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Life in the spotlight isn’t nearly as glamorous as it looks, particularly for new artists.
Between taking every road gig available, meeting programmers in multiple cities on radio promotion tours, creating new material and building a social media base, it’s not unusual for acts in their first year or two in the national spotlight to operate regularly on just four or five hours of sleep.
Artists don’t usually talk about it publicly — most folks with more typical jobs don’t want to hear anyone b–ch about playing music for a living. Sometimes even the family refuses to take pity, as new Nashville Harbor artist Greylan James discovered.
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“Talking to my parents every weekend when I got back from being on tour, [I’d be] complaining, ‘Y’all, I’m just exhausted. I’m stressed all the time. You guys have no idea how hard it is to be a country music songwriter and artist,’ ” James remembers. “Of course, my mom, being the Southern woman with the sass that she is, her favorite comeback was always, ‘Well, you think you’re tired and stressed now, Greylan, just wait ’til you have kids.’ ”
Thanks, Mom.
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“Wait Til You Have Kids” is now the title of James’ first radio single, released to country broadcasters via PlayMPE on March 3. It embraces the impact that raising children has on a parent’s view of life’s details while loosely tracing the kid’s journey from toddler to young adult. The stories are familiar, though neither James nor his co-writer, Matt Roy (“Done”), actually have children of their own.
“Sometimes we get a little caught up in that,” Roy says. “At the end of the day, a really good example is ‘There Goes My Life.’ I mean, as far as I know, [Kenny] Chesney doesn’t have any kids, and he’s not married. It just was a great song that he wanted to do.”
James had suggested writing “Wait Til You Have Kids” several times, but his co-writers invariably passed. He brought it up again in a May 2024 appointment with Roy on Music Row in Nashville, and they pinpointed Cody Johnson and Jordan Davis as artists who might be good targets, but then they moved on to other titles. Ultimately, Roy decided they should invest at least an hour into “Kids” and see if it worked.
James developed a flowy acoustic guitar part, and they kicked into a series of attitudes that would distinguish childless adults from parents: “Some people drive too slow,” “Tattoos are no big deal” or “If ‘There Goes My Life’ [is] just another song on the radio.”
“When I graduated high school, ‘There Goes My Life’ was the theme song,” James recalls. “That’s one of those songs that’s been a timeless classic, and so it was kind of a reference for us.”
When they reached the chorus, James was determined to make slight changes to a line or two in each iteration, the same way it had worked when he co-wrote Jordan Davis’ “Next Thing You Know,” another song with a significant parenting element.
“I’m sure Matt was dreading that,” he says. “When you’re trying to get out of the room by 3:00, like most writes work, changing the lyrics and the chorus gets a little complicated.”
But Roy saw the chorus modifications as a key development. Each time they changed the lyric, it advanced the kid’s age, making it a song with big-picture implications, rather than a gooey portrait of one particular age. It was trickier than it sounds.
“It grows the song up, but it doesn’t grow [the singer] up,” Roy says. “That was the hardest balance to maintain, just because every singer wants to be young and hip and cool — and particularly, for a young artist to act like a 60-year-old rocking around his porch telling advice wasn’t the direction we really wanted to go in.”
The second verse was surprisingly easy: They developed so many examples of the changes that kids bring to a life that they had plenty of options. “You just need to make it all rhyme,” Roy says.
They worked it so that the child’s aging process peaked in the bridge, with the kid “a thousand miles away” — presumably in college, but maybe married and living in another town — and the singer asking them to visit. James worked up a demo on his own at home. “I knew it was kind of a special song from the beginning,” he says. “Originally, I was like, ‘This doesn’t need to be something super-built up. It can just be a kick drum, guitar, vocal, maybe little cymbal swells here and there.”
James was very intentional about the vocal, recording 10-15 passes to make sure he showcased it in the best way possible. A few artists took a look at it, but when Nashville Harbor president Jimmy Harnen heard it, he called James and told him he should cut it himself. James protested — since he didn’t have kids, he didn’t think he was the right messenger — but Harnen assured him the song’s emotional value outweighed that issue.
Harnen convinced him they should release it early in 2025, and they assigned it to producers Jason Massey (Kelsea Ballerini, Kylie Morgan) and Brock Berryhill (Parmalee, Jelly Roll), with a tight one-week deadline. Booking a studio and a full cadre of musicians was an unlikely proposition, so they decided to build around the best parts of James’ demo. They kept his vocal and his acoustic guitar, and overdubbed the other instruments atop that core.
“It’s crazy because we’re writers, too,” Massey says, “so we were doing it around our writing schedule.”That meant it was mostly late-night work for the week. “I was just sending him all of my parts, and then he would send me a revised stereo file and I would just keep adding stuff,” Berryhill says. “We didn’t really have to do a whole lot on this one.”
Massey handled the bass guitar and drums while Berryhill supplied background vocals and other small touches, including a manditar, a smaller guitar with sonic similarities to mandolin. “For the most part, [the melodic instrumentation] is just two acoustics and doubling some of the parts with electric, kind of vibey tones,” Berryhill notes. “Then from there, it’s a lot of ambient layering, swelling guitars and some weird effect things.”
Despite the limited time frame, they did a little more than they needed. James asked them to pare it back. “There were some bigger drum moments,” Massey says. “It got a little bigger, and then Greylan was like, ‘I kind of miss the intimacy of the demo.’ I think he was right. That was a good call.”
Though James had reservations about releasing “Wait Til You Have Kids” as a childless man, he has grown more comfortable with the situation. He relates to the song as a son, and the possibility exists that he’ll become a father somewhere down the road. He expects the job will be at least as challenging as his current one in country music.
“I don’t hate where I’m at right now,” he says, “but if it ends up changing, that’s something I’d be blessed to be a part of.”
As it gears up to release its fifth studio album Bet The Farm on Friday (April 18), country duo LOCASH is celebrating a two-week No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart with “Hometown Home.”
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That milestone is significant, given that it marks LOCASH’s first No. 1 on its own label Galaxy Label Group, with “Hometown Home” also being its debut release for the label. The duo launched Galaxy in 2024, in partnership with Studio2Bee Entertainment, led by Skip Bishop and Butch Waugh, with BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville handling distribution for the label.
LOCASH’s Preston Brust and Chris Lucas co-wrote “Hometown Home” with Zach Abend and Andy Albert, with production by Jacob Rice. It has been nearly a decade since LOCASH previously summitted on the Country Airplay chart, in 2016 with “I Know Somebody.” While “Hometown Home” has spent two weeks atop the Country Airplay chart, the duo says it is still holding strong.
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“We were just talking about how well it’s still testing at radio, and we’re not in a hurry to take the foot off the gas on this one,” Brust tells Billboard via Zoom. “Sometimes you get a No. 1 and you just kind of let go quickly and go to the next single, but [their fellow label execs] were like, ‘If we could give you any advice, just let this one breathe a little bit, because we’re sitting in evergreen status.’ We definitely had Skip and Butch guiding us and [BMG president of Frontline Recordings for The Americas Jon] Loba is always one call away for us, so we did help guide it. We saw the research kept coming back positive, which — you can’t ask for better than that.”
Billboard spoke with Brust and Lucas about the success of “Hometown Home,” their new album and what is ahead for their Galaxy Label Group.
Some artists want to court radio, and some don’t. Did you initially plan to take “Hometown Home” to radio?
Brust: Definitely. We released it on DSPs and then went to radio very quickly. It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek when I say we were born at radio; that’s where Chris and I cut our teeth and began our journey and created all these real friendships and relationships. We’ve been on a few labels over the years, and I remember someone at a different label, a long time ago, said, ‘Those guys aren’t your friends — they’re not really your friends.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa. No, these folks really are our partners and our friends.’ Radio’s always been important to us, and so are the DSPs. It all works together. These relationships are real, and they reach beyond just the songs — we get to know each other’s families and about their lives.
You have an “Easter Egg Hunt” happening that involves fans finding clues in your album cover. What is the story behind that?
Brust: Chris and I both have 9-year-old daughters and other kids as well, but they’re really Taylor Swift fans. I mean, just love Taylor and when she comes out with an album, our kids love it. They’re digging in, they’re trying to find the Easter eggs and [figuring out] what does it all mean? They have fun with it, and so I was like, “Why not us?” So we hid 16 things that we love, and that ties in with a song on the album called “Things We Love.” Once the listener finds all 16, they register themselves into a drawing and the winner gets a free LOCASH concert at their house or backyard. They win that concert.
How did you decide on Bet The Farm as the title of the album?
Lucas: We were trying to find the name of the album, couldn’t find the name of the album, and it had to be turned in like yesterday. Preston gets a text message with a song start of “Bet the Farm,” and we ended up finishing it in like two days — and we told our team, “Hold off, I know we turned in the album, but let’s wait until this song is finished,” and we turned that in. It says everything about what we’ve done in our career: we celebrate the wins, but then put our chips back in and we bet the farm again.
You interpolate Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” on the song “Isn’t She Country.” How did that come about, and what was it like getting the approval of Stevie and his team?
Lucas: We were on the bus and had some writers [Rob Pennington and Forrest Finn] out with us, just trying to write songs for the album. It was like 11 at night and we had just come offstage. We started writing it, not thinking it was going to be on the album. We were just having a good time and Rob [Pennington] started strumming guitar and singing “Isn’t she country, isn’t she real small town?”
We were just changing the words as we went, and it wasn’t really writing a song — just rewriting some lyrics and giving it a country flavor. So we ended up recording it. We had to get Stevie and his team’s approval, and it took maybe two or three months. But it feels so cool to have Stevie and his team’s blessing on this — because music is a serious thing, and when a song has been written, you don’t want to mess it up.
Preston, you’re wearing a [Contemporary Christian artist] Forrest Frank hat on this Zoom call. Would you ever do a CCM collaboration?
Brust: I went to the Forrest Frank show [in Nashville, Tennessee] with Jordan Feliz. We went backstage, and I got to shake Frank’s hand and tell him he did a great job. He’s a really humble guy, and it was a good night. We want to do [a CCM collaboration] so bad, because a lot of our music is positive already, and it just puts people in a good place — so we’re looking or the right thing. I was talking to the Elevation [Rhythm] folks and talking to Jordan [Feliz], so you just never know when the time might be right. If the song is right and it feels like the right project, we’ll jump all over it.
In addition to your own hits, you’ve written hit songs such as Tim McGraw’s “Truck Yeah” and Keith Urban’s “You Gonna Fly.” Whether it’s an outside cut or one you had a hand in writing, how do the two of you decide what to record, if one of you likes a song more than the other?
Brust: It’s a little tricky, because there are certain songs that each of us gravitate towards — and for different reasons, because music is so subjective to mood and opinion, and that can change daily. So, you have a pile of songs that are important to Chris and important to me and we talk it out. And then sometimes you record them and see how they sound. And then there are times when, if one of us isn’t feeling a song, instead of putting it in a “no” pile, I’ll put it in a “Play this for him again in three months” pile. And that’s worked from time to time. There was a song called “Til The Wheels Fall Off” on an album a couple of years ago, and it became one of our favorite songs in the end. So you just never know.
What advice do you have for artists wanting to make it in the industry?
Brust: I think it’s important that artists understand that we need deal-makers, not deal-breakers at the table. And if we want to get down the road together, we have to find ways to make sure that everyone’s going to have a shot at winning together. Chris and I really learned that early on. We went into our first negotiation like, “Oh man, we’ve read all the books. We know what to do. We’ve watched all the scary stories on Behind the Music on VH1. We’re not going to get screwed.”
And sometimes you just have to take a step back and say, “How are we all going to do this together? How can we win?” With Galaxy, even though we are the CEOs and with Skip and Butch, we did have to sign ourselves to that label and we had to give up a few things to sign with our own label, because that’s what it’s all about.
Are you looking at signing more artists to Galaxy Label Group right now?
Lucas: We’ve got four or five artists we are really digging. One is an alternative rock band, one is a Christian artist, and then a few country artists and we’ve had initial talks with them. But they knew we wanted to get “Hometown Home” as high as we could first, so now it’s time to have those meetings. It’s exciting, because we just want to best serve the artists. We know where the pitfalls are, and we’ve stepped into all the quicksand over the 20 years we’ve been in town. We want to help them get the best possible project that means something to them out to the listeners.
This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2005 Week starts here with a discussion of 50 Cent’s game-running 2005 — possibly an even higher commercial and cultural peak than his hallowed 2003 run, but also the clear beginning of the end for his superstardom.
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With his inescapable Get Rich or Die Tryin’ album and its Billboard Hot 100-topping smash “In Da Club,” 50 Cent became the hottest rapper in the game in 2003, matching even his mentor Eminem for ubiquity and cultural dominance. After expanding his G-Unit empire in 2004, 50 returned in 2005 with his second album The Massacre, a couple smash collabs with his new West Coast lieutenant The Game, a huge tour with Eminem, new business ventures, new beefs, and even a film debut in his very own prestige quasi-biopic. He was arguably bigger than ever — but after two years where it felt like 50 couldn’t miss, his strike rate was finally starting to slip a little.
In this week’s Vintage Pop Stardom episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, host Andrew Unterberger is joined by a pair of Billboard Hip-Hop staffers and GPS regulars in Carl Lamarre and Michael Saponara to talk about the year that ended up being the top of the rollercoaster for the artist born Curtis Jackson. We start at with 50 playing kingmaker with his G-Unit crew in late 2004, including those couple classics alongside The Game, and then move into his ’05 — beginning with an album that sells over a million copies in its (abbreviated) first week, launches feuds with half of the hip-hop world and returns him to the top of the Hot 100 with his second straight lead single smash, and ending with a film debut that doesn’t totally do any of the things he hopes it will.
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And of course, along the way, we ask all the big questions about 50 Cent’s too-big-to-fail sophomore campaign: Could 50 and Game have been the Dre and Snoop for another generation? Is a “Candy Shop” even really a thing? Were the deep cuts on The Massacre better than the singles? Was 50 Cent: Bulletproof worth playing? Can you actually hoop in G-Unit sneakers? And if you catch the Get Rich or Die Tryin’ movie on cable, should you bother sticking around for the whole thing?
Check it out above — along with a YouTube playlist of some of the most important moments from 50 Cent’s 2005, all of which are discussed in the podcast — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!
And as we say in every one of these GPS podcast posts — if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:
Transgender Law Center
Trans Lifeline
Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe
Also, please consider subscribing to the trans legislation journalism of Erin Reed, and giving your local congresspeople a call in support of trans rights, with contact information you can find on 5Calls.org.
Lil Wayne is officially no longer down with the Super Bowl after organizers chose Kendrick Lamar for the 2025 Halftime Show. (And no, he didn’t watch Dot’s performance.)
Following the controversy surrounding this year’s headliner selection, Weezy revealed in the Rolling Stone cover story published Thursday (April 17) that he’ll never again consider playing the Big Game after being passed up to perform in 2025. The piece comes about seven months after the NFL announced that Lamar would take the stage at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans — the “Lollipop” rapper’s home city — after which Wayne told Instagram followers that he was “hurt” by the decision.
“They stole that feeling,” he tells the publication now of the NFL. “I don’t want to do it. It was perfect.”
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On that note, Wayne adds that he didn’t even watch Lamar’s February performance. Instead, he played pool with Lil Twist and went outside to smoke during the set. And every time he did peek at his TV screen during the show, he says there “was nothing that made me want to go inside and see what was going on.”
And despite saying that he’s on good terms with the “Euphoria” hitmaker, Tunechi did throw a little shade Lamar’s way. While listening back to some of the music he’s working on for upcoming album Tha Carter VI, Wayne apparently said of Dot’s halftime show: “They coulda had some music. But instead they got rappin’.”
“They f–ked up,” he added of the NFL.
Though Wayne technically wasn’t one of them, Lamar’s Halftime Show performance brought in 133.5 million viewers on game day — more than any other Super Bowl set in history. In addition to performing his smash Drake diss track “Not Like Us,” the Compton rapper also cycled through a number of the songs on his November album GNX, which spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
One song Lamar didn’t play from the LP, however, was opener “Wacced Out Murals” — the lyrics to which feature one of the only comments Lamar has made on the Wayne Super Bowl situation. “Irony, I think my hard work let Lil Wayne down,” he spits on the track. “Whatever though, call me crazy, everybody questionable.”
In the Rolling Stone piece, however, Wayne opened up more about why he took the snub so personally, revealing that he more so takes issue with the NFL for allegedly leading him to believe that he was a frontrunner for the gig.
“To perform, it’s a bunch of things they’re going to tell you to do and not do, a–es to kiss and not kiss,” he said. “If you notice, I was a part of things I’ve never been a part of. Like [Michael] Rubin’s all-white parties. I’m doing s–t with Tom Brady. That was all for that. You ain’t never seen me in them types of venues. I ain’t Drake. I ain’t out there smiling like that everywhere. I’m in the stu’, smokin’ and recording.”
Wayne claimed that his contacts at the NFL later apologized and told him that they weren’t “in charge” of the selection process after Lamar’s slot was announced. (Per producer Jesse Collins, Jay-Z — whose company Roc Nation oversees the alftime show — has selected every headliner since 2019. Even so, Wayne says he’s still cool with his “Mr. Carter” collaborator.)
“All of a sudden, according to them, they got curved,” Wayne added to the publication of the NFL. “So, I’m going to have to just settle with whatever they say.”
Billboard has reached out to the NFL for comment.
See Weezy on the cover of Rolling Stone below.
Bruce Springsteen dropped the second preview of his upcoming sprawling Tracks II: The Lost Albums collection on Thursday morning (April 17). The beat-heavy mid-tempo song “Blind Spot” will appear on the box set as part of the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions, a 10-song LP that a release noted has long been referred to by fans as the Boss’ “loops record.”
Opening with a sampled voice grunting over a mechanical-sounding drum beat, it finds Springsteen singing, “We inhabited each other/ Like it was some kind of disease/ I thought that I was flyin’/ But I was crawlin’ on my knees,” in a haunted cadence. The chorus leans into the notion that it’s the things we miss in love that are our undoing: “Everybody’s got a blind spot that brings ’em down/ Everybody’s got a blind spot they can’t get around.”
“That was just the theme that I locked in on at that moment,” Springsteen said in a statement about the song exploring doubt and betrayal in relationships that became the thesis for the Philadelphia Sessions. “I don’t really know why. [Wife and bandmate] Patti [Scialfa] and I, we were having a great time in California. But sometimes if you lock into one song you like, then you follow that thread. I had ‘Blind Spot,’ and I followed that thread through the rest of the record.”
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The song was written following the rock icon’s 1994 Oscar- and Grammy-winning song “Streets of Philadelphia,” which accompanied the 1993 Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington movie Philadelphia, Jonathan Demme’s legal drama about an attorney suing his former employer for his firing after the firm discovers he’s gay and has AIDS.
The never-released companion album “found Springsteen exploring an interest in the rhythms of mid-1990s contemporary music, and particularly West Coast hip-hop,” according to the release. “Initially poring over CDs of drum samples at his home in Los Angeles, Springsteen began making his own loops with engineer Toby Scott — which formed a rhythmic base he’d build on with keyboards and synthesizers. Both a revelation and departure in his home recording, Springsteen is the primary instrumentalist throughout most of Streets of Philadelphia Sessions.” Among those lending an assist during the sessions were his 1992-1993 touring band, as well Scialfa, E Street band members Soozie Tyrell and Lisa Lowell.
Though it never saw the light of day, the album was completed, mixed and slated for release in the spring of 1995, then shelved when Springsteen opted instead to reunite with the E Street Band after a seven-year hiatus. “I said, ‘Well, maybe it’s time to just do something with the band, or remind the fans of the band or that part of my work life,’” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer said. “So that’s where we went. But I always really liked Streets of Philadelphia Sessions’… during the [2017-2018] Broadway show, I thought of putting it out [as a standalone release]. I always put them away, but I don’t throw them away.”
Earlier this month, Springsteen announced the June 27 release of Tracks II, which will contain seven previously unheard full-length records. The 83-track collection will “fill in rich chapters of Springsteen’s expansive career timeline — while offering invaluable insight into his life and work as an artist,” according to a release, which noted that some of the LPs got so far as the mixing stage before being put on hold.
Among the albums included are the lo-fi LA Garage Sessions ’83, described as a “crucial link” between the stripped-down Nebraska and the rocking Born in the U.S.A., the sonically experimental Faithless film soundtrack he wrote for a movie that was never made, the country-leaning Somewhere North of Nashville and the border tales LP Inyo, as well as the “orchestra-driven, mid-century noir” Twilight Hours.
The box set covering the years 1983-2018 was previewed by the first single, the turbulent “Rain in the River.” The Lost Albums will be issued in a limited-edition 9-LP set , as well as 7-CD and digital formats, with distinctive packaging for each, along with a 100-page cloth-bound hardcover book with rare archival photos. A 20-track compilation, Lost and Found: Selections From The Lost Albums, will be released on June 27 on two LPs and one CD.
Listen to “Blind Spot” below.
Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Alternative Albums chart dated April 19 nearly three years after the album, her debut, was first released.
Preacher’s Daughter earned 39,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending April 10, according to Luminate. Of that sum, 37,000 units are via album sales, begetting a No. 1 debut on the all-genre Top Album Sales list.
In fact, nearly all of its sales are vinyl copies, as Preacher’s Daughter benefits from its first-ever vinyl release, 35 months after it first premiered on May 12, 2022. That count also leads to the set debuting at No. 1 on the Vinyl Albums chart.
Cain becomes the first act to rule Top Alternative Albums in their first appearance on the tally since Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts premiered atop the Sept. 23, 2023, list. As Rodrigo’s was not her debut album, Cain is the first to do so with a first release since The Smile, with A Light for Attracting Attention, in July 2022.
Preacher’s Daughter also begins at No. 2 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums charts, and on the all-genre Billboard 200, it bows at No. 10.
In addition to its album sales, Preacher’s Daughter also earned a total of 2.8 million official U.S. streams in the week ending April 10.
The chart-related activity around Cain is her first, with the majority centered around Preacher’s Daughter, though she also debuts on the Billboard Artist 100 chart at No. 4.
Cain followed Preacher’s Daughter with the nine-song ambient/drone release Perverts earlier this year, with a new album, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, also expected in 2025.
The Academy of Country Music revealed the winners of the ACM Radio Awards bright and early on Thursday (April 17). Ella Langley, this year’s top nominee at the upcoming 60th ACM Awards with eight nominations, called the radio on-air personalities and radio stations to surprise them with the news of their ACM Awards.
Winners announced include multiple first-time honorees. In the On-Air categories, first-time winners include: Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase of Crook & Chase Countdown for National Weekly On-Air Personality of the Year; Josh Holleman, Rachael Hunter, and Steve Grunwald of Josh, Rachael and Grunwald in the Morning for Major Market On-Air Personality of the Year; Joey Tack and Nancy Barger of Joey & Nancy for Medium Market On-Air Personality of the Year; and Mel McCrae of The Cat Pak Morning Show for Small Market On-Air Personality of the Year.
Among radio stations, WIVK in Knoxville, Tenn. won Radio Station of the Year, Medium Market for the ninth time, a longer winning streak than any of this year’s other winners.
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The 60th ACM Awards are set to take place on Thursday, May 8 at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas and streaming exclusively on Amazon’s Prime Video. Reba McEntire is set to host the show, which will feature performances by Blake Shelton, Eric Church, and Lainey Wilson, with more to be named. A limited number of tickets to the 60th ACM Awards are available now at SeatGeek.
The 60th Academy of Country Music Awards is produced by Dick Clark Productions (DCP). Raj Kapoor is executive producer and showrunner, with Patrick Menton as co-executive producer. Damon Whiteside serves as executive producer for the Academy of Country Music, and Jay Penske and Barry Adelman serve as executive producers for DCP. John Saade will also continue to serve as consulting producer for Amazon MGM Studios.
Here’s a complete list of the 2025 ACM Radio Award winners, with a notation indicating how many times each has won in this category.
On-Air Personality of the Year Winners
National Daily: Big D, Bubba | Big D & Bubba (fourth wins)
National Weekly: Lorianne Crook, Charlie Chase | Crook & Chase Countdown (first wins)
Major Market: Josh Holleman, Rachael Hunter, Steve Grunwald | Josh, Rachael and Grunwald in the Morning – WYCD – Detroit, Mich. (first wins)
Large Market: Big Dave, Stattman | The Big Dave Show – WUBE – Cincinnati, Ohio (fourth win, third win, respectively)
Medium Market: Joey Tack, Nancy Barger | Joey & Nancy – WIVK – Knoxville, Tenn. (first wins)
Small Market: Brent Lane, Mel McCrae | The Cat Pak Morning Show – WYCT – Pensacola, Fla. (third win, first win, respectively).
Radio Station of the Year Winners
Major Market: KYGO – Denver, Colo. (second win)
Large Market: WQDR – Raleigh, N.C. (fourth win)
Medium Market: WIVK – Knoxville, Tenn. (ninth win)
Small Market: WXBQ – Bristol, Va. (second win)
The ACM Awards are produced by Dick Clark Productions, which is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Eldridge Industries and Billboard parent company Penske Media.
At the beginning of the year, Gracie Abrams found herself in a rare bind. For one of the first times in her life, she says, “I felt like I had nothing to say.” The 25-year-old musician had scheduled a week to spend at Long Pond Studio working on new music with her longtime collaborator, Aaron […]
Zak Starkey has spoken out about his apparent firing from The Who after a nearly 30-year run, saying in a statement that he was shocked to hear that, according to reports, singer Roger Daltrey had taken issue with his playing at a recent Royal Albert Hall show in London.
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“I’m very proud of my near 30 years with The Who,” Starkey said in a statement on Wednesday (April 16) according to People. “Filling the shoes of my Godfather, ‘uncle Keith’ [Moon] has been the biggest honor and I remain their biggest fan. They’ve been like family to me.”
The veteran session and live drummer and son of former Beatles timekeeper Ringo Starr and his first wife Maureen Starkey noted that he suffered a “serious medical emergency” in January when he was treated for blood clots in his right calf. “This is now completely healed and does not affect my drumming or running.”
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In a statement to The Guardian earlier this week, a spokesperson for the group said: “The band made a collective decision to part ways with Zak after this round of shows at the Royal Albert Hall. They have nothing but admiration for him and wish him the very best for his future.”
The shows in question took place on March 18 and 20 in benefit of the Teenage Cancer Trust, a charity that singer Roger Daltrey has long been a patron of. According to Metro, Daltrey — who recently revealed that he is losing his hearing and eyesight — appeared to get frustrated about Starkey’s playing and stopped several songs mid-performance after saying he was having trouble hearing the band over Starkey’s drums.
During the band’s first-ever run through the show-ending Who’s Next track “The Song Is Over,” Daltrey reportedly told the audience, “To sing that song I do need to hear the key, and I can’t. All I’ve got is drums going boom, boom, boom. I can’t sing to that. I’m sorry guys.”
In his statement, Starkey expressed shock that “anyone” would find fault with his playing that night. “After playing those songs with the band for so many decades, I’m surprised and saddened anyone would have an issue with my performance that night, but what can you do?” Starkey said in seeming reference to the Metro report. “I plan to take some much needed time off with my family, and focus on the release of ‘Domino Bones’ by Mantra Of The Cosmos with Noel Gallagher in May and finishing my autobiography written solely by me. 29 years at any job is a good old run, and I wish them the best.”
Starkey, who first began playing with the Who in 1996 when they got back together for a reunion tour on which they played their 1973 double album Quadrophenia in its entirety, seemed to predict his sacking in an Instagram post on Saturday, in which he said he thought Daltrey, 81, was “unhappy” with him.
“HEARD TODAY FROM INSIDE SOURCE WITHIN WHOSE HORSES NOSE THAT TOGER DAKTREY LEAD SINGER AND PRINCIPAL SONGWRITER OF THE GROUP UNHAPPY WITH ZAK THE DRUMMER’S PERFORMANCE AT THE ALBERT HALL A FEW WEEKS AGO,” he wrote alongside a pic of him sitting next to a smiling Daltrey. “IS BRINGING FORMAL CHARGES OF OVERPLAYING AND IS LITERALLY GOING TO ZAK THE DRUMMER AND BRING ON A RESERVE FROM ‘THE BURWASH CARWASH SKIFFLE ‘N’ TICKLE GLEE CLUB HARMONY WITHOUT EMPATHY ALLSTARS’ THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY WHOSE LONG TIME MANAGER WILLYA YOUWONTYOUKNOW.”
Starkey got his start behind the kit when the Who’s original drummer and close family friend, Keith Moon, gave him a drum set for his eighth birthday. In addition to his longtime gig with the band, he has also played with Oasis, Johnny Marr, Paul Weller and Graham Coxon and also performs with the new supergroup Mantra of the Cosmos, which features Happy Mondays/Black Grape members Shaun Ryder and Bez and Andy Bell of Oasis and Ride.
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