanuele earrings, Minnie Lane rings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Wilson attributes that down-to-earth sensibility to her upbringing, though she admits she has had to work to maintain it as her star has risen: “I have fought tooth and nail to make sure that I am doing the things that make me feel like me, [like] calling my family at home, checking to see how the farm’s going and see if Daddy has planted his crops, [checking in] on my nephews, hanging out with my boyfriend on the porch and those kinds of things.”
She went public with her relationship with former pro football player Devlin “Duck” Hodges at the 2023 ACM Awards, but otherwise vociferously protects the privacy of herself and those around her. In her personal life, too, Wilson has looked to Parton — who has spoken about the importance of keeping some things to yourself when you’re sharing so much else with the world — as a guide.
“I think that was probably [about] her husband,” Wilson says. “When it comes to mine and Duck’s relationship, there’s going to be some things that we can’t escape and people are going to say and do whatever, but me and him are on the same page about the less we put out there, the less that we’re going to have to deal with people making anything up and saying anything. We want to keep that as sacred as we possibly can between me and him, and so far, it has worked for us.”
Wilson, whose first Broken Bow album features a song called “WWDD” (short for “What Would Dolly Do”), got to spend some time with — and glean some useful advice from — her inspiration last year at Dollywood. “She dove right in,” Wilson says of Parton. “She was like, ‘You got a good manager?’ And I was like, ‘Yep.’ She said, ‘Well, is he an a–hole?’ ” Wilson pointed to Monchick and said, “ ‘She’s a big a–hole.’ And [Dolly] said, ‘That’s all I needed to hear. That’s what you need.’ ”
Kelsey Randall shirt and pants, Double D Ranch boots, Brit West necklace and cuff, Minnie Lane earrings and Tenee Estelle Trading Co & Modern Myth Jewelry rings.
Joelle Grace Taylor
Parton has faith in Wilson’s ability to navigate fame’s tricky waters. “In this business, as in any other, you have to sacrifice and compromise to get things done,” she says. “But I believe Lainey, like myself, will never sacrifice her principles and values for a dollar bill.”
Another icon, Brooks, has also encouraged Wilson. After winning CMA entertainer of the year, she anticipated naysayers who believed her ascent had happened too quickly and that even her own doubts would creep in, but Brooks helped silence that inner critic. “He said, ‘I feel like you’ve got the keys to country music and you’re going to be driving it for a while.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, Lord. I hope I don’t wreck this thing,’ ” she jokes. “But when somebody like him says that to you, it does make you feel like, ‘OK, yeah, that imposter syndrome can just go kick rocks.’ ”
With that mindset, it’s easy to believe Wilson can do anything — and to understand why, at the end of the day, she sees herself as a cowgirl: rough and ready, and hanging on to the rollicking ride she’s on. “Being a cowgirl is digging in. Getting up, dusting your jeans off and not being scared to get your hands dirty,” she says. “I’m from a long line of cowgirls.”
This story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.