State Champ Radio magazine
Page: 5
As solo country artists continue to dominate the genre, in the last 12 months there has been a return of bands peppering the country charts. And while groups have long been a pillar of the genre, this rising crop of country acts often operates outside the traditional genre lines, with the bands’ sonic explorations leaning […]
There was a time when Cynthia Erivo could glide around town on her Razor scooter in peace. “Don’t laugh!” she quips as she reminisces about those halcyon days while sitting in a cozy loft above a cavernous Los Angeles studio. “I’ve been doing it for years!”
Whether maneuvering New York’s busy streets or transporting her from her L.A. home to a nearby studio to record voice-over work, Erivo’s reliable kick scooter was once her preferred mode of transit. But even a decade ago, she was warned that her hobby wasn’t sustainable with the life she was building. “[Director] John Doyle said to me, ‘Cynthia, you’re not going to be able to do that for very long,’ ” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘But why? I’m good! It’s fine!’ ”
His prediction ultimately came true. In the years since making her 2015 Broadway debut in Doyle’s production of The Color Purple, Erivo has transformed from buzzy theater ingenue to certified, capital “S” star by practically every metric. At just 38, the multihyphenate is already nearly an EGOT (she’s only missing her Oscar, despite three nominations); has starred in prestige TV series like The Outsider, Genius and Poker Face; paid tribute to musical legends at the Kennedy Center; and, most recently, scooped up that third Oscar nom with Wicked, the highest-grossing musical adaptation in film history.
Along the way, Erivo hasn’t lost sight of what matters to her, using the star power she has accrued for good. When she publicly came out as queer in 2022, she cited the importance of helping “some young Black queer actress somewhere” feel less alone in the industry. At the top of 2025, she took home GLAAD’s prestigious Stephen F. Kolzak Award for her continuing commitment to promoting visibility for the LGBTQ+ community. And in June, she’ll bring her talents to the massive WorldPride celebrations in Washington, D.C., making sure that everyone hears her voice — including politicians aiming to strip her community’s rights.
For her latest endeavor, though, Erivo decided to take the same energy she puts into both her community and others’ projects and turn it inward. She didn’t take to the stage or the screen, but rather the studio, looking to reinvigorate her solo music career — and the result is her revelatory second album, I Forgive You, out June 6 through Verve and Republic Records.
Back in September 2021, Erivo released Ch. 1 Vs. 1, her debut LP of adult contemporary tracks where she aimed — and, reflecting today, thinks she failed — to provide a soundtrack to her life up until that point. “It never quite felt like it was mine,” she says. She recounts working with a group of “lovely” producers and writers who provided plenty of new ideas and sounds — yet the project itself underutilized her own vocal dexterity. “It didn’t feel like it was one uniform story.”
Cynthia Erivo photographed April 21, 2025 at Milk Studios in Los Angeles. McQueen dress.
Erica Hernández
So when she began thinking about her next album, she started from scratch. On the advice of Wicked co-star Ariana Grande, Erivo met with Republic Records co-president/COO Wendy Goldstein to discuss her strengths and figure out a path forward. What could Erivo do that nobody else could? “Everything fell into place really fast from there,” Goldstein recalls of their first meeting.
The answer was simple: Erivo’s greatest asset is and always has been her protean voice, an instrument that belies her diminutive frame and lets her craft entire worlds of intricate harmonies. Her mother has said she first heard her daughter sing beautifully at a mere 18 months old, though Erivo has since said she first recognized her own innate talent around the ripe old age of 11. Following a brief stint studying music psychology at the University of East London, she dropped out, later enrolling at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London (where she now serves as vice president). After graduating in 2010 and spending three years performing around the United Kingdom, Erivo landed a breakthrough role in the off-West End production of The Color Purple in 2013.
“Anyone who saw her in that performance knew pretty quickly that she was just a generational talent,” says Jessica Morgulis, Erivo’s longtime manager who began working with her a year before The Color Purple transferred to Broadway in 2015. “In all my days of going to the theater, I’ve never seen the entire audience leap out of their seats mid-song in applause.”
So when it came to creating her own music, Goldstein asked why Erivo wasn’t leaning into her biggest strength. “When you hear Cynthia’s voice, you’re transfixed. I felt like we needed to lead with that,” Goldstein says. “We spoke a lot about how to really highlight her vocals, using it as an instrument with stacking and layering to create beautiful production.”
That, Erivo says, unlocked something for her. “Wendy is a very singular human being who just gets it,” she says. “It was the first time that everything became really clear. To have someone who understands who you are as a musician and a singer and an artist was just a new experience within this space for me as an artist.”
The subsequent project, executive-produced by Erivo and her longtime collaborator, Will Wells, spans pop, soul, jazz, disco, gospel and more, with her voice front and center. But more importantly, after a career dedicated to portraying characters, I Forgive You is just Erivo, telling the world who she is.
“People see a very cookie-cutter version of me, and we do this thing with people where we isolate them or crystallize them in one space and go, ‘She’s just that,’ ” she says. “People don’t know me as a musician in the way they’re getting to know me now.”
As Erivo arrives for our conversation, you’d never guess that she’s coming off one of the biggest performances of her life. Less than 48 hours earlier, she was belting out her forthcoming ballad, “Brick by Brick,” and Prince’s “Purple Rain” alongside maestro Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic during a surprise appearance at the orchestra’s Coachella set. “I was so surprised at how vast that audience was,” she giddily admits. “It was unbelievable.”
Though Erivo remains humbly awestruck by the ensemble inviting her to perform for her biggest crowd to date, her own reputation has preceded her from the jump. “I mean, for anyone who likes singers, all of our algorithms were just filled with endless bootlegs of her singing her f–king ass off,” all-star songwriter Justin Tranter says of her Tony Award-winning Broadway debut.
But while the world was tuned into Erivo’s jaw-dropping performances of The Color Purple’s showstopper “I’m Here,” she found herself focused on something else entirely while playing the character of Celie: her sexuality. “I hadn’t really ever explored [my queerness], I hadn’t really ever discovered or understood or really learned about it,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, I get to play this woman who is exploring and learning about her own queerness at the same time as trying to discover what love is.’ This sort of wonderful thing happened at the same time — I got to do the same for myself.”
Erivo had been out to her close friends and family since her early twenties, but playing Celie for two years began to open the door to come out publicly, as fully embodying the experience of a queer woman eight times a week slowly made her more assured. “It’s like your feet finally hit the ground,” she explains. “Even the work that I started doing, whether I’m on a set or in a studio, I just felt a lot more relaxed.”
Saint Laurent bodysuit.
Erica Hernández
With that newfound sense of ease came a wave of projects. After closing out her run in The Color Purple, she booked her first film roles, in Drew Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale and Steve McQueen’s Widows, holding her own on-screen with stars like Viola Davis and Jeff Bridges. With her starring performance in 2021’s Harriet, Erivo earned her first pair of Academy Award nominations (for best actress and best original song) — had she won, she would have become the youngest person ever to earn EGOT status.
“How lovely is that? To be in this position at this point in my career is one, a privilege — but two, a massive surprise,” Erivo says of her near EGOT. “To be one of those people that’s on the edge of even looking that in the face is quite wonderful.”
Morgulis credits Erivo’s sharp instincts, saying she’s “almost never wrong” when picking projects and pointing to her client’s multiple viral performances at the Kennedy Center Honors, where Erivo has honored Dionne Warwick, Julie Andrews and Earth, Wind & Fire, as an example.
“Often, the producers of something like that will be leaning one way, because whoever it is you’re paying homage to has some favorite song of theirs they want to hear,” she says. “But Cynthia knows herself so well and will say, ‘I know I can really give this individual the best performance from me if we do this other song.’ And every time, she nails it.”
Yet despite her many successes, Erivo says nothing could have prepared her for the cultural phenomenon that was Wicked. She knew the film would do well, but she never predicted it would break box-office records and earn a whopping 10 Oscar nominations. “It’s insane,” she says. “And it’s insane while it’s happening, too.”
Of all Wicked’s achievements, none shocked Erivo as much as the soundtrack’s immediate Billboard chart success. It bowed at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 (the highest debut for a film adaptation of a stage musical in the chart’s history), ruled the Top Album Sales and Vinyl Albums charts, and landed seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100, with her own version of “Defying Gravity” earning the highest position among them at No. 44. “The cast was like, ‘Oh, so it’s just in the ether now? People are just listening to it on their way to work at this point?’ ” Erivo recalls. “It’s really wonderful.”
Miu Miu bra, shirt, and skirt.
Erica Hernández
The second part of the duology, Wicked: For Good, will arrive in November, and Erivo warns fans unfamiliar with the source material that her viridescent heroine, Elphaba, enters much darker territory in the second act. “She’s able to access her rage more,” she says. “The scent I wore changed. The makeup changed. Little shifts that bring you to a more mature version of who Elphaba becomes. And she is delicious in this next one.”
The Wicked Witch of the West isn’t the only one who has changed in between the two films’ releases — with rave reviews and another Oscar nomination for her stellar performance in the first act, Erivo became a household name practically overnight. That transition has occasionally felt scary, especially when it comes to maintaining her personal privacy.
“I think there is an interesting thing that happens, where it’s assumed that because you’re in the public eye, everything is for everyone,” she explains. “But being in the public eye does not stop you from being a human being — you just have eyes on you now. I am totally OK to share some of my life — whenever you see me on the stage, whenever you hear me sing, whenever you see me act, I am sharing. But that doesn’t mean that everything gets to be yours. I should be able to keep something for myself.”
That “something” likely includes her visible, but never publicly confirmed (including for this story) relationship with lauded producer-writer Lena Waithe. “You also wouldn’t want me to share everything — nobody should have to, because then what’s left?” she says with a half-smile. “You can be grateful, but you can still have a boundary.”
But thanks to the groundwork she has laid over the course of the last decade, Erivo says she doesn’t feel flummoxed by her sudden stardom. “I’m glad that I had those breakthroughs before — it’s school for what might come, and it means that here and now, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to sweep me up,” she says. “A lot of us fear that if this happens, you’ll sort of lose yourself. But I still feel like myself.”
There is a moment in “Play the Woman,” an early, R&B-adjacent standout from I Forgive You, when Erivo taps an unexplored topic in her career thus far: unabashed desire. “I could run these hands of mine down the map of your spine/Feel how your heat against my fingertips could make the blood in me rush,” she croons on the pre-chorus before blooming into her glossy head voice: “Could you play the woman for me?/Go slow, ’cause I like what I see.”
Erivo had long wanted to explore sensuality in her acting. But when the parts didn’t materialize, she decided to take matters into her own hands. “Honestly, you rarely get that opportunity as Black women anyway,” she says. “So I was just like, ‘Well, if I don’t put it in my own music, I’ll never get to put it anywhere else.’ ”
Prada top, skirt, and belt.
Erica Hernández
That ethos runs through I Forgive You, as Erivo breaks out of the boxes that the industry at large constructed around her ever-growing career while simultaneously giving voice to the parts of herself that she was once too scared to reveal in public. Whether she’s providing a grooving rumination on self-doubt with “Replay” or delivering an airy ballad about finally finding connection after years of trying on “I Choose Love,” Erivo lays all her cards on the table.
“It wasn’t scary to write because I really didn’t know how else to write it. It had to come,” she explains. “The scary thing was getting ready to share it. When something is personal, you hope that people understand that your humanity exists and they’re not just listening to random stories that come from nowhere.”
When going into their sessions with Erivo, Tranter was already well-aware that she had one of the best voices in the business. What they quickly discovered was just how adept a songwriter she was, too. “She’s a real visionary in that she knows what the f–k she’s doing,” Tranter says. “It’s not even that I was surprised, it’s just that the world doesn’t know her that way. You don’t know what to expect when someone like Cynthia hasn’t been able to reveal all her talents yet.”
That’s a recurring theme in Erivo’s career: One of the main hurdles she faced while working on her debut album was record executives who were unsure how to utilize her talents or market her. She recalls one telling her, “You can sing everything, and we don’t know what to do with you.” Her response? “ ‘Why don’t we just try everything, then?’ ” she remembers. “ ‘If I can do it, then why not try?’ ”
It’s a refrain Morgulis returns to often. With her client’s aspirations spreading across multiple fields of entertainment, the manager says that it’s vital for her to help Erivo remain in control of the projects she’s working on. “That conversation of not putting her in a box and, importantly, not allowing others to put her in a box, is happening on every single level of her team,” Morgulis says. “That act alone kind of sends a message to the industry of who she is and what direction she’s going in.”
And recently, Erivo has applied that philosophy to discussing her identity. After coming out publicly on the cover of British Vogue in 2022, she assumed a rare position in the entertainment business as a Black queer woman in the public eye, and it’s a platform she takes seriously.
Her decision to come out, Erivo says, had less to do with her own sense of self-actualization and more to do with the deep sense of care she feels toward her community. “I think I was actively looking for those who were encouraged to be more themselves,” she says. “I can’t change a person’s opinion of me; if they want to feel some way, there is nothing I can do about that. But I was so excited about being able to at least be one more face where someone could say, ‘Oh, my God, she did it and can still do it. She’s still creating, she’s still making. So maybe I can also do the same.’ ”
Saint Laurent bodysuit.
Erica Hernández
In hindsight, Erivo says she didn’t feel any trepidation about her decision to come out and didn’t notice any significant change in the roles she booked or the feedback she received for her performances. “Maybe I’m naive and wasn’t paying attention to it, because I’m sure there was [pushback],” she confesses.
The one notable exception came in early 2025, when the Hollywood Bowl announced that Erivo would star in the titular role of its upcoming three-night production of Jesus Christ Superstar. A predictable wave of conservative outrage followed at the thought of a Black queer woman portraying Jesus Christ, accusing the actress and the production itself of “blasphemy.”
Erivo can’t help but laugh. “Why not?” she chuckles with a shrug, before adding that most of those comments don’t seem to understand the critical lens of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. “You can’t please everyone. It is legitimately a three-day performance at the Hollywood Bowl where I get to sing my face off. So hopefully they will come and realize, ‘Oh, it’s a musical, the gayest place on Earth.’ ”
It’s easy for Erivo to dismiss a vocal minority decrying the mere announcement of her casting in a limited-run performance; it becomes much harder when the conversation turns to politics. Like many, she has watched in horror as the Trump administration has attempted to strip the rights of and federal protections for queer and trans people across the country through a flurry of executive orders.
Erivo doesn’t pretend to have all of the answers. “I’m trying to be a person you can get positive things from, because that is the only way you can balance this stuff,” she says with a sigh. But when she looks at something like the current administration’s “anti-woke” takeover of the Kennedy Center — the place where she has delivered some of her most iconic performances to date — she can’t help but feel a sense of dread. “I don’t know who gains what from that. I hope that it comes back,” she says. “It’s really sad to have to watch this happen to it. The Kennedy Center is supposed to be a space of creativity and art and music for everyone.”
Yet Erivo refuses to let that dread rule her actions. It’s part of why, during Pride Month, she will perform a headlining set at the closing concert for WorldPride in Washington, D.C., alongside Doechii. “I want to encourage people to not decide to just tuck away and start hiding and not being themselves anymore, because that is exactly what they want,” she says. “The more yourself you are, the more you are in front of people who don’t necessarily understand, the better understanding starts to happen.”
Tranter points to that sentiment as a perfect example of why Erivo has become such a powerful voice in the entertainment industry. “Cynthia being Black and queer, and being one of the most famous people alive in this moment while our community is dealing with what we are dealing with, is no mistake,” they say. “For someone as talented as her to be a beacon for young Black queer people all over the world, to be in the most successful movie and releasing a gorgeous, poetic album in this moment is no accident.”
It’s apparent that Erivo holds herself to an incredibly high standard. As Morgulis rattles off the singer’s schedule for the next few months — wrapping up filming on the forthcoming feature film adaptation of Children of Blood and Bone, hosting the 2025 Tony Awards and performing at least six solo concerts around the country, among dozens of other obligations — she must pause for a breath. “It’s a lot,” she says. “But she can do it.”
But today, the singer stops short of perfectionism. Even in a career as fortunate as hers, she knows that she cannot be everything to everyone. “I used to say, ‘I don’t want to make any mistakes. I don’t want to get anything wrong,’ ” she recalls. “What I’m leaning toward is just trying to be the best version of myself, full stop. And hopefully, the best version of myself is enough for those who want it.”
When Chappell Roan accepted her trophy for best new artist at the 2025 Grammy Awards in February, she asked a question that quickly went viral. The pop star used her speech to advocate for livable wages and health care for recording artists, concluding with the line, “Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”
Tatum Allsep, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Music Health Alliance, posted the speech to her Instagram account that night. “THIS!!!! Music Health Alliance has got you, your band, crew, team, songwriters, engineers, etc. #HealTheMusic,” read her caption.
“At first, I was jumping up and down and elated,” Allsep recalls, “and then, after I started reading the articles coming out, I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Chappell lost a record deal in 2020. We were here.’ We could have helped her in two seconds, but she didn’t know. And that’s on us.”
Trending on Billboard
By Feb. 13, Music Health Alliance and Universal Music Group partnered to launch the Music Industry Mental Health Fund, with the goal of providing mental health services to music industry professionals. The two organizations first started working together during the pandemic, creating a concierge program for UMG artists, songwriters and employees. Yet the Mental Health Fund is the latest step in Allsep’s decadeslong career as an advocate for health care in the industry, and on June 4, she will be honored with the Impact Award at Billboard’s Country Power Players event in Nashville.
“[Awareness] has got to come from the industry internally,” she says. “Just letting people know that we’re a safe space and we exist. All the funds we raise go right back into our programs and services. We want it to be that way, but we also want those that need us to know we’re here.”
How were the Music Health Alliance and UMG able to move so quickly following Chappell Roan’s speech?
We were already working with [UMG], and six months before the Grammys, we had started to talk about doing something in the mental health space. Chappell’s speech [made us say], “OK, now’s the time. This is what we need to do.” It was a great opportunity for the industry, for the label and for us to do something really meaningful at a time when people were listening.
You founded the Music Health Alliance in 2013. Why is it still necessary for an artist like Roan to give the speech she did 12 years later?
It’s not black and white. It’s a complicated issue. You get health insurance by being an employer of an organization — and you can negotiate anything, I understand that. But talking about Chappell specifically, if she was going to be an employee of UMG, they would own her creativity. And that’s suffocating for artists. We’ve got to prioritize their health, and that needs to be equally as important as making sure their vocal cords work when they’re going out.
What kind of uptick in artists reaching out to you did you experience following the formation of the Mental Health Fund?
For February, March and April, it was a 250% increase over last year. And that’s specifically for mental health.
The first Music Health Alliance fundraising event was hosted with Jack Clement for his “living wake” in 2013. What are more recent examples of working alongside an artist to create change?
Dierks Bentley is a great example. We went to college together and started in the music industry the same week. He was in the tape room at [The Nashville Network] and I was the receptionist at MCA Records in the promotion department, and we thought we had arrived. I think we were each making like $12,000 a year. And so, when I started Music Health Alliance, he was one of the first people that was like, “I support this.” About two years in, his team called and they were like, “Dierks wants to provide group health insurance for his band.” And I’m like, “I don’t know anything about group health insurance.” That was over Christmas break of 2016. By Jan. 1, we had a game plan, and by Feb. 1, his band and team were fully insured.
What are the goals for the Mental Health Fund in 2025 and beyond?
Where there’s a gap and a really serious need is for outpatient counseling. Vetting counselors is huge. You can’t just watch a 30-minute video and be music industry-informed. You have to understand the creative brain, and that is not the same. Once [an artist or executive] knows that they can trust us, we can help them for as long as they need.
This article originally appeared in the May 31, 2025 issue of Billboard.
Under president/CEO Ben Vaughn, Warner Chappell Nashville consistently dominated country music publishing. In 2024 alone, WCN was crowned publisher of the year at the SESAC Nashville Music Awards and at the BMI Country Music Awards (for the fifth time).
But all those accolades aside, Vaughn, who died Jan. 30, stood out due to his respect for and belief in songwriters. With an unwavering confidence in those he worked with at WCN, Vaughn guided them to where they needed to go creatively and professionally.
To honor his memory and his love of songwriters, Billboard has created the Ben Vaughn Song Champion Award, presented to an artist who uplifts songwriters just as Vaughn did.
Trending on Billboard
The first recipient is Little Big Town, whose relationship with Vaughn, Billboard’s 2020 Country Power Players Executive of the Year, goes back more than 25 years to when it was just a nascent band and Vaughn a Belmont University student running Scott Hendricks’ Big Tractor publishing company. “We all were kids,” LBT’s Karen Fairchild recalls. But even then, Vaughn had a way of connecting with songwriters. “He just was always so vibrant, and his personality just always so encouraging.”
Years later, shortly after Vaughn moved to WCN in 2012 following a long stint at EMI, LBT’s publishing deal at WCN was set to expire — and the band was determined to leave. “Ben was like, ‘What would it take? Let me take you to dinner and let’s discuss,’ ” Fairchild remembers. “Ben and [then-Warner Chappell Music chairman/CEO] Jon Platt reworked our deal, but Ben was definitely the catalyst. He was our champion. He had our catalog there and he believed in all those songs. People can sign you and be vacant, and Ben was never that guy.”
“He listened to our hearts and to our music and said, ‘I’m going to give this band what they deserve,’ ” LBT’s Kimberly Schlapman recalls. “He made us feel so good because he gave us value at Warner Chappell, not only as an artist but as songwriters. We felt like he wholeheartedly had given us his endorsement, his adoration and respect. We never thought again about going anywhere else.”
Vaughn took a hands-on approach in helping the group find outside songs for its fifth album, 2012’s Tornado, which included “Pontoon,” LBT’s first platinum single. It marked the first time the quartet, which also includes Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook, worked with noted songwriters Natalie Hemby, Luke Laird and Barry Dean. “He was always sending songs and [suggesting] collaborations and asking who we wanted to write with,” Fairchild says. “Just an encourager creatively, giving us renewed hope, and that’s very, very important when you’re diving back in and making a record.”
Vaughn frequently sent the band members songs from writers they hadn’t previously worked with, including “Next to You,” which opens LBT’s 2020 Grammy Award-nominated album, Nightfall. “ ‘Next to You’ was a total Ben moment,” Fairchild says. “Ben sent it to me first and said, ‘Listen to this song. You’re gonna die.’ It was some L.A. writers that we wouldn’t have known, but he just heard all the harmonies and he’s like, ‘This is going to be so epic.’ It was the cornerstone of Nightfall.”
Vaughn also suggested that Fairchild and Schlapman write with the Love Junkies (Hemby, Liz Rose and Lori McKenna), who penned some of the group’s biggest hits, including “Sober” and “Girl Crush.” “He always encouraged us to write with them because he loved what those three ladies and Karen and me were doing together,” Schlapman says. “He has a huge hand in that relationship.”
At Billboard’s Country Power Players cocktail event on June 4, the group will perform “Rich Man” in tribute to Vaughn. “Ben was rich in so many ways,” Schlapman says, “and he gave away his richness to others through his kindness and his encouragement and his love.”
Accepting the award is bittersweet for the band members, but they’re honored to pay their respects to Vaughn’s legacy. “I hope his family knows what an indelible mark he has left on all of us,” Fairchild says. “Just what a good publisher, friend and human he was.”
Vaughn “elevated the entire town,” Schlapman says. “He made the songwriters shine, and especially in this day when they don’t get nearly the credit and the money and the accolades that they deserve, he made them feel like superstars. He made everybody believe in themselves because he believed in them and the power of their music.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
It’s around 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, a few hours before Riley Green’s Duck Blind will open, and its eponymous proprietor is giving a tour of his Nashville bar and restaurant. The multistory complex in Midtown features a few private areas where the singer-songwriter and his friends can hang, including a small lounge that doubles as a podcast studio and a cozy outdoor porch with recliners where Green intends to hold screenings of some of his favorite movies, like Tin Cup, Secondhand Lions and Bull Durham.
Though he’s only 36, Green laments that the younger generation, raised on TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, doesn’t have “the temperament to sit down and watch Shawshank Redemption. And because they don’t, they’ll never be decent people,” he says. That’s a strong indictment and he’s kidding — but only slightly: “You don’t think that at some point in your life you’re a better person because you watched that movie?”
Trending on Billboard
The get-off-my-lawn rant is ultimately good-natured; Green admits he’s a bit of an old soul, which he credits to his upbringing in Jacksonville, Ala. (population: 15,000). “The majority of my [youth], all four of my grandparents I saw every day. My great-grandmother was alive until 2020,” he says. “I think that’s where I get a lot of the more traditional values.”
A nostalgia for simpler times is reflected in Green’s back-to-basics country sound and in many of his songs — most notably his 2019 triple-platinum smash, “I Wish Grandpas Never Died.” (Though both had died by the time he wrote it, he gave his two grandfathers songwriting credits “as a sign of respect,” he says.)
But in the past year, Green has also leaned into his playful, romantic side — and it has kicked his career into overdrive. His flirty duet with Ella Langley, “you look like you love me,” which recalls classic country songs from the ’70s and ’80s like Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” and George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” with its spoken interludes, won musical event of the year at the 2024 Country Music Association Awards and three trophies at May’s Academy of Country Music Awards, including single of the year. Green admits he wasn’t sure the track (on which he’s the featured artist) would do well, but it reached No. 1 on Country Airplay and No. 30 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. “I thought the talking verses were probably too traditional to be a big hit on country radio,” he says, “and I’m so glad I was wrong.”
Riley Green
Eric Ryan Anderson
With fans looking at him in a new light, Green and his camp smartly followed “you look like you love me” (and its sultry video) with “Worst Way,” a sly, sexy song with an even steamier video that plays up Green’s leading-man charisma (and re-creates a love scene from Bull Durham).
Though he played guitar in high school, it wasn’t until Green was in college at his hometown’s Jacksonville State University (where he was also quarterback on the football team) that he got serious about music. He started playing four-hour shifts in local bars and restaurants, filling his sets with covers of songs like Jamey Johnson’s “In Color,” which he still plays every show. (In a full-circle moment, Johnson will open for Green on tour this fall.) But Green didn’t rely on outside material for long. “I never thought of myself as a great singer, [but] I knew how to entertain people,” he says. “When I started writing songs, that was how I saw I could set myself apart from somebody who was more talented as a singer or player.”
While Green writes with many top-tier country songwriters, some of his most acclaimed and diverse songs were penned solo, including “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” “Worst Way,” “Don’t Mind If I Do” (another Langley duet) and “Jesus Saves,” about a homeless veteran. “From a songwriter standpoint, Riley has really embraced his versatility,” says Jimmy Harnen, president/CEO of Green’s label, Nashville Harbor/Big Machine Label Group. “He’s at the point in his career where he’s not afraid to express what he’s feeling and seeing around him.”
BMLG founder and CEO Scott Borchetta recalls a conversation he had with Green two years ago that helped focus the artist for the future. “He said, ‘I’m writing so much and I need to get it out.’ So we set it up to where he could go into our studio anytime he wanted to just start letting all of this music out, and then that led to trying some different production styles. We really focused on his vocals more than ever and had him try a couple different things. And through this, I think he discovered a new voice and discovered his own attractiveness and sexuality, and that wasn’t there when we signed him.”
Riley Green
Eric Ryan Anderson
Billboard’s 2025 Country Power Players Groundbreaker, who had never been on a plane before he signed his record deal with Nashville Harbor in 2018, is now expanding his audience beyond America. He opened for Morgan Wallen in front of 50,000 people at London’s BST Hyde Park last July 4, played several shows in Australia in October and headlined a string of Canadian dates this spring. He jokes that Canadian fans were severely disappointed that his Instagram-famous dog, Carl the Cowboy Corgi, didn’t tag along: “Everywhere we went, in my meet-and-greet people would come in, they’d be looking at my feet to see if he was there. They didn’t care about me at all.”
Carl and Green’s other two dogs were at his 680-acre Alabama farm, which Green only managed to visit five times last year. His trips there could become even less frequent. “Riley called me about a year ago and asked about Tim McGraw and how did Tim [get into acting],” Borchetta says. “That’s something that he is going to spend some energy on, and I think we could see another gear with him in that space.”
“When things are going well, you’ve got to go. ‘Make hay while the sun is shining’ is what Granddaddy would say,” Green says. “And I feel like that’s where I am. Things are going really well.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” a curious fan asks BigXthaPlug as the rapper and his entourage are escorted through Coachella’s artist entrance.
BigX has probably heard that phrase a lot lately. From Beyoncé using the good-naturedly boastful “The Largest” as part of an interlude on the Cowboy Carter tour to earning a top five hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for his Bailey Zimmerman collaboration, “All the Way,” the Dallas native radiates Texas-sized star power.
And while BigX’s booming voice and larger-than-life stage presence have helped him become one of rap’s most recognizable newcomers, the 26-year-old born Xavier Landum is preparing to take his outsized charm across genre lines with his highly anticipated country-trap project.
Trending on Billboard
“Everybody is realizing I’m not just a rapper — I’m an artist,” BigX says while reclining in the cavernous living room of the Indian Wells, Calif., estate he’s calling home for Coachella, as vitamins flow through an IV drip into his beefy bicep. “I feel like it’s not [me] trying to take over somebody’s situation. It’s more like, ‘Hey, I’m an artist and I want to see if I can do this as well.’ ”
BigX landed on the country scene in 2022 with his platinum-certified breakout hit, “Texas,” and its music video, in which he threw on a cowboy hat while rapping over bluesy acoustic slide guitar. Some believed BigX had country roots, having been raised in the 214 — but the self-described “city boy” bluntly admits he “never listened to country music in my life.” Instead, he grew up on the mix of rap, soul and R&B, ranging from Lil Wayne to 2Pac to The Isley Brothers, that his parents played.
But as his career picked up steam, some of his biggest new fans turned out to be country superstars like Morgan Wallen, Jelly Roll (who just brought BigX out during his 2025 Stagecoach set), Post Malone and Luke Combs. “So many people from the country world said they f–ked with me and wanted to do something with me,” says BigX, who was genuinely surprised by the crossover appeal.
The seeds were planted for a country project. “We buckled down and did it before the next person would do it,” he says. BigX’s right-hand producers — Tony Coles, Bandplay and Charley Cooks — collected different sounds to create a perfect country-trap blend that remained true to BigX’s signature soulfulness.
“I wouldn’t say my version of country music is country music. It’s kind of mixing the two sounds,” he explains. “I’m rapping on a bunch of country-style beats, but it’s not just country. I’m not on there sounding like no cowboy; I’m rapping. I’m just doing it from a country standpoint. I’m not saying it was easy — it definitely was a challenge.”
Among those challenges: For a country project, BigX felt he needed a different mentality from the one he has had while recording his upcoming rap album. “I was just coming out of my sad era and I don’t really drink liquor like that, [so] it was kind of harder to do,” he admits.
But the early returns on his country gamble have been both immediate and massive: First single “All the Way” debuted at No. 4 on the Hot 100 in April and became BigX’s first Hot Country Songs No. 1.
“All the Way” was a year-and-a-half in the making before its release. After hearing the rapper was working on a country project, Zimmerman thought it would be “insane” to work with BigX. A few months later, “All the Way” was in his inbox.
“It didn’t feel like we were trying to be something. It just felt right and a great song,” the rising country artist says, adding that he hopes “All the Way” encourages other artists from different genres to team up. “It always felt off to me that we wouldn’t go have fun with Snoop Dogg or go have fun with Eminem like Jelly [Roll] did.”
While BigX considers the project done on his end, his team is still awaiting verses from potential collaborators and doesn’t want to shut the door on any 11th-hour tweaks. As it is, BigX’s country rodeo is already shaping up to be a star-studded affair, with Jelly Roll, Post Malone, Shaboozey and more onboard.
“I didn’t think I was going to get as much positive feedback as I’ve been getting,” he says of the wide-ranging approval he has received from the country community, including being honored as Billboard’s 2025 Country Power Players Innovator. “A lot of people, I feel like, wouldn’t even accept that. A lot of people don’t even accept people of my color even trying to be in that lane. Just to be accepted the way it’s being accepted and everyone wanting to work with me — I’m grateful.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
At this year’s Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards, Ella Langley was the biggest winner of the night — but she can still recall fighting to perform in sweaty, hole-in-the-wall clubs in her home state of Alabama.
“I was the only woman, really, in that scene,” the 26-year-old artist says. “I was living with two other artists who were getting gigs over me. I was like, ‘I play just as good as they do. My band’s just as good as theirs. Give me a chance.’ There were times I’d have to send a couple of extra emails, but once they let me in [the venues], they would want me back. It made me work harder. But I grew up with a lot of strong women, so I’ve never looked at myself as anything other than equal.”
In the male-dominated country genre, Langley’s determination — along with her blockbuster single, the flirty, recitative Riley Green collaboration, “you look like you love me” — has helped usher her to the forefront of a new generation of country artists. Her lyrics are frank and unfiltered, her music a blend of neo-traditional country with a folk-rock edge, and she approaches her shows with the swagger of someone who battled for the attention of fans in those sweaty clubs and won.
Trending on Billboard
Onstage at the ACM Awards, while accepting the trophy for music event of the year for “you look like you love me” — one of five awards that she received — Langley again acknowledged the power of following her vision and instincts. “Everyone said this song was going to be the most underperforming song on the record,” Langley said of the duet — which ultimately defied expectations by topping Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in December and becoming her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100.
The video for “you look like you love me” has an Old West saloon vibe, but Langley has cultivated her own version of vintage-rock style that has drawn comparisons to 1970s music icons like Linda Ronstadt and Jessi Colter.
“I’m a tomboy [who] grew up with brothers, but I love to do my makeup and get dressed up,” says Langley, who can often be found in the forest deer hunting when she’s not onstage. “Jessi Colter was the outlaw of the outlaws. She didn’t put up with s–t, and I don’t either. I think the things they wrote about were very honest. That’s all I’m trying to do — write songs that mean something.”
That goal has roots in her Hope Hull, Ala., upbringing. Growing up in a musically inclined family, Langley says she learned to read by singing from a hymnal and became a disciple of classic artists such as Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks, but also modern ones including Miranda Lambert. (Langley performed Lambert’s “Kerosene” with her at the ACM Awards.)
Langley’s love of nature led her to study forestry at Auburn University, but she ultimately decided to pursue music, refining her performance and songwriting skills and honing her craft. She relocated to Nashville in 2019 and signed with Columbia Records/SAWGOD in June 2022, releasing the song “Country Boy’s Dream Girl” later that year and then following it with her EP Excuse the Mess in 2023. She wrote songs recorded by Elle King and collaborated with Koe Wetzel and Kameron Marlowe, but broke through in her own right with “you look like you love me,” which she began to work on with songwriter Aaron Raitiere while on tour opening for fellow Alabama native Green in early 2024.
Langley’s musical chemistry with Green, who contributed the song’s second verse and joined her on vocals, was undeniable — as was the catchy chorus. The track officially arrived in June, and the pair performed it on tour. When she issued her debut full-length album, Hungover, in August, “love me” surged on the charts. The 14-song set highlighted her unapologetic brand of songwriting, fusing it with rock’n’roll acuity (“Girl Who Drank Wine,” “I Blame the Bar”) while also conveying raw vulnerability (“People Change”).
This fall, Langley will extend her headlining Still Hungover Tour with additional dates, and she’s at work on a new album, which could arrive next year. “It’s unlike anything I’ve put out, and it’s the most me I’ve ever felt on a record,” she says of her forthcoming music. She dreams of one day adding acting and writing cookbooks to her résumé (“My kind of cooking is redneck cooking”) — but for the moment, music is her focus. Though it’s too early to tell whether the album will feature duets, “There will be things this year with collaborations that will appease the fans,” she teases.
Whatever shape the new album takes, one thing is certain: Billboard‘s 2025 Country Power Players Rising Star will keep making music her way.
“Where’s the damn rulebook that people keep telling me about?” she says. “I have yet to see it.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Growing up in rural Minnesota, Stacy Vee didn’t have particularly lofty ambitions. While attending St. Cloud State University, she says, “my dream job was maybe I could be a special events planner at this hotel on the freeway one day and do weddings and conferences.”
Vee did end up planning events — just on a far larger scale than that highway-adjacent hotel. Now she’s executive vp of Goldenvoice/AEG, where she has been in charge of the world’s largest country music festival, Stagecoach, since 2015, greatly expanding the three-day, Indio, Calif.-based event that launched in 2007 — and altering perceptions of country music in the process. Attendance at the late-April festival, capped at 85,000 per day, rivals its eclectic cousin, Coachella, which Goldenvoice holds on the same grounds the previous two weekends each year (and which Vee is also involved in booking).
On the day Billboard meets with her, Vee is sentimental, sad, elated and tired. It’s the last day of Stagecoach and she’s sitting in her trailer in the artist compound, which she has made cozy with a bowl of fresh nectarines, macrame pillows strewn on the sofa, vintage lamps, Christmas lights and cowboy boots and hats.
Trending on Billboard
After all these years, she still gets pre-festival jitters. “On the night before day one of Stagecoach, I woke up at one and I just couldn’t get back to sleep,” she says. “It’s excitement and nerves and we’ve been working on the show for so long.” In fact, she adds, “I’ve been working on 2026 for a year already. It’s 80% booked.”
Vee, who is 48, has her hand in every facet of the festival. She smiles as the clock strikes 1 p.m. and Quiet Riot’s “Cum on Feel the Noize” blasts through the loudspeakers, signaling that the grounds are open for another day. “Heck, yes. I pick the song that plays when gates open for Stagecoach!” she says. The first day’s choice was AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and day two was Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” but high winds delayed the opening, so no song was played. “I was feeling a little metal this year,” Vee says. “I very seriously don’t take myself and Stagecoach too seriously.”
When Goldenvoice president Paul Tollett started Stagecoach eight years after he had co-founded Coachella with the late Rick Van Santen in 1999, Vee would’ve seemed an unlikely choice to be his successor to helm the festival, given how little she followed country music.
“I listened to a little Mavericks, a little Dwight Yoakam, a little Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks in high school,” she says. “But then after that, I was really into indie and alternative and college rock.”
Stacy Vee
Ashley Osborn
So much so that after graduation, Vee worked as promotion director at a Minneapolis alternative radio station for two years before moving to Los Angeles in 2000. She became an agent’s assistant at WME before shifting in 2002 to Goldenvoice (which AEG had acquired the previous year), where she started as former Concerts West co-CEO Paul Gongaware’s assistant and quickly joined Tollett’s team as well.
“I had noticed [Tollett] didn’t have an assistant and Coachella was coming up, so I asked if I could also assist him. Paul Gongaware’s response was, ‘Well, if you want to work twice as hard for the same money… go for it!’ I said, ‘Thank you!,’ thinking it was the coolest thing that had ever happened to me, professionally,” she says.
That willingness to step in wherever needed made Vee stand out, says Tollett, to whom she still reports. “She was organized from the beginning and could always follow the conversation. That’s what I love about Stacy,” he says.
The two worked hand in hand on Coachella and then Stagecoach. Though her indie and alternative rock tastes were more aligned with Coachella, she learned country through osmosis. “Over the years, I began anticipating needs, studying and putting ideas in front of him,” she says. “Paul graciously allowed me the opportunity to run with the ball, make decisions and get my feet wet booking.”
Vee took on increasing responsibility until, in 2015, Tollett told her, “You’re ready,” and handed her the Stagecoach reins.
“You could turn over anything to Stacy. That’s the key,” he says. “It turned out to be Stagecoach, but it could have been anything. When you’re someone like her, where success is where you just want to be, she’s going to work toward it, no matter the challenge or the hurdle.”
Plus, by then, country was shifting; edgy country-rock artists like Nikki Lane and Sturgill Simpson had come onto the scene. “The first time I heard those two, it was a switch that kicked on for me,” Vee says. “I was like, ‘OK, this s–t is cool.’ It always was, but I just really identified with it.”
From left: Nikki Lane, Stacy Vee, Diplo, and Sierra Ferrell backstage at Stagecoach Festival on April 25, 2025 in Indio, Calif.
Julian Bajsel
Just as Coachella’s aesthetic reflects Tollett, Stagecoach’s now reflects Vee. She has made country cool again by, paradoxically, expanding Stagecoach’s purview beyond the genre’s strict musical parameters. That’s especially evident on the Palomino Stage, a tent that has far less capacity than the Mane Stage but is viewed as the hippest spot to play. At Palomino, Vee books acts that, if not country, are compatible and share fans with core country artists; legends like Tom Jones, Smokey Robinson and, this year, Lana Del Rey have appeared there.
Regardless of the stage, Vee says, “I think my stamp on Stagecoach is looking just outside of country and bringing these artists in. Nelly toured with Florida Georgia Line, so he belongs at Stagecoach. Post [Malone], he’s Texan. During the pandemic, he was doing at-home performances, and I saw him cover a Sturgill Simpson song. I was like, ‘That man has to come play Stagecoach.’ ” In 2024, Post Malone performed a full set of country covers on the Mane Stage months before the release of his star-studded country album, F-1 Trillion. “I keep my eyes and ears peeled for people who just belong in the space,” she says. This year, that also included rapper BigXthaPlug, who has a collection of country collaborations coming out.
She has learned that veteran acts of all genres — in addition to Nelly, this year’s Palomino roster included Backstreet Boys, Goo Goo Dolls, Creed, Crystal Gayle, Sammy Hagar and Tommy James & The Shondells — pack the tent. “All bets are off in there, and I can get as creative as any person ever could at a festival,” she says. “People just love to sing some of these iconic anthems and songs where everyone just puts their arms around each other.”
Still, Vee knows she can impose her personal tastes only so far: “I still have to sell 85,000 tickets, so I have to get the biggest headliners. I have a job to do, but I can put some of myself in there, too.”
Vee is always looking for ways to enhance the experience for festivalgoers, such as Stageshop Marketplace, a vintage clothing store run for several years by Lane that also included its own performance space. That’s also how both Diplo and Guy Fieri ended up as cornerstones of the festival. Fieri’s Stagecoach Smokehouse, which serves barbecue and holds cooking demonstrations with music guests, debuted in 2018 and has become a popular hangout. “This was Stacy’s idea,” Fieri says. “If you’re going to bring people here and you’re going to set this environment around country music, you have to give them all the senses. Stagecoach is Stagecoach because of Stacy Vee.”
Even before Diplo put out his first country album in 2020, he wanted a platform at Stagecoach, but Vee, protective of her patrons, had to be convinced he was coming for the right reasons. “Diplo’s managers really wanted him to come and play Stagecoach,” she says. “I was like, ‘I don’t think so. He can’t come here and make fun of people.’ They said, ‘He wants to respectfully come into this space. He wants to collaborate with these artists. He wants to write.’ His managers came to Stagecoach [in 2018], and each of them were wearing T-shirts that had Diplo wearing a cowboy hat.”
Diplo played a late-night set in 2019 and now curates the Honky Tonk Tent, which programs during the day as well. The tent has become so popular that even members of the Backstreet Boys were left waiting in line late one afternoon this year when Paris Hilton’s DJ set, with special guest Lizzo, packed the tent so tightly that security quit letting people in.
“Stacy is a superstar. She took a random idea me and my managers cooked up in a trailer backstage at Coachella and turned it into a full-blown tent at Stagecoach with my name on it,” Diplo says. “She saw the trend of country taking over pop light-years before anyone else and has built such an amazing festival with something for everyone — old school, new school, outlaw and pop. Stagecoach is my favorite show every single year… Stacy truly is the queen of Stagecoach, and I always look forward to seeing her, even though, somehow, she always manages to have better outfits than me.”
Stacy Vee
Miranda McDonald
Vee considers Fieri and Diplo part of her brain trust. “I find it fascinating — other people’s interpretation of Stagecoach, other people’s interpretation of country music,” she says. “I want to know what draws Guy in. I want what Diplo is excited about. A way for me to keep learning and to keep expanding is to have this trusted posse of people that we work with and see what ideas they bring in.”
In addition to Stagecoach, Vee is in charge of Morgan Wallen’s new festival, Sand in My Boots, which took over the Gulf Shores, Ala., grounds and mid-May calendar slot of former all-genre Goldenvoice fest Hangout. She also runs June’s Buckeye Country Superfest in Columbus, Ohio, and is on AEG’s touring team for Zach Bryan, who this year headlined Stagecoach alongside Jelly Roll and Luke Combs. “Anything high level for country music domestically, or even internationally, I have my hand in,” she says.
Beyond country, she runs Goldenvoice’s Just Like Heaven, a May indie-rock festival in Pasadena, Calif., and is on Coachella’s five-person booking committee. “We lock ourselves in a conference room a lot and just discuss ideas,” she says of the Coachella booking process. “We throw up a lot of grids, throw up a lot of stats. Take a look at playlists. Just all the things.”
Her future seems limitless, bolstered by a team, including Tollett and AEG Presents chairman/CEO Jay Marciano, that supports and empowers her. And unlike the college kid whose goal was to work at the local hotel, her aspirations have greatly expanded, especially when it comes to her role in building country music.
“[I want to] pull people into our community because it is such a loving, vibrant, supportive, artistic, fulfilling community,” Vee says. “I want to not let people underestimate the genre or the fans. I want to grow the genre. I want to change country music. That’s my dream.”
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
We had all met up for dinner in Santa Fe a couple of years ago. It was Chris, Morgane, me, my wife Kathryn and several band and crew members very close to Clan Stapleton. It was a humbling night in that no matter the status of our perceived successes, we all seemed to resort to naked-in-a-dream, childish reactions when the stress mounted. But in sticking with said dinner, it turned out full of a nectar that ended the night in everyone’s favor.
The owner and maître d’ of this Mexican restaurant came in on his day off, a little tipsy, I think, sporting a rhinestone-studded cowboy hat, and he welcomed us with grand sweeping gestures, overenunciating as he introduced each course with a rolling monologue. After his many waiters (one assigned to each of us) served us with aristocratic flair, he instructed us, with great drama, to, basically, pick up our spoons.
“Break the outer coating!” We did. “Now spoon up a small portion of every color on your dish. Every color!” We did as we were told. “And on the count of three put it in your mouth.” He was whispering at this point. We were getting scared. “One!” I looked up at Chris across the table from me, and his mouth, behind his beard and mustache, was neither grinning nor frowning, but something twisted in between. “Two!” We all had our spoons at exactly the same height, most shaking. After a long pause… “Three! In!”
Trending on Billboard
Like Willy Wonka, the owner knew precisely what was happening — delectable, divine, an otherworldly Disney ride in our mouths — as it happened. “You will next be getting a slight chile burn in the back half of the inside of your cheeks riiiiight now!” He was spot on. This was sorcery, Mexican f–king magic.
I had a similar feeling when I heard Chris play for the first time so many years ago at the Ryman, but I never put the two together until now.
It was 2017, and I was in Nashville promoting a film, and Kathryn and I were asked if we wanted to go see Chris Stapleton. “Who’s that?” I asked. Then, that night, I was slapped in the face with that visceral charge I hadn’t felt in music in that familial of a way since I was a kid.
Chris and Morgane Stapleton are country rock stars. There’s no question about it. Since I was 8 years old, a boot-toting rancher’s hanger-on at The Palomino Club in Los Angeles with my parents watching the likes of Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, Charley Pride, Mel Tillis and the great Willie Nelson, I have sought whatever that thing is that Chris and Morgane ooze: the presentation toward fans as family, and an added innate strut that suggests there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye.
I text Kenny Chesney that I’ll soon be seeing Chris and Morgane, and he replies right away: “I love them. Say hello for me. He’s a gift from God. He wrote a big song for me called ‘Never Wanted Nothing More.’ It put a lot of gas in the bus, for sure.”
Chris Stapleton and Josh Brolin photographed April 10, 2025 in Nashville.
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
Chris has also written songs for the likes of Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw, Sheryl Crow and Luke Bryan. But as a performer, something drives him. When I look at early videos of him sitting bespectacled and beardless, singing as if he is possessed, it hits me with both awe and envy and I, like him, am transported into the song-glory. I am living it while he is belting it free from wherever it sat in wait until now:
“Oh, why you gotta be so cold?Why you gotta go and cut me like a knifeAnd put our love on ice?Girl, you know you left this holeRight here in the middle of my soulOh-oh, oh, why you gotta be so cold?”
The “Cold” lyrics are simple and straightforward. The song sounds as much like a calling out to God as to the Devil himself, and it surpasses the cosmetics of how we all pretend we live broken love into what it’s actually like as we scratch at our faces and write the 15th letter in hopes of reconciliation.
Today, we are in Nashville. Kathryn and I flew here, then drove to a big metal warehouse where Chris and his band practice. Inside, there’s an eclectic mishmash of fan art, memorabilia, Grammys and awards of all sorts strewn about; paintings of a smiling Dolly Parton and an ingenue Audrey Hepburn; and there is a back room with a collection of guitars reaching into the hundreds, an obsession of his. This place was a rental during the coronavirus pandemic where Chris could perform remotely, but over the years they’ve grown attached to it, happily purchased it, and it’s where everything musically happens now. It’s theirs, very theirs. Poncho, who manages the place, sees us in. And there they are, Chris and Morgane, standing with open arms. They show us around, and we get the awkwards out. When we eventually leave a couple of hours later, Morgane’s sneaking a cigarette outside, waving.
The next morning, when Chris and Morgane walk in at around 11:30, I’m sitting on the couch draped with Native American blankets stuffing guitar picks into my pocket. There’s no reason to do it. I could just ask and I’m sure Chris would give me a thousand of them — but something about stealing them just feels right.
Morgane and Chris Stapleton photographed April 10, 2025 in Nashville.
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
“You want to listen to the new song?” Morgane asks. She turns on a high-fidelity record player that suddenly bellows a raw duet with Miranda Lambert through the room. The song immediately has Morgane and me dancing on the disco floor that they just laid, the one used in their “Think I’m In Love With You” video. I’m no Rick Rubin but it just has that thing that makes you move, that everybody can’t help but want to play again and again. He keeps surprising us (and himself, I’m sure) with who he chooses to work with: Taylor Swift, Adele, Justin Timberlake (the video for his “Say Something” featuring Chris might be the best music video I’ve ever seen, as a one-take, anything-can-go-wrong vibe gone right in every way). “This is amazing!” Kathryn yells from behind her camera. Chris is off meandering through his gaggle of guitars.
I ask Morgane to play it again and I sit down at a drum set surrounded by speakers. Chris grabs a chair to sit in that I later find out he brought with him when he first came to Nashville. “My mom recovered the seat pad sometime in the ’90s, but this is one out of four we had when I was a kid,” he says. “I brought this one with me. It’s so uncomfortable. I don’t know. I like it.”
He gets up and takes me into a long closet on the other side of the room.
“Lemme show you something,” he says.
The double door is locked, and I can see Morgane smiling as I pass her. Poncho unlocks it and we walk into what feels like miles of guitar cases, wall to wall. Chris finally stops at one that isn’t particularly a standout: “And this.” He pulls, then slowly opens it as if he’s revealing One-Eyed Willy’s personal hidden treasure; I even half expect at this point to see a golden-amber glow of some sort coming from inside. And there it is: an acoustic 1950s Gibson LG-2 steel string. It’s worn and scratched and looks like it’s trying to speak but is too old to.
“This is the first guitar I ever bought after I got to Nashville. I bought it for $380.”
He holds it up.
“Where’d you buy it?” I ask.
“Chambers guitar store, which I don’t think exists anymore.”
He runs his hand over it, almost longingly.
“There is nothing about it that is precious to anybody else. It’s got a million crack repairs. There was even mud in it when I first bought it, I think.”
“Except it means everything to you,” I say.
“That’s right.”
Chris Stapleton photographed April 10, 2025 in Nashville.
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
There are silences between us that will come and go all day, natural silences that come from people not needing to fill space all the time. This is one of those moments. I relish it. I don’t look at my phone. I don’t really look at him. Morgane and Kathryn are talking outside, and Poncho is getting himself a glass of water.
“If I had to walk out of here with one thing, it would be this. All the other stuff — I would be sad about it — but whatever I’ve done, whatever I’ve made, whatever I’ve turned into has pretty much been built on this thing.”
And for the first time this morning, he smiles. Then he walks out of the storage closet, leaving me in there holding his old friend.
Chris sits back down in his chair, his arm now around a 1976 bicentennial Gibson Firebird that Tom Petty used to play a month of shows at The Fillmore in the ’90s. The vibrato chords and Travis picking are coming through a shoulder-high amp that I find out later is the one that Jimmy Page used when Zeppelin toured America for the first time in 1969, a Rickenbacker Transonic. The amplifier that rests on top belonged to John Lennon. I’m not much of a drummer, but I return to sit behind the drum kit in the middle of the room and try and hold a beat… and Stapleton starts riffing. What the hell?!
After a while we stop and he looks at me. “It’s the buzz I look for. That buzz that starts with me then connects me to the band that connects to the audience then back around. I’m always looking for that electrical current.
“I had no voice before, no guitar skills,” he continues. “But something drove me to it. My uncle had a regional band, so maybe that. My dad listened to all the great country too — Waylon, Willie, Merle Haggard — but he also played R&B: Otis Redding and Ray Charles. He loved all of it. So music was always there, but sports became less prevalent, and the music just stayed.”
Chris grew up in Kentucky with big dreams of being a football player: “I couldn’t watch ball for years because it just hurt too much.”
“Were you a good football player?”“I thought I was.”“But something happened?”“Nope.”“It’s a sensitive subject.”“Not so much anymore.”“But it was.”“Yes, it was.”
Chris Stapleton and Josh Brolin
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
We speak about what keeps him grounded to his roots, as he’s accumulated 11 Grammys, 15 Academy of Country Music Awards (including 2025’s male artist of the year honor), five Billboard Music Awards and 16 Country Music Association Awards. His latest album, Higher, won the ACM award for album of the year in 2024, earning Morgane her first ACM award as an official co-producer. Since we saw him that night at the Ryman in 2017 his career has skyrocketed. There isn’t anyone out there who doesn’t seem to love his music, his lyrics or him.
“I’m grateful.” He looks at me over his arms that are still draped over his guitar. “I’m grateful I get to do this. I’m grateful for what it brings my family and that’s all that matters at the end of the day — those five people who call you daddy.”
It’s something we’ve talked about before, but the longer we sit there it’s obvious that words can’t describe the depth of what he feels, or even what he knows. I get it because I have the same push/pull with my profession, so we stammer through the personal stuff. That’s the whole point, I’m realizing, sharing that struggle with someone you trust, and this is that time and place. We never land anywhere with it, but, rather, travel in it, witnessed.
“Let’s go eat!” Morgane says. “What do you want?”
Suggestions: Mexican, chicken or burgers? “S–t, you’re from California. We can’t take you for tacos. Y’all have your Mexican food covered.” We land on Hattie B’s, a staple hot chicken joint in town known for its added spicy sauce.
We hop in the car, the four of us, the AV crew, Poncho and whoever else wants to come, with Morgane driving. She got a new car, a mom car. We pull into the small parking lot and there’s one spot. “Ain’t no way you’re going to make that,” Chris challenges. “Watch me,” Morgane retorts. She seven-point turns until she slips right into the space like a hand into a baseball glove. “Damn, woman!”
Chris Stapleton
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
We get a table outside.
“What’d you get, medium?” I ask Chris, curious if he is one of those burn-until-you-have-to-call-911 eaters.
“No, mild. I don’t mess with that medium stuff. It’s not real medium anyway. Somebody’s temperature gauge must have broke.”
“What about the hot?”
“There’s mild, medium, hot, ‘damn hot’ and ‘shut the cluck up!’ I stick with mild.”
“Want to try the hot with me?” Morgane asks.
“Yeah,” I excitedly and blindly reply.
They bring us some hot, along with some quarter and half birds, fried pickles, a few orders of “dirty bird” fries, a black-eyed pea salad and a few banana puddings. Morgane hands me my drum stick with the hot goop on it and we each take a bite. It’s not bad.
Right at that moment we hear Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” from across the street. We all look over and see a man on a fully dressed, cream-white Harley-Davidson unapologetically karaoke-ing to the blasting coming from his motorcycle speakers: “Then I look at you/And the world’s all right with me/Just one look at you/And I know it’s going to be/A lovely day…”
We are all smiling. The man on the motorcycle is stopped and looking up at the sun, also smiling.
And my mouth is getting hotter.
“Look at him! How great, man. Does anybody have water?” I start to panic, but everyone is focused on the Bill Withers guy on a motorcycle, so I don’t start screaming.
Morgane starts laughing, “This is f–king hot. My lips.”
Chris’s face is in the direct sun, and I know he’s getting sunburned, but he’s too polite to say anything. My lips are burning, and this is exactly what I want to be doing with my day: extraordinary people doing ordinary s–t.
Chris Stapleton and Josh Brolin
Kathryn Boyd Brolin
The man with the motorcycle drives away, taking the song but not the feeling away with him.
We finish our banana puddings, and Morgane and I each wipe our now blistering lips.
“Let’s get outta here,” somebody says, though I don’t know who.
The plan when we got back was to continue the interview, but that moment has passed. We’ve talked. We’ve jammed. Kathryn needs to take her photos so she and Chris go somewhere that she feels will inspire, and Morgane and I are left to reminisce on what today has been.
“I wanted you guys to go back to the roots thing,” she says, looking at me like a mother taking care of her boy. “The drive your book [Brolin’s memoir, From Under the Truck] came from was from your mother and his was from his father. That’s the connection between you guys — you trying to please your mother and him his father.
“After SteelDrivers [the bluegrass band that Chris started and was subsequently fired from] he went solo on a heavy riff, sex rock’n’roll-type music,” she continues. “A departure. And he had a lot of fun doing it, but it didn’t hit. This was before the Traveller album. So we were sitting on the couch one night talking about what we were going to do. And I’ll never forget it: He looked at me and said he needed to do something with meaning.”
I hear Kathryn and Chris laughing from across the room.
“He had already written all the songs. Brian Wright and him. You know, a close-knit team. And he said, ‘I would like to make a record that would make my dad proud.’ And that’s the root. I think he’s been chasing that ever since.”
“When did his dad die?”“2013.”“Before Traveller.”“Yep.”
We were supposed to leave, get back to our respective kids, but we ended up at the table on the disco floor, just shooting the s–t: me, Kathryn, Chris, Morgane and Poncho. Poncho used to work at the used car dealership in town. He knows a lot about guitars too. Chris, Morgane and him met and they hit it off. He takes care of the warehouse now. He’s family. It’s obvious how deep the mutual care is. He lost a son. His wife then said he needed to leave because it wasn’t good for their daughter, his drinking and staying out so late every night. He couldn’t imagine life without his son. Then God came into the fold. Saved him from himself. Reminded him that there were others that needed taking care of. He got his s–t together and showed up, and today they are all together, slogging through the moments, as a family.
I have tears in my eyes (even as I write this) thinking of that late-night talk at the table on the disco floor, Chris easy with whatever wanted to happen. All the talks that day, but this one, especially.
Yes, Chris and Morgane Stapleton are country rock stars; there’s no refuting that. But when it comes down to it, they’re all about finding meaning in the music and in the moments — with their fans, their families and between each other.
We spent the day together just shooting the s–t, eating hot wings, singing along with Miranda Lambert and Bill Withers and, yeah, it’s true, I got to play the drums with Chris f–king Stapleton.
Amen to it all.
This story appears in the May 31, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Most people wouldn’t expect to see pillows passed around a Dead & Company concert.
But for Bernie Cahill of Activist Artists Management — the firm that manages Bobby Weir, a founding member of the Grateful Dead and frontman of Dead & Company (which Cahill co-manages with Irving Azoff and Steve Moir) — the decorative pillows, handed out to fans with floor tickets during the band’s nightly performance of “Drums/Space” at its Sphere residency, serve an important purpose. Those on the floor are encouraged to lie down and gaze up at the cutting-edge venue’s towering screen, which during the instrumental segment often displays imagery of the cosmos; at other points during the band’s Dead Forever shows, audiences take in visuals from the San Francisco Bay Area to psychedelic animations.
Thanks to its massive video screen, its booking of superstar acts and its aggressively high ticket prices, Las Vegas’ Sphere — where Dead & Company alone grossed $21.6 million from six concerts in March, when it resumed shows there following a successful run last year — is again the world’s top-grossing building, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. It surpasses the top stadium (Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros) and two iconic New York venues (Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall) with a $165.3 million haul at midyear, which spans from Oct. 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025.
Sphere’s economic power isn’t in its show count — at midyear, the venue has hosted only 42 dates, including other residencies by the Eagles and dance artist Anyma — but in its average ticket price, which at $238 is roughly double those of Madison Square Garden ($133) or London’s O2 Arena ($105). While much of the music industry debates rising ticket prices, Sphere has shown there’s a vibrant market ready to pay a premium for special experiences delivered by top talent.
A DOWNWARD TREND: This year’s midyear charts are down significantly compared with 2024: Last year, the top 10 tours at this time had a combined gross of $1.4 billion, while in 2025, the top 10 outings have grossed a combined $1 billion, a drop of more than 28%. Among the top 50 tours, the combined gross disparity was less stark but still notable, going from $3.2 billion in 2024 to $2.5 billion in 2025, a drop of about 21%.
But this shift doesn’t necessarily signify weakness in the market. The main reason was show count: There have been fewer concerts in 2025 at the midyear point than there were in 2024. In 2024, the top 10 tours at midyear reported a combined 442 total shows for the period, compared with 245 in 2025, a 45% decline. For the top 50, the 1,425 shows reported in 2024 fell to 1,159 in 2025, a drop of 18.7%. On Billboard’s Top Promoters chart, Live Nation’s grosses were down to $2.2 billion in 2025 from $2.8 billion in 2024. But because shows are booked months, or sometimes over a year, in advance, changes in the number of total shows don’t reveal much about consumer spending or demand in early 2025.
The decline partially stems from timing. During a recent earnings call, Live Nation president/CEO Michael Rapino noted that more artists are waiting until the second and third quarters to launch their tours — and with more acts playing stadiums in 2025, more major tours are on the road in the summer, when the weather is better. The 2025 show count should increase in the next six months, which historically covers the busiest part of the year, especially in North America.
Importantly, last year’s touring numbers at midyear were unusually high thanks to U2’s venue-opening Sphere residency, which grossed $231.6 million from 38 shows during that time. That tracking period also included dozens of concerts from three major tours (Madonna, P!nk and Luis Miguel) that led to a high show count.
CHART STATS: Three acts in the 2025 midyear top 10 — Coldplay, P!nk and Eagles — also appeared in last year’s midyear top 10. And three more among the top 10 — Paul McCartney, Bruno Mars and SEVENTEEN — ranked among the top 20 at midyear in 2024. But there are some notable differences in the music genres atop the chart.
After three Latin tours reached the top 10 at midyear in 2024, only Shakira has done so in 2025. And after Travis Scott ranked No. 9 at midyear in 2024, no hip-hop artists cracked the top 10 in 2025. The highest-ranking hip-hop tour at midyear is Tyler, The Creator, who is No. 16 with $65.3 million grossed.
When it comes to ticket prices, Eagles at Sphere had the highest average price among the top 10 tours of $285 per ticket, followed by Usher, who charged an average of $179, and P!nk, whose tickets averaged $174.
The cheapest tickets among the top 10 tours were for Coldplay ($109), Mars ($118) and McCartney ($129). On average, the ticket price of the top 50 tours was $130, down 10% from 2024. On the Top Tours chart, 10 acts had an average ticket price that was under $100: Aventura ($99), Sebastian Maniscalco ($98), André Rieu ($94), Deftones ($88), Iron Maiden ($85), Trans-Siberian Orchestra ($84), Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds ($84), Cody Johnson ($77), Feid ($77) and Strait ($49).
THE TOP 10: Keep scrolling for details on the top 10 touring artists of Billboard’s midyear Boxscore period, tracking all shows worldwide from Oct. 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025.
Justin Timberlake
Image Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
