rookie of the month
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Over the past year, Texas native George Birge has steadily ascended Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, earning a top 5 hit with his debut single “Mind on You.” The song’s success represents a full-circle moment, given that the song was previously on hold for Jason Aldean.
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“This has probably been the wildest 12 months or so of my life,” Birge tells Billboard during an interview in Nashville. He wrote “Mind on You” in 2020 with Jaron Boyer, Michael Tyler and Colt Ford. At the time, Birge, previously half of country duo Waterloo Revival, was amid a career shift.
“I had been chasing the artist dream, and I had gotten close, had some failures to launch,” he recalls. “I asked out of a previous deal and there was an eight-month period where I was writing songs for other artists. We pitched ‘Mind on You’ to Jason, who’s a huge influence on me musically, and we got an email back, saying, ‘Jason wants it for his new record.’ He was by far the biggest artist to want one of my songs. I thought that was going to be the life-changer for me.”
In 2021, Birge began releasing snippets of music on TikTok. Birge happened upon a video from TikToker Erynn Chambers, which used the phrase “Beer, beer, truck, truck, girls in tight jeans” to lampoon the tropes used in many country songs. Birge based the chorus of his song “Beer Beer, Truck Truck” on the viral video (Chambers is credited as a co-writer). The song earned more than 5 million Spotify streams, and in the process, introduced Birge as a solo artist.
Birge parlayed the streaming surge into a record deal, signing with RECORDS Nashville in 2021. When RECORDS CEO Barry Weiss heard “Mind on You,” he made a pivotal phone call to Birge.
“He said, ‘We can’t wait to work with you, but that song you’re giving to Jason Aldean, that’s going to be your debut single. You need to ask for it back,’” Birge recalls. “That was a scary prospect. At the time, I was struggling to launch my career, barely scraping by monetarily, and I decided not to let one of the biggest artists in Nashville cut my song — which would have guaranteed me some money. Instead, I bet on myself and it was a one-in-a-million long shot.”
In 2024, the WME-repped Birge will tour with fellow Texas artist Parker McCollum. Below, Billboard’s January Country Rookie of the Month discusses his musical beginnings, the success of “Mind on You,” and the career wisdom he’s gleaned along the way.
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You recently released a remixed version of “Mind on You” featuring Charlieonnafriday and Kidd G. How did they come to be on the track?
I wanted to do a remix to give it the biggest pop it can possibly get when it’s at max visibility. I had seen an interview with Charlieonnafriday where he said he was new to country music but liked it. I had been a fan of his, so I sent him a note to ask if he would be on the song. Kidd G has one of the most authentic vocals of anybody I know. I sent it to Charlie and Kidd on the same day, hoping one of them would say yes. They both said “yes” in like 10 minutes, so we had both jump on the song.
Did you give them any guidance on their verses?
We didn’t give them any direction on their verses; we let them write what they wanted to write. Each artist looked at the song through a different lens. I wrote the song about my wife and how I feel about her. Charlieonnafriday wrote about a past love interest, where they still think about each other. Kidd G wrote about a full-on breakup, where he’s missing her. It was cool to see how “Mind on You” could translate to different people’s perspective and have us flip the hook on all three different verses.
Have you spoken with Jason Aldean since releasing “Mind on You”?
When I asked for the song back, he was unbelievably kind and gracious, but I never met him in person. About two months ago, we were both at a party and some of our mutual friends introduced us. He was like, “I’ve been watching the song and I’ve been rooting for you.” To have him say that was so gratifying.
He also filled me in on some parallels of what I’m doing and how he started his career — he told me about a failed record deal when he got started and later how one song changed his life and how at the time he had his first hit, [Aldean’s label home] Broken Bow Records was kind of a startup label. He talked about finding his lane, building a brand and scaling from clubs up to arenas and amphitheaters. I left that conversation feeling 10 feet tall, because it was so inspiring. I’m very thankful for the time I got to spend talking with him.
You were previously part of the duo Waterloo Revival. How do you think that experience prepared you for where you are now in your career?
I’m thankful for every second and learned more than I ever have during that time. We started as a bar band in Austin, Texas. I was working a desk job for a real estate company, but music was my passion. We started getting traction and sold out the Rattle Inn, a 300-400 person room, every time we would play there. Some Nashville industry folks flew down and before I knew it, I had a management deal, a record deal. It forced me to figure out who I want to be, what I wanted to say, how to put on a live show—because there’s a huge difference between standing behind a microphone in a club for 90 minutes and going on tour with Toby Keith, entertaining 30,000 people in an amphitheater.
What other lessons have you learned along the way?
In 2020, when I ended up asking out of that record deal, the only way I was going to do an artist project was if I was making the music that I wanted to make. RECORDS said they wanted to invest in giving me the best opportunity to be who I wanted to be as an artist, and they’ve been true to that. I feel like “Mind on You” is the first time I’ve gotten to be true to myself, storytelling-wise and sonically. Country fans are good at sniffing out what’s authentic and what’s manufactured. It’s gratifying to get to be myself and have it become the first thing that’s also ever taken off.
When did you find your passion for music?
My mom and dad weren’t musicians, but they loved music. My dad’s truck probably is where I fell in love with country music, listening to the radio. With it being Austin, there’s live music around all the time. I started writing songs in middle school. My freshman year of high school, I had started a band and we would go play on Sixth Street in downtown Austin. At the time, I thought everywhere was like that, playing on Sixth Street as a 14-year-old with “Xs” on your hand [for being underage] and having your friends coming out to shows.
The other cool thing about Austin was everybody had a garage band or music project, but nobody was in a cover band. We all wrote our own songs. I feel like that was the biggest head start my hometown gave me when I moved to Nashville: I had already had a foundation in how to write songs. Being in Nashville, with the best songwriters in the world, I’ve learned something new every day — but I at least felt like I could hang with other songwriters when I moved here.
What was the first concert you ever saw?
Bryan White and LeAnn Rimes at the Frank Erwin Center [in Austin]. She was fresh off [her breakthrough hit] ‘Blue,’ so that was cool.
Who would be your dream collaborator?
Gary Allan has had a huge influence on me. He’s got a lot of that grit and dark, smoky sound that I’ve tried to make my own.
You released your full-length album, George Birge: Mind on You, in 2023. What is next for you?
There’s a song that I just wrote called “Cowboy Songs” will come out as my next single. We started playing that live, and I’ve never seen a song react with fans like that one has.
You will be featured as part of Country Radio Seminar’s New Faces of Country Music Show in 2024, alongside Megan Moroney, Conner Smith, Dillon Carmichael and Corey Kent. What does that mean to you?
My friends at country radio, and at streaming, have changed my life this year. To be considered part of this class, with these artists, I feel so lucky — and to look at other artists and how they have gone from New Faces to selling out arenas and amphitheaters, it’s inspiring.
Though Lauren Watkins was born and raised in Nashville, it took leaving Music City for her to come into her own. She honed her acumen as a writer, and poured her talents into her new, six-song project Introducing: The Heartbreak, out today on Songs & Daughters/Big Loud Records.
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“I want people to feel like they know me better,” Watkins tells Billboard while seated at an eatery in Nashville’s Green Hills area. “I want to be a vessel for the songs to get heard. I thought the best way to do that was first introduce ‘the girl,’ and then introduce the things I’ve been through, which is the heartbreak.”
Introducing: The Heartbreak balances husky vocals, razor-sharp lyrics and sonic touches that range from tender to tough, positioning Watkins as far beyond a heart-on-her-sleeve singer-songwriter. “Stuck in My Ways” details the myriad habits she doesn’t plan to change post-heartbreak, while “The Table” conveys a relationship arc from flirtatious desire to heartbroken freedom.
Growing up, it was Watkins’s older sister Caroline who showed an early bent toward music. Their father worked in health insurance and their mother was a painter; meanwhile, the sisters began performing together at the restaurant Corner Pub in the Woods just outside of Nashville.
“We brought our little speaker and invited all of our family and friends, and played on their little outdoor patio,” Watkins recalls. Her sister was already writing songs, so Lauren chimed in on harmonies. “There were moments where I was like, ‘Oh, I kind of wish I was singing lead,’ but honestly, I was too scared to do it by myself. She was like my security blanket.”
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While her sister signed a publishing deal right out of high school and enrolled at Nashville’s Belmont University, Watkins began carving her own persona and creative vision by taking a different path. Watkins followed in her parents’ footsteps by attending the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in Oxford, Mississippi.
“I knew I wanted to go to Ole Miss and I knew if I wanted to have a career in music, it would have to be something I did on my own,” Watkins says. “At the time, I thought if I left Nashville, that meant I had to choose between school and music.”
Watkins largely put her musical ambitions behind her, and didn’t perform for the bulk of her university years. But still, “There was this hole in my heart, this tugging,” she says.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, upending everyone’s plans. On-campus college classes quickly pivoted to remote courses, leaving Watkins with ample time to reflect on her goals, write songs — and eventually, make frequent trips back home to Nashville. When her sister traveled to Oxford to visit and perform a show, Watkins sang a few songs with her, a moment that fully reignited her passion for singing.
With still just over a year to go before college graduation, Watkins threw herself into writing songs, drawing inspiration from everyone from Kacey Musgraves to George Jones, and joined a local cover band in order to gain performance experience. Like most Gen Z artists, it was second nature for Watkins to share both some originals and some of her cover song performances on social media.
One of those videos caught the ear of songwriter Rodney Clawson, husband of singer-songwriter and Songs & Daughters label head Nicolle Galyon, setting off a chain reaction that led Watkins to her current publishing and label deals.
Watkins is a co-writer on all six songs on the Joey Moi-produced Introducing: The Heartbreak, alongside her sister Caroline, as well as Galyon, Rodney Clawson, The Warren Brothers, Will Bundy, Emily Landis and David Garcia. She recently wrapped her three-night Nashville residency, dubbed the Heartbreak Supper Club, and is on the road with Austin Snell and upcoming concerts opening for Conner Smith.
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Watkins, November’s Rookie of the Month, spoke with Billboard about signing with Songs & Daughters/Big Loud, and shared the stories behind her new project.
What was the process like of preparing to sign a publishing deal and then a label deal?
After I met Nicolle, she let me do my own thing. She let me just write for a while and kind of hustle on my own. She watched me grow as a writer and then signed me to a publishing deal, maybe a year after we met. I still had a lot of developing to do as an artist. All I did for the past few years was write and write. She let me develop on my own before I signed with Songs & Daughters and Big Loud. You hear horror stories about labels where they want you to fit this certain mold, and I never felt that with them. It felt like this is where I needed to be signed.
“Fly on the Wall” features your Big Loud label mate Jake Worthington. How did he come to be part of this?
The first time I heard of Jake is when he opened for Ernest last year; they took me on the road for a weekend on that tour, so I got to open shows for Jake and Ernest. Jake’s music is so good and he’s just so real country—and he’s not putting it on; he’s really like that. I didn’t write the song as a duet, but the more I listened to it, it needed a male voice on there. It was perfect to highlight the contrast of the couple arguing in the song. The song is so old-school and I wanted it to come across that way.
“The Table” has a great “non-ending,” where the melody carries the lyric itself. How did you arrive at that moment?
Originally, we had “on the table” as the final lyric, and Joey [Moi] and I went back and forth about whether to take the line out. The songwriter in me was like, “Take it out — people know what it means and the music does it for you.” Then I talked to other people and some were like, “Leave it in there; people aren’t going to get it,” but I just didn’t listen to them. I’m so proud of this song. I wrote it with Nicolle and the Warren Brothers on a writing a year ago.
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Carter Faith joins you on “Cowboys on Music Row.” When did you write that song?
She’s one of my good friends and as another female artist, she just understands all these niche things that only other artists really understand. We were on a writing retreat earlier this year in Pigeon Forge, and we were there with my sister Caroline, Lauren Hungate, Ashley Monroe, and Jessie Jo Dillon. We love Tales From the Tour Bus and some of the girls hadn’t seen it so were were showing them all the George Jones and Tammy Wynette episode, the Waylon Jennings episode and that sent us down a rabbit hole of documentaries on those guys. We were inspired because they were just singing about their real lives. It came together quickly, and by the time we were almost done with the chorus, Carter sang part of it and she just has this great sound to her voice that was perfect.
What has the response been like?
Sometimes it can ruffle feathers, that type of song. But we’ve just been saying, “If it ruffles your feathers, then maybe you should look inward,” right? There are real cowboys on Music Row. This song is a hyperbole. There are definitely some real cowboys — Jake Worthington is a great example — and they’re not getting offended. They’re going, “Yeah, tell it to the world. We know we’re here.”
Do you feel like it is easier to write on retreats, versus the day-to-day Nashville writes?
There is definitely something to be said for showing up everyday, writing Monday through Friday. That’s a huge part of it, but as an artist and writer, there’s also something to be said for getting away from Nashville and disconnecting. And there’s this respect that you go and do your thing and they know you’ll come back with something great if you’re just relaxed and focused on writing. And you forge such great friendships—we all got so close on that trip and we still go to dinner when we’re all in town. We hope to do the same retreat again and make it an annual thing. You just write better songs with people that know you and know what you want to say.
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Does having a sister who is also involved in music further strengthen your sibling bond?
We write together so much, and at the same time, I have my artist thing and she has her songwriter thing that’s separate. We have success together but we also have success outside of each other. It’s a lifestyle that so few people understand, and so to have your sister be in it with you is great.
What do you hope listeners take away from your music?
This is me at my most natural place. I love country and I want to be my own form of modern and old-school, and I also want to make all my heroes proud with these songs.
Tyla fogged up television screens across America last week when she performed the bacardi-inspired, wet-and-wild TikTok dance (surprisingly without her water bottle in tow) to her latest sultry single, “Water,” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon for her U.S. television debut.
“It’s crazy just being a normal girl in South Africa, and then living this dream that I’ve always wanted to live,” she tells Billboard. “I used to be so jealous watching all of the American celebrities on TV, like the Kardashians, Adele, Rihanna, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj. I was like, ‘One day, I’m gonna be there.’ I actually used to want to be born in America only because I thought only Americans could be famous. I did not know it could happen for us because it didn’t really happen very often for people in Africa and especially South Africa.”
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Tyla (real name Tyla Laura Seethal) grew up in Johannesburg, listening to local house and kwaito artists, such as Black Coffee and Mi Casa, as well as American rap and R&B stars, like Tupac, Boyz II Men, Aaliyah and Rihanna. At age 11, she uploaded videos of herself singer covers (like of Justin Bieber‘s “Fall” and “Die in Your Arms”) to YouTube and even stole her father’s cellphone to create an Instagram account so she could post her covers and original songs on there, while also messaging them to celebrities and music industry figures. “I would do everything and anything — because I just felt like, one day, something was gonna catch on,” says Tyla, now 21.
After discovering Tyla from one of her Instagram videos, director and photographer Garth von Glehn (who eventually became her first manager) sent her an email. “I literally felt like I was going to get scammed, so I didn’t respond,” she recalls. “But then a few weeks went away, and something was telling me, ‘Just respond.’ I ended up responding, and then I met up with him with my parents. And I ended up recording for the first time.”
Tyla and her best friend/stylist, Thato Nzimande, proceeded to spend every weekend in 2019 at von Glehn’s apartment/studio, writing and recording music and conducting photo shoots. She eventually linked up with South African DJ/producer Kooldrink on her debut single “Getting Late,” which introduced her refreshing take on amapiano, the increasingly popular South African house subgenre that blends Afro and deep house, jazz and kwaito music, and is characterized by sizzling synths, rattling basslines and soulful piano melodies. “I mixed it with pop because I wanted to make a three-minute song,” she says. “Amapiano songs were like eight minutes, 10 minutes at that time. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a bit too long! Let me make an amapiano song that has the normal format of a pop song or an R&B song.”
Her unique “popiano” formula scored her a label deal with Epic Records in 2021, when she started gradually dropping singles — like the boisterous “Overdue,” featuring gqom pioneer DJ Lag and Kooldrink; the tantalizing “To Last,” which was later remixed by amapiano giant DJ Maphorisa and fellow South African singer Young Stunna; the super sleek “Been Thinking;” and the passionate “Girl Next Door” collaboration with Ayra Starr. But it wasn’t until she released “Water” — where her sensual pop/R&B melodies float over bubbling amapiano log drums — and its accompanying dance that Tyla really started experiencing the fame she had desperately desired since childhood.
“Water” debuted at No. 67 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the week ending Oct. 14, and it has since risen to No. 21 (for the week ending Nov. 4). It has spent three weeks at No. 1 on U.S. Afrobeats Songs, marking her first No. 1 on any Billboard chart and ending the record 58-week streak of Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down,” and it’s cracked into the top 10 of the Global 200. “Water” has also been making waves at radio, landing in the top 20 of Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and Rhythmic Airplay and debuting at No. 39 on Pop Airplay this week.
“This hasn’t happened in so long for a South African artist, born and raised in South Africa, with an African song, with an African dance style. Everything is so authentic, and the fact that all of that managed to translate overseas is crazy. It’s opening more doors for other South African artists and creatives to just have a place,” she says. “And for me personally, it’s unbelievable. I always wanted to be the biggest pop star in general. I didn’t want to be the biggest African pop star. I just want to be the biggest pop star that was born and raised in Africa. And the fact that I’m already getting a good response from the world [means] I’m one step closer to that dream.”
Billboard spoke with October’s R&B/Hip-Hop Rookie of the Month about Tyla’s signature “popiano” sound, opening for Chris Brown‘s European tour, making an unexpected cameo on The Kardashians and the inspiration behind her viral “Water” dance.
How did you first get introduced to amapiano?
The first time I heard a proper amapiano song was while I was in high school. I remember being in one of my classes and a friend was playing the song called “Gong Gong.” And it’s just a beat — there are no lyrics, no vocals on it. I remember that song till this day because it was my first time hearing something like that.
What makes the genre and the culture so special, in your opinion?
It’s ours. It’s a South African sound that has been able to travel. We haven’t had a genre that traveled this far. It’s brought a lot of pride to South Africans and a lot of jobs and opportunities for us. Amapiano has resulted in so many South Africans being able to travel the world now and make music and make a living off of it. It’s not really just a genre for us — it’s a culture and a movement. That’s why we’re always screaming, “Amapiano to the world! South Africa to the world!” It’s changed our lives.
And it’s very much an open place for us to work in. Everyone is welcoming. Our sessions in South Africa are not like the sessions overseas. All our sessions are open basically, so a session could be happening at this person’s house and then anybody is able to walk up and add a verse, anybody is able to come in and touch the beat. That’s why our songs have 20 people featured on it and the songs are so long.
What influenced you to come up with your signature “popiano” sound?
In 2019, the year I actually got in front of a mic for the first time, I was experimenting and trying everything to see what sat with me. It got to the point where I was like, “Let me try an amapiano song.” At that time, it was still booming and people weren’t really singing on it. So I tried it and I ended up making my first song “Getting Late.” It just felt right.
And since that day, I just gravitated to that sound more, and as the years went by, and the more songs I made, the more my sound developed. People started calling it “popiano” because it is my own sound. There’s no one that’s really doing it. I just knew that I wanted it to feel like me, and this genre feels like me because I’m able to mix the genres that I was influenced by — R&B and pop, with sounds from home, amapiano and Afrobeats.
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The story behind the “Getting Late” music video is inspiring: You wrote on Instagram that you had “set out wanting to make the best video South Africa has ever seen” and filmed a little before production was halted altogether when COVID-19 hit. After lockdown lifted, you resumed working on the video, which was your shot by your manager, and you were styled by your best friend for it.
It was literally like a family business. We shot one scene, COVID hit and then everything closed up. I felt like it was the end because my parents gave me that year to prove myself, because they wanted me to study. But I begged them and I was like, “No! I need to do the singing thing. Just give me one year. I’ll show you guys.” And they eventually gave me that year, and then COVID hit. And I was like, “Ugh! This is the worst time for them to give me the year to prove myself.”
But we made it work. When South Africa would open up a little bit, we would try and shoot a scene. Or we’d try to perform for free at this one place just so we can use the venue. It’s just crazy to think of how we made that video because everyone thinks that we had a huge budget, but it wasn’t that at all. My manager found a way to do it. We all found a way to make it work. And it literally changed my whole life.
At the time of its release, you wrote, “Even if it only gets 270 views on youtube and my career fails, I’ll just watch this video on repeat for the rest of my life and I’m pretty sure I’ll be happy.” Your video has nearly seven million views (so far) and was also nominated for music video of the year at last year’s South African Music Awards.
It’s literally crazy. We went through so much to make that video — like, I couldn’t stop watching that video, ’cause I was so proud of myself and proud of my team for pushing through it. I just love the video so much that I was like, “OK, guys. We did our best. We’re just putting it out there, [and] whatever happens, happens.”
How did you eventually sign with Epic?
“Getting Late” started doing its thing, and I was just excited that people were retweeting the video. Because I didn’t really know how record labels worked, a record label didn’t even cross my mind at the time. But then my manager told me that labels are reaching out and they want to sign me. I was so confused. I was like, “Cool, what do you mean?” Then they’re telling me, “Oh, this label and this label and Epic Records.” And I was like, “What?! American people? How do they even find me?” America always seemed like it wasn’t a real place for me, so hearing all of that was crazy.
My manager started setting up the calls, and the labels would speak to me over Zoom calls (because it was still COVID) and basically pitch themselves. Epic was actually the first one — and after going through everyone, Epic just felt right, so I ended up signing with them.
I was recently watching an episode of The Kardashians, and I saw you were sitting next to Kim Kardashian in the front row of Dolce & Gabbana’s Fall/Winter 2023 runway show during Milan Fashion Week. What was going through your head that night?
The crazy thing is: I didn’t even know I was going to be on the Kardashians show, especially during “Water” time. It honestly feels like everything is just falling into place at the right time. I was on the Chris Brown tour, and the offer came where I would need to fly to Milan to do the Dolce & Gabbana show. And I didn’t have a visa for it, so we were hassling one of the European countries trying to get a visa, and they were not having it. They were like, “We are not going to give you a visa. You need to go back to South Africa and then you can get a visa.”
We flew back to South Africa for 24 hours to try and get a visa, and we ended up getting it, and we had to fly out [to Milan] the next day. That same day, I had to shower, get ready and go straight to the show, where I’m sitting next to Kim Kardashian and I’m literally wearing a Dolce & Gabbana dress. It was like I was in Princess Diaries. It was so crazy even sitting next to [Kardashian], because I was like, “This person is real.” Especially when you only see these people on TV, it’s crazy when you see them in real life. She was nice, and it was just a cool environment to be in. It was also the first-ever fashion week I attended, so it was such a good first experience.
Being a supporting act on the European leg of Chris Brown’s Under the Influence Tour was also a big look for you. First of all, how did that opportunity come about? And what were the biggest lessons you learned from either Chris or the experience overall?
I was at Tricky Stewart‘s Grammy party and the head of the label, Sylvia Rhone, came to me and asked me, “Do [you] want to open for Chris Brown on his Europe tour?” I didn’t even know what to do. I was like, “What?” I wasn’t even sure I was hearing her correctly. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about that question the whole day. Obviously, I was like, “Yes.” It was such a huge opportunity. And then we literally had to start straightaway preparing. We flew to Europe. We had like two days of rehearsals, I’m not even joking, two days of rehearsals. Then the next day, we had to open at the O2 Arena. It was so crazy!
It taught me so much in terms of performing — especially from Chris, because he’s an amazing performer. He spoke to me a lot. He gave me a lot of tips, and I still use them to this day. I feel like it was literally the perfect bootcamp for me. It gave me a lot of confidence, and it helped me play around with my performance. It helped me get a wider audience, because I was traveling all of Europe, and videos started circling around of me, which was amazing. Opportunities just started falling into my lap. It was the best experience ever. I’ll never forget that tour.
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Take me back through the making of “Water.”
I’ve been recording music for over two years now, since I got signed to the label, making music for my album. And we got to a point where we were like, “OK, let’s start finalizing songs.” But I just felt like I needed that summer dance song, I felt like I was missing that. I said, “OK, I need it to sound like this. I need it to have African influence. It needs to sound like ‘popiano,’ Afrobeats, amapiano, R&B all in one. It needs to live in the clubs. It needs to be a banger.” And I’m not even joking, as soon as I heard “Water,” I was literally like, “It’s over. It’s over for everybody!” I just fell in love with it. I played it for everybody I could, and everyone fell in love with it. So I just knew in my soul that this was the one.
How did you come up with the viral “Water” dance?
The dance style is actually called bacardi, it’s a dance style in South Africa that originated in Pretoria. And the dance style is usually done with bacardi-type music. Usually when we have songs, I get on a call with my choreographer from South Africa [Lee-ché Janecke] [and] my best friend Thato for hours and we’re thinking, “OK, for this song, what are we going to do?” Then I was just like, “I really feel like this song needs a dance. I really want to do something on TikTok with this song.” Not all the songs I want to make are all TikTok songs where you dance and everything, but this one felt like it needed that.
And then I was like, “Why don’t we make it bacardi?” Obviously, everyone was like, “Um, this isn’t the genre for bacardi.” [Laughs] It felt like that type of style would just go with this song. We actually had a bacardi-type dance for a different song. And we changed it and made that dance for “Water.” We tried a little bit of it in Portugal, but we didn’t pour the water. We ended up reworking it and I was like, “Guys, this is what we’re going to do. You pass me the water, and I’m just going to pour it on my back when I do the bacardi move.” It was exciting for us.
We ended up doing it on the stage for the Giants of Africa Festival, and I was so worried after that performance ’cause I was like, “I don’t know if I did it right.” And then I got videos. I actually DM’ed someone that was in the audience because they posted on their story like, “Please, can you send me the video?” She sent me the video and I edited it and I posted it on my way to a different country. We were on a plane, and I posted it just before we took off and my phone got disconnected. When I landed, it was already at like five million views. I was in so much shock because that flight wasn’t even that long. I was like, “This is crazy!”
How many water bottles would you estimate you’ve spilled down your back while doing the dance?
[Laughs] I don’t know. Probably a whole water company. [Laughs]
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I loved that you teamed up with Ayra Starr on “Girl Next Door” and you performed at Uncle Waffles’ NYC show. What’s it like to shine alongside other female artists coming out of the continent?
I love it. I’m a girl’s girl for real. Waffles is a girl’s girl, Ayra is a girl’s girl. In general, we all have the same goal: Africa to the world. I feel like we’ve always had the great music and the culture and the vibe, but we haven’t had the audience. Social media helps so much because it’s been able to give us that access to more people. I love seeing Afrobeats artists win, amapiano artists win, everyone in Africa. It’s only up for us really.
Who would you love to collaborate with next?
I’d honestly love to have a song with Tems. I love her voice, I love her vibe. Her new song [“Me & U”] is on repeat.
I heard you’re finishing up your debut EP. What can fans expect from it?
Definitely more bangers. It’s going to be a short and sweet one, but it’s going to be a glimpse into my sound because I do feel like it has developed over time and it’s more where I want it to be. It’s my first project ever. I’ve been releasing music and making music for years now, so it’s exciting for me to start making worlds for people to listen to and tap into. But it’s definitely a new, fresh sound for the world. And it’s a fusion between my African world and my ideal popstar/R&B world. And I’m super excited for people to listen.
Considering amapiano has become increasingly popular in the U.S. over the last couple of years, what is your hope for the sound in the future?
I honestly feel like it’s going to be the next biggest thing in dance music. It’s going to be playing in all of the raves, all of the festivals, Ibiza, all of the [places] where they listen to [sings] oontz oontz oontz oontz oontz. I feel like ‘piano is really going to take over that whole world.
What advice do you have for up-and-coming African artists who are hoping to have their music travel across the globe?
It’s very hard because I’m still figuring out a lot because I’ve been coming [up] and trying to find my way. But based off my experience, just make music that feels like you, that’s very authentic to you. Don’t try copying other people. Just find your sound and what you want the world to see you as and push that forward and believe in it. If you keep working towards it and go day by day as if you’ve already achieved your goal, you will get there.
A lot of people say “manifestation” and whatnot. I don’t want to put a label on it, but personally, ever since I could remember, before “manifestation” was even a word I knew, I always believed that I already achieved that goal. I already believed that it was mine. It was just a matter of time that it was going to be given to me. That really helped me because it really happened. Everything happened the way it was supposed to happen. And if you as an artist feel like that, just keep believing that it’s yours already and I’m sure it will be one day.
Seven years before he was born, Charles Wesley Godwin’s parents survived a hurricane and subsequent flood in 1985 that was determined to wreak havoc on West Virginia. For a harrowing several hours, his mom and dad navigated treacherous waters and a washed-out bridge by car and foot trying to reach the safe embrace of their parents and grandparents.
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As they walked along the ridgelines of the Allegheny mountains, they saw Godwin’s uncle, waving a flashlight in the darkness, waiting on them. “He had no idea they would be coming, no way to reach them, but he just said he had a feeling they would come, so he went to the hill that night to wait on them,” Godwin says.
That true tale is recounted in “The Flood,” a song on Godwin’s third album, Family Ties, out Sept. 22 on Big Loud Records. Godwin calls the song a chronicling of “the bravest moment in my mom’s life.” It is one of several family-oriented songs on the project, alongside the towering romance of “Willing and Able” (written for his wife Samantha), “Gabriel” and “Dance in Rain,” written for their children, and the keen-eyed “Miner Imperfections” (a tribute to Godwin’s father).
Godwin has been among the acoustic, roots-oriented singer-songwriters and groups surging to the forefront over the past few years, including Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, Billy Strings and Turnpike Troubadours. Since the release of his 2019 debut Seneca and its follow-up, 2021’s How The Mighty Fall, Godwin has further refined his considerable skill as a detailed storyteller. “The Cranes of Potter,” from How the Mighty Fall, cast a critical eye on big-city development, while that album’s title track surveyed the toll time ravages on the weak and strong alike. Much like those previous projects, Godwin is the sole writer on nearly every song on the new, 19-track album.
The aforementioned “Miner Imperfections,” written with Zach McCord, is one of the few exceptions. The track showcases Godwin’s rough-hewn vocals as he sings of the worthy qualities and shortcomings of a working-class man trying to build a simple, loving life, and his pride in all of it.
“[Zach] had that chorus, and my dad was a coal miner, so I loved the idea,” Godwin says. “His dad’s a blue-collar guy from West Virginia and both of them were similar, in that they were pretty quiet guys, but extremely loving fathers at the same time. We worked on it that whole day and We just wrote it for our dads. It felt like a perfect song for this album.”
Godwin picked up a guitar just over a decade ago, inspired by watching a Grammys performance from The Avett Brothers, Bob Dylan and Mumford & Sons.
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“It blew me away,” he says. “It made me want to pick up a guitar. I thought it would just be another productive hobby, since after high school, I wasn’t playing sports anymore.” But rather than the onslaught of bro-country that dominated the country radio airwaves around that time, Godwin’s influences veered toward names like Prine, Kristofferson and Nelson.
He first played onstage while still studying finance at West Virginia University; a college classmate essentially forced him onstage during a semester abroad in Estonia, during Godwin’s junior year.
“I brought my guitar [on the trip] and one night we went to a show in Tartu,” Godwin says. “I didn’t know it, but one of my roommates took my guitar out of my room after I left and brought it to the show. When the concert was over, he ran up onstage — and somehow didn’t get kicked out — and got everyone in the room to start chanting, until I got up there and played a song.”
His potential as a musician was solidified when he received a Facebook message from a local fashion designer who had seen his impromptu performance and offered him 150 Euros to play music during a local fashion show. “Drinks were on me that night,” he recalls with a laugh. “That just changed my whole life.”
Along the way, Godwin has slowly, deliberately built his career, playing shows, and drawing fans with his burly vocal and nuanced writing style. But not long after the release of How the Mighty Fall, Godwin began facing new pressures as labels began sniffing around.
“I was having a hard time dealing with it, to be honest,” he recalls. “I was in a funk for a handful of months. I was trying to get back to writing songs, spending each morning going into the woodshed, kind of writing garbage but just trying my best. A bunch of labels wanted to hear what I was working on, even though I had just come out with an album. It threw me off because I had two albums out at that point and was selling tickets all around the country. To me, I was not a risk, yet folks were still kind of wanting to cherry-pick whether I had ‘it’ or not.”
He recalls that it took him “a few months to get my head around that, and be confident again. I had all these guys depending on me, my family. I want to keep growing on their behalf, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care if a label worked out or not.”
A heart-to-heart with his father offered perspective. “He said, ‘All you have control over is the pen in your hand and the notebook in front of you. Everything else will happen in time if it’s meant to be.’ It helped me to shake all that stuff off.’”
The next morning, Godwin wrote “Two Weeks Gone,” start to finish; the song served as a launching point for what became Family Ties. “I just thought, ‘Okay, how about I just go within myself and write what’s personal to me? I’m gonna write about my family this year.’ I ended up having one of the best writing years of my life last year, and that led to the album.”
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Earlier this year, he released the EP Live From the Church, recorded at The Church studio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He recorded Family Ties at Echo Mountain Recording, an old Asheville, North Carolina church building that was remodeled into a recording studio and has since become a go-to recording center for artists including The Avett Brothers (Godwin was inspired to record there thanks to the 2017 The Avett Brothers documentary May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers).
“I always wondered what it would be like to get to record in a place like that,” Godwin says. “This time around, I finally had the opportunity and resource to do it. And in a practical sense, the main room is so big — and they have so many iso booths — that all of us were able to record live to tape at the same time. It was a best-case scenario to work in that studio.”
He also nods to his roots with “Cue Country Roads” and cover of the John Denver classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” which he performs to close every show. Godwin says he recorded it with the blessing of the manager of Denver’s estate. “He and his son came out to Red Rocks when I played there in May,” he says. “They said they loved it and wanted to do whatever they can to help, because they view it as kind of helping the song reach the next generation.”
The label issues resolved themselves, too; in March, Big Loud, home to artists including Morgan Wallen, HARDY, and Hailey Whitters, announced it had signed Godwin. Family Ties was completed before he signed his label deal.
“We made the album in January and handed it in to them and they said, ‘We love it,’ and that was it. There was no helicoptering over making the album or anything,” Godwin says.
Godwin spent much of this year opening for Zach Bryan’s Burn, Burn, Burn Tour and will join Luke Combs’ 2024 summer stadium tour. But before then, he will continue with the house of worship-turned-house of music conduit when he headlines two shows at Nashville’s own Mother Church, the Ryman Auditorium on Dec. 7-8.
“I’m just very grateful for the people that connect with my music,” Godwin says. “It’s amazing just how diehard they are and it’s going to be a really special couple of nights.”
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The notion of chasing creative ambitions across the country, from small towns to music industry meccas, is far from novel for Parkland, Florida native Ashley Cooke. Due to her father’s corporate job, Cooke’s family moved around frequently, living in 19 homes before Cooke was 18. At one point, her family relocated to Los Angeles when Cooke was a child, to support her older sister Jenn’s ambitions as an actress.
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“She loved acting and pageantry and all of that. I was kind of dragged along, the little sister,” Cooke says with a laugh. “I grew up as a tomboy who loved playing sports and was nowhere near interested in being in the spotlight. But being in that environment, I fell in love with the poetry behind songwriting and performing. “ At one point, the sisters performed together, but Cooke’s passion for music soon led her to make her own leap of faith as a solo artist.
She moved to Nashville and enrolled at Nashville’s Belmont University as a corporate communications major. Her first breakthrough came when she won Belmont’s country music showcase in 2019 (the same showcase series that had become a career launcher for Brad Paisley, Kassi Ashton and Florida Georgia Line). In addition to offering a pair of original songs, she covered the Maren Morris/Zedd/Grey collaboration “The Middle.” (Also competing in that same showcase was Monument Records sister duo Tigirlily Gold).
As with many of today’s newcomers, Cooke first caught the industry’s attention with a viral TikTok moment, via her song “Never ‘Til Now” — which she parlayed into a collaboration with country hitmaker Brett Young. Now, Cooke is gearing up to release her debut album, Shot in the Dark, out Friday on Big Loud Records/Back Blocks.
On the sprawling, 24-song double album, Cooke deftly mixes stories of love, heartbreak and lessons learned along the way, and showcases a range of sonic styles — all underpinned by her powerful but accessible vocals. Highlighting the camaraderie among today’s crop of rising and veteran artists, the album features collabs with Brett Young (“Never ‘Til Now”), Colbie Caillat (‘Mean Girl”), Nate Smith (“See You Around”) and Jackson Dean (“What Are You on Fire About”).
Billboard spoke with Cooke, July’s Country Rookie of the Month, about writing for her debut album, her collaborations, the role of social media in artist development, and the advice she received from Kenny Chesney.
There are 24 songs on your debut album. Why did you choose “Taste Like” to open this project?
It sets a fun tone for the project. I love the initial kind of ghostly whisper that you hear at the beginning of the song. That was a product of the demo. We did a writing retreat with three of my favorite songwriters — Corey Crowder, Jordan Minton and Emily Weisband. We were writing the song and Emily just kind of kept singing that part over and over, and Corey captured her singing that part. I was so obsessed with the way that sounded on the demo, and I thought that would be such a great way to open the album. So we recreated it with my voice on the project.
“The State I’m In” closes the album. Why did that make sense as the final track?
I thought of the album in the same way I would a live show. This song felt like, “Welcome to this era of my music.” With this song, I was driving through somewhere in Ohio or Indiana, touring in the van. It was 1:00 a.m. and I was scrolling Instagram, seeing a bunch of my friends posting about getting married and having babies and just being in that state of life. I just felt how cool it was that we can be in different phases and states and support each other.
So I had the idea because we were in different states, physically and metaphorically. And so that sounds like the perfect album cap, because it felt like the place I’m at. I can be a very indecisive person, but it was like, “No, I know where I’m at — and it’s okay to be totally in love with my career and doing this full-time right now.”
You are a co-writer on nearly every song on the album. One of the few outside cuts is “What Are You On Fire About,” which features Lainey Wilson as a writer on it, alongside Luke Dick and Jason Nix (who is a writer on Wilson’s “Things a Man Oughta Know”).
They played it for me as an outside pitch. It sounded different than what I would write, but it still felt like my voice. I cut it, and Jackson Dean is a good friend of mine. I love his voice and artistry. He asked about the songs that might be on my album, and I told him “What Are You On Fire For?” which his producer [Luke Dick] wrote. He was like, ‘I would love to be a feature on that,’ so we recorded it.
You do have some great collaborations here. What was it like working with Colbie Caillat on “Mean Girl”?
She was such a huge inspiration to me growing up. I used to cover “Bubbly” all the time, and people would say that my voice kind of favors hers, and that was always such a huge compliment. I was really hoping to work with her down the road, and that point came quicker than I realized. It was great, and her voice sounds incredible on the track. It’s such a full-circle moment.
Like a lot of artists these days, your big break came through TikTok. How do you balance those commercial demands with creative demands?
I try to post one video per day. If I make more, great, and if I don’t that’s fine. I used to be a lot more obsessed with getting the perfect video and taking hours to make one video. I realized the ones that did best are the ones I tried the least for. Just make a video, spend 20 or 30 minutes on it, post it and see what happens. It’s tough to be a new artist and be so focused on that, but it is a tool to get your name and music out there.
How did that impact the album-making process?
We went into this album process — my label and I talked about it and decided to just post all of the songs, and see what happens and let fans decide what might go to radio and on playlists. Like another song on the album, “Your Place.” I posted it on social media, and the day it came out, I played a festival in Ohio. I was absolutely mind blown because everyone knew every word to it. It’s really exciting the era that we are in with social media, because of that instant connection you can have with fans.
You are currently on tour with Luke Bryan. What are some of your must-haves on tour?
I love essential oils, throat coat tea, my airpods and some kind of hoodie. I have to have a hoodie on the road, even if it’s 95 degrees out.
Earlier this year, you performed with Kenny Chesney during the Tortuga Music Festival, where you both sang “When the Sun Goes Down“…
It was exciting, it was so crazy. I played my own set earlier in the day, and he saw my performance and invited me to sing with him. He’s just such a kind, humble human being.
Has he given you any career advice?
He said that his first tour was when he was 25, which was the age I was when we played the Tortuga Music Festival. He was like, “Keep your head down, grinding hard, keep working, and enjoy it along the way.” He’s such a hard worker and it shows in all of his success, and I respect how he chooses to mentor other artists. He is just one of those guys who wants to help and wants to mentor.
What drives you, musically?
I grew up listening to artists like Luke Bryan, Rascal Flatts and Ed Sheeran, and I felt so much comfort in the way they wrote about such universal feelings in a specific, unique way. That’s what’s exciting — the chance to take everything that I’ve experienced, and that a lot of other humans have experienced, but spinning it in a way, and making it sound different in a way that hits you right in the chest. That’s what inspires me the most.
Coco Jones is aiming to kick down doors and usher in a whole new generation of fearless Black women right alongside her.
Walking the balance beam of music and acting, Jones has emerged as as a fast-rising double threat. The vivacious soul singer is grabbing ears and stealing hearts with her R&B hits, while also appearing on Peacock’s Bel-Air as the self-assured Gen-Z version of ’90s character Hilary Banks.
After signing to Def Jam in 2022, Jones released her major label debut project, What I Didn’t Tell You. Soaked in buttery vocals and gripping tales about heartbreak, WIDTU was the perfect entrance for the former child star who had breakout roles in Disney Channel shows and films including So Random!, Good Luck Charlie and Let It Shine.
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On her debut, only does she seamlessly flip SWV’s “Rain” into the addictive “Double Back,” but she flaunts her range on the Hot 100 hit “ICU.” Laden with emotion, “ICU” deals with the push and pull of a fallen relationship and proves why Jones has the potential to be one of the genre’s strongest vocalists.
“I was used to 12-hour work days, which didn’t faze me,” says Jones. “As a kid, I was on set during school. I was always working my little butt off. This is just what I do for my dreams.” Despite being a workhorse, Jones believes she’s still a work in progress in the music department, but is willing and eager to learn more to put the next generation on.
“Every time I sing ‘ICU,’ I find a new way to make it iconic because I don’t want the next girl to struggle how I struggled to get here,” she says. “We’re all talented. It should be easier. So that’s what I gotta do. I’m gonna kill it every time so that it will be easier one day.”
Billboard caught up with June’s R&B / Hip-Hop Rookie of the Month, Coco Jones, to speak about the success of “ICU,” the best advice SZA gave her and her mission to help Black women succeed.
Thinking about your Disney origins, does the pressure ever get to you knowing that only Zendaya has made the transition to music from a Black woman standpoint?
I think it’s very difficult and there were times where I was kind of in fear, but it was more of the uncertainty of when, if and how. Sometimes, it’s just like, “How the hell am I supposed to do this?” I think it’s hard enough to rebrand anything. If Coca Cola wanted to start selling cake, I would look at them so crazy because that’s not what you told us you do. So I think for me, I was like, “Somebody’s gotta help me.” That’s what I wanted the most; somebody else who knew how to figure this rebrand out. I’ll do my part. I’ll do the writing, I’ll do the creating, find myself and be vulnerable enough to tell ’em, but somebody gotta make somebody care. I feel like that was the part that really clicked for me and everything changed when I got the right team. Also, it took time to get to that. I had several promises and only one time did they pay out the way they were told to me, you know? That’s been my entire career, though.
Talk about the freedom you were able to have on this project as a Def Jam signee versus when you were first signed after the success of your 2012 film Let It Shine.
For me, you don’t know what you’re missing until you learn about it. For me, from Tennessee, just me and my mama doing this and trying to figure it out, having any label behind me, having any team was all so amazing. I had no creative control then. I just sang what they told me to sing. I would write songs and they wouldn’t like ’em and I was like, “OK. Cool.” I didn’t know. I think I was super delusional and I was so green.
Now, having the experience of looking back at the old songs, I’m now like, “Wait. That was fire.” Then, doing the math and seeing my other peers and creatives like SZA and H.E.R. and [thinking] “I would sing a song like that. Why didn’t I do that? Wait. You can dress like that on stage? That’s allowed?” I had epiphanies as I came to have a life and have experiences. I remember even the first time I said a curse word on a song. I wrote it for someone else and then I was even scared to have my voice on the demo saying that. I had to get out of the box, because I was so deeply in this cookie cutter box.
You’ve said in a past interview that your best guide is your intuition. Did your intuition tell you that “ICU” would be your biggest hit when you were recording it?
You know what? I think it didn’t [laughs]. I didn’t know it was going to be my biggest hit. There’s this thing I would do since when I was a kid where the actual soul would come out. I used to do it all the time when I would audition. I would sing “Chain of Fools” by Aretha Franklin and I would pretend I was Aretha, like I been through the storm and this is my song. “You’re going to feel this,” but I’m nine. I don’t know anything. So I do give a lot of credit to my mom for even introducing me to that type of soul, emotion and that raw vulnerability that I learned to imitate, but I knew when I heard the track, I just knew [it was special]. I just knew I was going to do some sh-t.
You’ve also deemed this your most confident era. When did you find that sweet spot and start living life confidently?
Hmm. This was probably around the time that TikTok really popped me off again. Like the resurgence of relevancy was baffling. So I was like, “Wait a minute. These people still care? Ok. I gotta do something with this.” Like I thought I did enough. I really thought out of sight, out of mind and I don’t have no new show. I don’t have no new song. But when I told my story on the internet on YouTube, when I saw the wave of support, that didn’t go away. It kind of charged me up. Like, it would be a shame for me to not give these people that support me a reason to keep supporting me. I gotta put stuff out with my chest.
How do you balance being Hilary [on TV] and then Coco?
I think there’s no option but to do what must be done. I realized that I signed my name to both of these entities. I signed to two companies. One was NBC, Peacock and then Def Jam my second. So they both require me to get my job done, so I just do my job [laughs]. There’s no balance, though. There’s what can be done to work around the other and not like, “Ok. I have to be here. What can we do when I’m done with that? Then, I can go there.” It’s really about just figuring it out. There’s really no balance. It just depends on the schedule.
Have there been times when you caught yourself pulling from the Hilary Banks character when you’re in artist-mode?
Hilary’s a boss. I feel like she has a certain way that she sees her image, her career and trajectory, and nothing can sway her from that being what it is. I wanna tap into that more. I feel like I’m very self-assured of where I want it all to go, but I think I get stuff from Hilary because I’m still a rookie. There’s some things that I have to be educated on by people that have been here longer than me. So in one sense, I’m very decisive like Hilary, but I’m also very much more collaborative with my team.
When you get cosigns from artists like SZA and Janet Jackson, do those mean more to you than any of the love you’ve gotten from the acting side?
[Laughs] Well, because I was singing first and singing is my home, it does hit a little differently that people acknowledge who I wanna be as really good. That does hit differently. I do appreciate the love for Hilary, but at the end of the day, I’m just reading these words. But with me, this came from my heart. So to know that people are supportive of what came from my heart and literal spirit, yes, it hits very different.
SZA once told you that you needed to live life with a bit more delusion. How have you incorporated that into your everyday life?
I think just making my goals galaxy-big instead of medium-sized like they used to be. [They used to be] very logical, percentages and statistics, like, “What are the chances of…” I would really look these things up before I decided it was something I wanted, just to be safe. But that’s not the life I’m trying to live. I’m trying to live in delusion. If that’s where you want to get to, to shoot for the galaxy and at least hit the moon, then that’s how I’m gonna shoot. I think making all of my goals insanely large and not fact-based, not percentage-based, not based on my skin color or the genre [is the way to go].
You said your goal is to make a new standard for Black women. What steps are you taking to rewrite those standards?
I think showing up as the best version of me in every category. Like you said, the balance game of playing all of these roles is not easy. There are times where I feel like I could half-ass it and it would still be good, but no. I know that for where I want these next generation of Black girls to be able to walk into, I have to break those doors down and you don’t get there by just being good. You have to be jawdropping.
Before Leo Brooks and Andrew Millsaps teamed up to form the new country duo Neon Union, their careers were on decidedly contrasting paths.
Millsaps focused on writing songs and performing around his native North Carolina, at one point winning the MerleFest Chris Austin Song Contest and performing his original music during the roots music festival MerleFest.
Meanwhile, the bilingual, Miami-based Brooks spent years honing his talents playing bass on tour with Pitbull and Lauryn Hill. He also co-wrote Pitbull’s “Echa Pa’lla (Manos Pa’ribba),” which earned a Latin Grammy for best urban performance, and contributed to songs, including “Que Lo Que” (recorded by Sensato featuring Pitbull, Papayo and El Chevo) from the Grammy-winning project Dale. Along the way, he also played bass for artists including Mary J. Blige, Nas and John Legend.
But country music was a strong influence when he visited family on the Honduran island of Roatan. “The main music on the island was classic country and reggae music. My dad gave me a guitar and taught me to play George Jones and Hank Williams,” Brooks tells Billboard via Zoom.
When Pitbull realized Brooks’ own music had a country vibe, he connected him with “Freedom Is a Highway” hitmaker, songwriter and exec Jimmie Allen, who felt it was a match for Millsaps’ burly voice and energetic stage presence.
Millsaps and Brooks formed Neon Union and Allen subsequently signed them to his management and production company JAB Entertainment, which Allen launched with John Marks and Aaron Benward. They also collaborated with Allen on “Livin’ Man,” from the latter’s 2021 album Bettie James Gold Edition. In June, they inked a label deal with Red Street Records (led by Rascal Flatts member Jay DeMarcus), and landed their first entry on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart when “Bout Damn Time,” written by HARDY, Tyler Hubbard, Jordan Schmidt and Hunter Phelps, reached No. 60 on the chart.
“We want to kick the doors down and make a little noise,” Millsaps says of the song, which pays homage to the “farm tan crew” and “the ball cap boys with a six-inch lift.”
Brooks says of the song, “It represents everybody. We want everyone to be at our party.”
Neon Union is also one of a handful of multi-racial acts who have tried their luck in Nashville over the years, including duo Malchak & Rucker, who notched five songs on Billboard’s Country Songs chart in the 1980s, followed by trio The Farm with their 2011 top 20 hit “Home Sweet Home,” and more recently, the duos Exit 216 and 2 Lane Summer.
Neon Union talked to Billboard about their career journey, working together, touring with Allen — and Brooks’ impromptu wedding performance with George Strait.
Jimmie Allen brought the two of you together. What was that like?
Millsaps: I started playing in the bars during college Later, I had a job interview in Nashville and was staying at a hotel downtown. I randomly met Jimmie on an elevator at that hotel and we connected on social media. I didn’t think anything of it, but about six months later, I was playing at [Nashville music event] Whiskey Jam and saw him again. He liked my music, we exchanged numbers — and maybe two weeks later, he called and asked if I had ever thought about being in a duo, and introduced me to Leo.
Brooks: I played with Pitbull for 12 years, and was his musical director on tour, but I was the only one in the back of the bus listening to George Jones. Pitbull told Jimmie about me because I wanted to do my own thing, musically.
Millsaps: We briefly met over FaceTime. Leo flew into Nashville and we met at Jimmie’s house. Jimmie was like, “You guys have to be sure you want to do this.” We got some beers and hung out that evening and just clicked right away.
Brooks: It’s like a movie — so randomly put together, but we just get along so well.
How long after you met did you start recording together?
Millsaps: The next morning we were recording together. There were some nerves — I hadn’t even been in a full-fledged Nashville session at the time.
Brooks: I was just hoping this guy could sing. He did, and I was like, “Wow, OK.”
Millsaps: We started recording scratch vocals and cold chills just went over everybody. It sounded so good.
How did your deal with Red Street Records come about?
Millsaps: We started that day with a writing session and wound up with a record deal. We wrote a song and Leo had a flight scheduled that night. Then Aaron [Benward] called me up. He said, “Jay DeMarcus wants you to come by Red Street Records, like right now.” Leo canceled his flight and we drove over there and met in the conference room. We played like two songs and Jay said, “I want y’all to know I’ll have your record deal on the table by tomorrow.”
Brooks: Everyone over there, it’s just a great team of people.
Not only did Jimmie bring you two together to form Neon Union, but you were on his Down Home Tour last year.
Millsaps: Jimmie has been so supportive to us and getting us on that tour early. We didn’t really have any music out at the time. We got to meet a lot of folks in radio while we were on the road with Jimmie, which was great to give them that initial connection on the road — and then later as we put out this song, they remembered us.
What has being on radio tour been like for you?
Brooks: It’s a lot of travelling but we’re used to it. When I was with Pitbull, I was gone for months and home for a couple of days and then right back out. Here, we’ll travel for six days and then we’re home for a day or so. But it’s great having each other through all of it. You’re not just sitting by yourself in an airport, ever. We goof off and have fun. It is a lot of early mornings though — people will say, “See you bright and early.” Instead, we say, “See you dark and early.”
Leo, your first gig out of high school was playing with Lauryn Hill’s band. How did that happen?
Brooks: I picked up bass in high school, and I got the gig through one of my friends in Miami. He was auditioning for drums and she asked him if he knew a bass player. That’s when I came in and she loved it. I used to have a big old afro with a green bass [guitar]. The work with Pitbull came through the same drummer. I was always in New York and wanted to be closer to family in Miami, so I auditioned and met Pit and we became like brothers. I was just learning from him because Pit works hard and it’s nonstop. I would send him music for like seven years before I landed a song.
You are also bilingual. Would the two of you ever release a bilingual or Spanish-language song?
Brooks: Pitbull told me the other night, he was like, “We gotta do a song in Spanish.”
Millsaps: We also have already done another song, that we haven’t released yet, with Jimmie [Allen] and Pitbull, too, so that was sweet. You hear this country guy from Mayberry going, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Worldwide.” I was like, “Did I just get to say that?”
Where are you at in the album-making process?
Millsaps: We are starting to release new music by the end of March and just cut some songs with [producer] Dann Huff. We’re looking at releasing an EP this summer and hopefully a full-length in the fall. We’ve been out on the road playing so much that people are like, “Where’s your music?” We’ve got it coming.
What was the first concert you ever went to?
Millsaps: Kenny Chesney when Keith Urban was opening for him.
Brooks: Mine was No Doubt.
What did your parents do growing up?
Millsaps: My mom was a teacher and my dad owns a flooring cover store. I was third-generation coming up through a floor-covering business, and that’s what I started doing in Nashville at first. It’s still in my blood — I still look down everywhere I go. [Laughs.]
Brooks: My dad was a car painter and did body work as well, he had his own body shop. My mom was a nursing assistant.
If you could see any artist perform, who would it be?
Brooks: Metallica, for me.
Millsaps: I’ll say George Strait because I haven’t seen him in concert yet.
Brooks: I did play with him one time. There was a wedding I was doing and they were like, “George Strait is going to come here.” I was like, “Yeah, right” — but then he walks into this little party house in West Palm Beach, Florida. I was playing bass guitar and he came up and sang “Troubadour.”
Millsaps: Dang, I’m so jealous. That’s, like, one of my favorite songs.
Singer-songwriter Jordyn Shellhart’s family moved to Nashville when she was 10, dedicated to assisting the precocious musical talent pursue her dreams. Within a few short years, Shellhart’s aspirations were shifting to reality; by age 16, she had inked her first publishing and record deals and played on the Grand Ole Opry stage.
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This was the mid-2000s, at a time when another talented teen named Taylor Swift was just beginning to turn the country music scene upside down.
“It was on the heels of that phenomenon, so people were more willing to sign younger artists and I was a benefactor of that,” Shellhart recalls. However, things quickly went sideways. “I lost my voice and my record deal and had to totally regroup. I started over as a songwriter, trying to figure out what my life looked like in music without being a singer. It was pretty jarring at the time, but looking back, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
While working with vocal coaches to reclaim her voice, Shellhart became laser-focused on songwriting, earning her first cut at age 19 when Don Williams recorded “I Won’t Give Up on You.” More cuts followed, including “Secondhand Smoke” and “I Guess They Call It Fallin’,” both recorded by Kelsea Ballerini, “How You Love Someone,” recorded by Mickey Guyton, and “I Always Wanted To,” first recorded by Cody Johnson and later Garrett Hedlund. Along the way, she’s worked in writing rooms alongside legendary songwriters like Lori McKenna, Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin.
Her previous cuts, plus Little Big Town earning a 2021 Grammy nomination for best country duo/group performance for the quartet’s recording of her song “Sugar Coat,” positioned Shellhart as one of country music’s most formidable new songwriters.
But Shellhart felt a yearning to be a performing artist again. Earlier this year, Shellhart, 28, released her debut Warner Music Nashville single, “Who Are You Mad At,” which she wrote with Marc Beeson and Shamblin. A full album is slated for later this year.
“It feels like returning to myself, like coming home,” Shellhart says.
Shellhart spoke with Billboard about her early career success, reclaiming her physical and artistic voice and crafting her upcoming album.
How did “Who Are You Mad At” come about?
Marc and Allen are two of my favorite songwriters, and we write quite a bit together. One day, Alan had this experience with someone that he was telling us about and I think most of us have been on the receiving end of someone’s rage, or disproportionate reaction to something that maybe we didn’t even do. I totally understood what he was going through and just started singing the chorus. It was just born out of that conversation.
This marks a homecoming of sorts for you, after going through a journey of losing — and regaining — your voice. What was that like?
It was a slow process. I was touring and performing a lot and it became difficult. I was never sure if my voice was gonna show up or not. So it was this mental anguish before I would have to sing. From there, it progressed to the point where I couldn’t talk anymore. Looking back, I feel like it was probably sort of a psychological spinout, basically just stressing myself out about it, and it made it worse. I think everyone carries stress differently — and for me, it got locked up right in my throat. It was pretty traumatic, looking back on it.
And you turned to songwriting.
It was by accident. My publisher at the time at Sea Gayle, Chris DuBois, was so supportive of me. He was like, “OK, you have nine months left in your deal, and let’s figure this out. Let’s keep trying to create.” So I started writing by myself for the first time. I learned how to write songs through co-writing at 14, while so many other people start out writing [solo] in their bedrooms. But my formative writing years were in rooms with older, superior writers. It took me losing my voice to go back to that innocence of, “What do I want to say, by myself, as a writer?”
Then you teamed with Lori McKenna and Josh Kerr to write “Sugar Coat.”
Lori was so gracious, and I don’t think Josh or I had written with her much before. I remember that first trip [to McKenna’s home near Boston], we just threw out all of these ideas and wrote two other songs, before she said, “I have this thing that I want to try to write,” and pretty much read what is the chorus of “Sugar Coat.” So we helped finish out the verses and the melody, and in the process, just got to absorb her brilliance that day.
You also wrote “I Always Wanted To” with Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin.
That was one of the craziest co-writes for me. I got the idea for that song in the shower and just started writing the chorus, not really knowing what it was about, but knowing it was from the perspective of a guy who never did the things he wanted to do. It was my first time writing with Tom and Allen together. I shared that chorus, and Allen said he had verses he had written — and they are exactly what you hear in the song. Tom laughed and stared at us and said, “Guys, put that chorus with those verses and let’s go to lunch.” Allen didn’t have a melody with his verses, so I just sang the melody I had for the chorus around those verses and it was seamless. I’ve never had that experience before.
You have a new record deal with Warner and are returning to being a performing artist. Obviously, you are an adult now, but what else is different about being an artist this time around?
I think as a kid, I was so defined by being a singer — I had this death grip on it, because it was the only thing I felt like was worthy about me, and the only thing I had to offer anybody. So having that taken away from me, it made me reckon with my place in the world. So, for the last 13 years, I’ve been learning what it’s like to be human apart from the gifts I’ve been given. Eventually my voice came back, but it took awhile before I was brave enough to try recording again.
You started working with producer Cameron Jaymes, and you will have an album out later this year.
Cameron and I went into making this album with the lowest stakes. He was like, “Let’s just make something for you and maybe we get more co-writes out of it.” He was pulling favors with our friends who played instruments. Then Warner reached out, because they had cut a few of my songs on their artists. As soon as I started recording with Cameron, it felt like returning to myself, like returning home. I started engaging with Warner and co-chair/co-president Cris Lacy came by the studio and listened to the whole project. I felt like I was being seen and heard in such a real way. I just tried to cut songs that I knew I would feel annoyed if anyone recorded them except me.
As an artist, who would you most want to collaborate with in the future?
I would love to collaborate with SZA. I listen to her lyrics and I just feel a connection, like she speaks the same language as me a bit, and I find that inspiring. But also, just growing up listening to country music, I love storytellers in general. Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Kris Kristofferson, those are people who can just write a song and tell a story.
What was the first concert you remember seeing?
LeAnn Rimes. I saw her in California when I was like eight years old.
What is one song you wish you had written?
“Bridge Over Troubled Water.”
What are your must-haves when you are on the road?
The only thing I require before a show is hot tea or hot water and honey. That’s the only real diva thing I have at this point.
If Lola Brooke had the chance to meet one person, she’d probably pick the late legend DMX.
“DMX gives me chills,” says the Brooklyn dynamo. “I wish I had that [co-sign] so bad. One day, I hope somebody comes up to me and says, ‘You know I brought you up to X, right?’ I just pray that happens.”
Standing 5’0′ tall, the East Coast fireball has traces of her Yonkers role model embedded in her petite frame. Like X, her bark can hush any sizable threat, as previously proven on her 2021 Tri-State standout “Don’t Play With It.” The drill-centric track, featuring her Brooklyn cohort Billy B, showcases Brooke’s charisma and grit, which are essential ingredients needed to climb the hip-hop ranks in New York City. Then, the song received a boost on TikTok and attracted a whole new audience for Brooke.
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Today, she touts a fistful of co-signs from Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliott, Meek Mill, and more. Last December, Future brought out Brooke during his New Year’s Eve show at Brooklyn’s Barclay Center. Her homecoming performance went viral, and was punctuated by her electric stage presence, causing Missy Elliott to even sing her praises on Twitter. The following week, Brooke announced her deal with Arista Records in collaboration with Team Eighty Productions.
“Lola is the rare talent whose presence matches her message,” Arista Records CEO David Massey told Billboard last month. “Her music is larger-than-life, but her vision is just as powerful. We’re excited to welcome her to the Arista Records family.”
With “Don’t Play With It” now gaining chart success two years after its release (it entered the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart last month), Brooke looks to carve up her next big play and become more than New York’s latest rising star. We caught with our February Rookie of the Month to speak about her scorching rise, appreciating her co-signs and what it’ll take to crack the next level.
How did your love for poetry pivot over to you rapping?
I don’t want people to think that I was deeply into poetry. I learned that academically in school. I always had journals and diaries. When I went to school, they taught us about poetry. So I went back home and tried to fix up my journals in that format. It didn’t last too long. I went straight into [makes machine gun noises]. I went straight into that mode. [Laughs.]
You had some influences on the rap side, especially Meek, right?
Meek is the top one. Meek Mill is the one that I said to myself, “If Meek can do it, then I could do it.” The first song I heard from Meek was “Goons Gone Wild.” I remember listening to it, and I was catching the bars — because I used to listen to Lil Wayne and run his songs back, just to make sure I understood what he was saying. So when Meek had his vibe, I knew straight on from jump [what to expect]. I was a fan from there.
He used to vlog his journey and I remember when the public used to say funny stuff. When you’re a fan, you see everything. “He could rap, but can he make songs? Is he gonna last? He just a battle rapper?” And then he proved them wrong. I knew if could do it, I could do it for real.
Do you remember the first song you wrote?
Yeah, it was like a little love verse. I wrote it for a boy. It was a verse for someone.
Did they hear it?
Yeah, they heard it. I don’t remember telling them if was for them though. I just sent it.
Though people know you for your more aggressive material, I think you’re pretty versatile. Why has that been an important trait for you to have?
It’s important because it’s me. A lot of people be afraid to show their vulnerable side a lot of times, and it’s OK to show that. It’s also OK to hold your guard up too, as well. That’s just the Brooklyn in me. It’s my stomping grounds. I’m always going to hold it up — but at the same time, I do love love. I’m in a space that if you cross me, that love can turn into hate. Without love, there’s no hate. Without hate, there’s no love.
What does being a female rapper from Brooklyn with your kind of momentum mean for you right now?
It means everything. It means power and control. I’m in control of my own destiny. It’s a lot of girls like me that’s scared to come out, because they feel they’re not feminine enough — but you are enough. When I was younger, I used to feel like I wasn’t enough, but now I know that I’m enough.
That power doesn’t scare you?
It used to, but my voice is so powerful. I feel like I have no choice. This is what I’m here to do, so even if I am scared, it means that I’m normal and I’m human. It happens. Sometimes, I do get scared, but I have no choice to keep going. I have people looking up to me.
Another one of your influences, Missy Elliott, showed love on social media for your performance in Brooklyn at the Future concert. What did that mean for you?
I wanted to ask for her number, but I kept it cool though! It meant everything, because when I look at Missy, it’s not just an artist — I look at her as a creator, as a director. Everything that she did was off the grid, but it was her, and it still made sense, because she’s showcasing who she is. That right there meant a lot to me, because she’s an OG telling me that I did a great job with my stage presence. I can only imagine how many other people I touched that understand that craft of music. That meant a lot to me.
Command the audience👏🏾— Missy Elliott (@MissyElliott) January 1, 2023
Are there any other co-signs that you’re most proud of?
Snoop and Jadakiss.
That kind of validation must hit differently for you, versus praise from your peers?
It’s like a trophy. It’s like I got the Grammy before the Grammy type of thing, because they’re not just going to say they f–k with something if they really don’t. If they feel something, and they say it out loud, you’re gonna feel them. That’s just my chance to make sure the people don’t look at them crazy [for making those co-signs]. Now it’s my job to make sure what they’re saying is not a lie.
You’ve been in the studio with Conway The Machine and Juelz Santana. Do you feel the need to step your pen game up when you’re locked in working with those caliber of MCs?
My pen game is gonna be stepped up wherever, with whoever, whenever — because it’s not just about having one of the greats in the room and go crazy … whoever is in the room, [I’m gonna] go crazy. Even if I’m doing a record by myself, I do the first verse and the second verse, you better go crazy on Lola. You better be [my alter-ego Big Gator] on the second verse. That’s how I look at it. I don’t even compete with people, I compete with myself.
But at the end of the day, as a young artist, I do look for that kind of validation from the OGs — and if they’re in the room, of course I gotta make sure they know this is real. I’m already prepared, so I don’t gotta worry about that. The pen game is there now. Where the vibes at? Where the energy at?
You’ve accomplished a lot of buzz in the Tri-State. What’s the plan in becoming a mainstream superstar?
Consistency. That’s the main key. That’s the blueprint. Even if s–t wack, put it out so you know what not to do again. Put stuff out so you know what your fans like. That’s the only way you’re going to win. It’s to know the feedback from your fans.
What’s the roadmap for you knowing you’re getting these early looks, like Artists to Watch wins?
It’s self-care, and making sure that I’m healthy, so that I can keep applying pressure — because without me having a stable mentality, none of this can get done. As well as my team. They need to be mentally ready, as well as me, so that we can feed off each other and always come with strategies on how we can win.
Alana Springsteen has an old classical guitar she found in her grandfather’s garage at the age of seven to thank for her first foray into music.
“He didn’t even play guitar, but from the first second I saw it, I was drawn to it,” the Virginia native tells Billboard, calling just before heading out to perform as part of Luke Bryan’s annual Crash My Playa festival in Cancun, Mexico.
Her grandfather gifted her the guitar, on one condition. “He said I could have it if I promised to learn how to play it,” Springsteen recalls. “I begged my uncle to come over on weekends and start teaching me chords.”
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By nine she started writing songs and a year later was making trips to Nashville. By age 14, she had signed her first publishing deal. Last year, she released the two-part EP project, History of Breaking Up, via Sony Music Nashville/Columbia. Now 22, the member of CMT’s Next Women of Country Class of 2023 is gearing up to release her three-part, full-length debut album.
On March 24, she will put out the project’s first installment, the six-song Twenty Something: Messing It Up, spearheaded by fiery single, “You Don’t Deserve a Country Song.”
When she walked into the writing session with Mitchell Tenpenny, Geoff Warburton, Michael Whitworth and Will Weatherly in early 2021, Springsteen was healing from a tough romantic breakup and was intent on writing about moving on.
“You can’t really say that title without smiling,” she says. “I wasn’t in a really good place after my last relationship ended, and this guy was the same one I wrote a lot of History of Breaking Up (Part Two) about. He broke my heart and it was not a good situation, which is why It made sense to me to kick off Messing It Up with this song. It doesn’t come from a place of anger or pain, but from a place of deciding to put myself first. I realized I was giving my ex a lot of power by sitting in regret and heartbreak, so I walked into that writing session very intentionally.”
Chatting with Billboard, Springsteen discussed her upcoming project, her new song and her time in Nashville.
When you first came to Nashville, what were your first co-writing sessions like?
I first came when I was 10 and started co-writing with Sherrié Austin and Will Rambeaux. It’s so funny looking back because I’m like, “What must they have been thinking when they saw this 10-year-old walk into a room like, ‘Here’s this idea I have. Let’s write a song’?” But I never questioned it, and just knew it’s what I was born to do.
We wrote a breakup song, believe it or not. I remember they were like, ‘Have you been through a breakup?’ I drew from stories, and movies and books. Then I met people like Bart Herbison at NSAI and Tim Fink at SESAC, just early believers. That’s one thing that is so special about Nashville. People, for the most part, genuinely want to help you get connected.
What does songwriting mean to you?
That was really a big deal for me. I mean, when I found songwriting, my whole world changed. Songwriting is how I make sense of the world. It has been my therapy. All I wanted to do was be a country artist like those I grew up on, like Shania Twain, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban. I love the way country music can craft a hook and take you on this journey through song.
Mitchell Tenpenny was a co-writer on “You Don’t Deserve a Country Song.” You’ve also toured with him.
We met while writing this song and that led to a cool friendship. He’s got a few other moments on this upcoming album, which is exciting.
As a co-writer, a vocalist, or both?
I don’t want to give away too many details, but he’s definitely all over this record.
Do you already have all of the songs written for all three portions of Twenty Something?
I always leave room to change things. I write in real time, so I’m keeping room if something really special comes along, but I have pretty much the record planned out.
Last year, you released the two-part project, History of Breaking Up. Your upcoming album, Twenty Something, has three parts. What appeals to you about making these multi-part albums?
I think there’s just something really cool about creating this body of work and letting fans digest a lot of songs. Twenty Something is, as a whole, about kind of the messiness of your 20s. I’m only two years into my 20s, but I’ve already learned so much about myself and experienced so much change. I know I’m not alone in that.
When I wrote the song “Twenty Something,” I started to see that a lot of the music that I had written over the past few years fit into three separate categories. I wanted to compile them and take it step by step and take my fans along with me on this journey.
What can fans expect from the music on the upcoming portions of Twenty Something?
There are songs on here that call out my struggles, areas that I’ve messed it up, which a lot for me has been in the areas of love and relationships. It’s pretty vulnerable. But then there are moments where, if you’re lucky, you start living your purpose and start figuring things out. I think your 20s are a mixture of all of that. I hope that people can just find a little bit of themselves in this record one way or another.
What is the first concert you remember seeing?
The first concert I went to was Taylor Swift’s Speak Now Tour in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m a huge Taylor fan. Growing up, it was like she was telling my stories. She was writing from such a young age, that encouraged me that I could do the same thing. I’ll never forget what it felt like watching her on that tour, the way she shared that moment with her fans. It was beautiful to watch and I’d never seen fans react to an artist that way.
Do you have a favorite music book or podcast?
I love the [podcast] And the Writer Is…, that one’s always really fun to listen to, to get into the mind of writers and learn tips from people that I look up to in the field. I’ve also been reading a book called 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think. I’m making my way through it. I feel like I’ll read a paragraph and be like, “Oh, wow, I need to spend a week just sitting with that and figuring out what it means to me.” So it’s one that I pick up, whether I’m on a plane or in the van on the road. But it just gives me something to think about.