Country Music
Oklahoma Radio Station Gets Stung By Bey Hive Over Beyonce
A country radio station in Oklahoma is finding out exactly why you don’t play with the Bey Hive after going viral for refusing to play Beyonce’s new country release, “Texas Hold ‘Em.” The backlash occurred after a fan took to social media to share the response from SCORE following his online request to radio station […]
Cheat Codes Go All-In With Country Legend Dolly Parton for New Single, “Bets On Us”
Cheat Codes hit the jackpot in their latest single, “Bets On Us,” which finds the dance music trio joining the iconic Dolly Parton. The can’t-lose combination marks the fourth single in the group’s rollout of their upcoming fourth studio album, One Night in Nashville. Few have found a cohesive vision that blends the seemingly polar opposite worlds of country and electronic music, but with cuts like “Bets On Us,” Cheat Codes are making it look easy and spurring a growing eagerness to discover what’s in store for the full project. With “Bets On Us,” Cheat Codes lean wholesale into native country instrumentation, incorporating stadium claps and the melodic twang of the banjo. The production allows ample room for harmonizing vocal...
‘Yellowstone’ Star Luke Grimes Inks Deal With UMG Nashville
Universal Music Group Nashville has signed actor-musician Luke Grimes, in association with Range Music. Grimes is known for his role portraying Kayce Dutton on the hit Paramount Network series Yellowstone. Grimes previously released a snippet of his new song “No Horse to Ride,” which will release Friday (Dec. 16). He wrote the song with Tony Lane and Jonathan Singleton and is currently working on his debut major-label album with producer Dave Cobb (Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton). Related 'Yellowstone' Actor Luke Grimes Previews Upcoming Country Song Release 12/13/2022 View this post on Instagram A post shared by Luke Grimes (@lukegrimes) “As an actor, Luke Grimes has effortlessly brought the cowboy lifestyle to the forefront of American culture,” said UMGN president...
Morgan Wallen Repeats as Top Country Artist in 2022: The Year in Charts
Just as the 29-year-old singer-songwriter did in 2021, Sneedville, Tenn. native Morgan Wallen reigns as Billboard’s Top Country Artist of 2022. Concurrently, he finishes first as top country male artist. Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the cale...
Megan Moroney Inks Deal With Sony Music Nashville/Columbia Records
Singer-songwriter Megan Moroney has inked a label deal with Sony Music Nashville and Columbia Records. During her opening performance slot for Warren Zeiders: The Up to No Good Tour on Wednesday evening (Nov. 16) at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl, Moroney announced her label signing, and also told the audience that her song “Tennessee Orange” will be sent to country radio. According to Moroney’s manager, Punch Bowl Entertainment’s Juli Griffith, Moroney and her team were in talks with 18 record labels before signing with Sony Music Nashville and the NYC-based Columbia. “We picked this combination because they understand exactly who Megan is and what she has already created,” Griffith tells Billboard. “Their plan is to come in and enhance what we are already doing under her creative vi...
Jon Pardi & Wife Summer Expecting First Child: ‘No Plans, No Timing, Just a Gift From God
Jon Pardi and his wife Summer are about to expand their family. The couple, who wed in November 2020, are expecting their first child in early 2023, the couple confirmed with a statement to People published on Thursday (Sept. 22). The country singer-songwriter telling the outlet, “I’m ready to start a new adventure with my wonderful wife Summer and our new little one — Pardi of three! I’m really excited to meet our baby and to have someone to ride around the ranch with.” Summer also told the outlet that she is excited to welcome their first child and added that she looks forward to seeing her husband in his upcoming role as a father. “He’s such a big kid at heart, always the life of the party and has such positive energy so I can only imagine how much fun this little Pardi addition will be...
“YeeDM”: Apple Launches New Radio Series to Merge Electronic and Country Music
From the tailgate to the rave, Apple Music is providing the soundtrack after launching “YeeDM,” a new radio series merging EDM and country music. Yes, it’s okay to cringe at the name. According to a press release shared with EDM.com, “YeeDM” will deliver an exclusive mix of music spotlighting collaborations between country and EDM artists. Listeners will also hear country songs with electronic production as well as dance remixes of the genre’s biggest hits. “You might hear a Dolly Parton edit going into Jack Harlow, or going into Alesso or Diplo,” said the show’s DJ, Telemitry. “You might hear everything from Megan Thee Stallion to George Strait in these mixes. You have a one-hour mix to blend all these worlds together.”...
Eck Robertson, Whiny Fiddles and the Birth of Country Music Recording Sessions
When River House/Columbia Nashville released Luke Combs’ “The Kind of Love We Make” on June 17, the single employed a fierce lead vocal, two-part harmonies and around 10 different instruments, all apparent in their own clean, digital audio lane. The performance shows how far the country recording business has come in 100 years. On June 30, 1922, a pair of fiddlers — Henry Gilliland and A.C. “Eck” Robertson — held what is widely regarded as the first country recording session at Victor Studios in New York. They had no chance to overdub a bad note here or there, to correct poor pitch or to amplify one of the fiddlers later. They had to capture the entire three-minute performance in one sitting or start all over again, playing into a bell-shaped audio horn, with the sound’s vibrations transla...
Queer Country Pioneers Lavender Country Saddle Up for First Album In Nearly 50 Years
When Lavender Country arrived in 1973, mainstream culture – not to mention Nashville – was not ready for Patrick Haggerty, an openly gay country singer who sang candidly about hookups, heartbreak and homophobia. The band’s self-titled album didn’t make much of an impact beyond the widely marginalized LGBTQ communities of the ’70s, and eventually Haggerty drifted away from music. But as the decades wore on, the boldly pioneering band’s reputation grew. After some reissues, reappraisals and reunion shows, Haggerty – a self-proclaimed “screaming Marxist bitch singer” – found himself enjoying a degree of the attention that eluded him decades earlier, sharing the stage with Orville Peck in 2019 and recording a duet with Drag Race winner Trixie Mattel in 2020. On Feb. 18, a proper release of the...
Nashville Labels Turn to Pop Partners as Streaming Changes the Game
This kind of arrangement is growing more common to the point that every big Nashville label now works with a pop counterpart. Sony Music Nashville has teamed with RCA Records to promote several acts including Tenille Townes and Kane Brown, who has released songs with several acts on RCA’s pop roster, including Khalid and H.E.R. At first, Brown’s deals were renegotiated per song, but as it became clearer that the country star would continue to delve into pop, SMN and RCA now have a “broader partnership” for the “Be Like That” singer, says SMN executive vp/COO Ken Robold. “Basically it was [RCA Records COO John] Fleckenstein and I coming up with what we thought was a fair deal.” While he wouldn’t give specific percentages, Robold says RCA is “incenti...
Morgan Wallen’s Radio Airplay Has Doubled in Past Month
Nothing can stop Morgan Wallen’s ascent to country superstardom, not even a massive controversy and being banned from select radio stations. Over the past month alone, Wallen’s radio airplay has more than doubled (!) in the latest instance of an unsurprising comeback, reports Billboard. Nearly 150 radio stations report to Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, and the numbers they tracked are hard to argue with. At the start of May, their accumulated spins clocked in around the low 1,000s. In the first week of May that number went up to 1,100 and in the second week it was bumped to 1,500. Fast forward to the first week of June and there’s more than 2,900 plays. That’s a total gain of 164% in the span of one month — and with summer on the way, chances are those numbers will only continue to ris...
Lucinda Williams Is Recovering From a Stroke
<span class="localtime" data-ltformat="F j, Y | g:ia" data-lttime="2021-05-03T18:10:27+00:00“>May 3, 2021 | 2:10pm ET Lucinda Williams is recovering from a stroke. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the 68-year-old country musician said she spent five weeks in the hospital after a blood clot developed on the right side of her brain in November of last year. She’s since been discharged, is undergoing physical therapy, and is expected to make a full recovery. In the months leading up to the stroke, Williams was otherwise doing just fine. She spent her days taking safety precautions during the ongoing pandemic while performing in special livestream tributes, taking part in birthday bashes, and recording cover songs of T. Rex, Sharon Van Etten, a...
