Blake Shelton‘s new single is out! The Oklahoma native just dropped “Come Back As a Country Boy,” celebrating everything that is right about country music. The song, written by Michael Hardy, Jordan Schmidt and Josh Thompson, is from Blake’s upcoming Body Language Deluxe album, out on December 3.
“I think this song is an anthem for everyday hardworking country people out there,” Blake said of his rocking new single. “We have so much pride in who we are and what we do that, if we ever died and got the chance to live life over again, we probably wouldn’t do it if we couldn’t be country.”
Blake will wrap up his Friends and Heroes Tour this weekend with shows in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Dolly Parton will headline the inaugural Kiss Breast Cancer Goodbye concert, benefiting the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The concert will be held on October 24 at the CMA Theater inside the Country Music Hall of Fame. The lineup of performers also includes Dennis Quaid, Linda Davis and Collin Raye, among others.
Randy Travis will receive the Artist of a Lifetime Award at the upcoming CMT Artists of the Year ceremony. Other artists who have been given the prestigious honor include Loretta Lynn, Reba McEntire, Shania Twain, Kenny Rogers and Merle Haggard.
Brandi Carlile will receive the She Is the Music Award at the upcoming virtual Songs of Hope celebration, presented by City of Hope. The event will take place at 8:30 p.m. ET on September 30.
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Dan + Shay might have one of the most successful careers in country music, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to struggles just like everyone else. The duo’s Dan Smyers admits that, like many others, he has struggled with his mental health.
“Full disclosure, my mental health lives in a constant state of shambles, but that’s to be expected working in the music industry,” he tells Fault magazine. “In the age of social media, it’s tough to stay unaffected by criticism and comparison.”
Fortunately, Dan says he’s found a way to take care of his mental health as well as his physical health.
“I would say something I try to do daily is make a list,” Dan reveals. “It gives my day a bit of purpose and objectivity, and I can look back on it and feel like I’ve accomplished something. I think my brain goes into panic mode with too many unfinished tasks, so this helps give me some structure and focus.”
Lady A never imagined the backlash that would follow from changing their name, from Lady Antebellum to Lady A. The trio, who made the decision when they realized the negative connotations associated with the world “antebellum,” were soon after faced with a lawsuit by blues singer Anita White, who also goes by Lady A.
“That wrecked me,” band member Dave Haywood told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “As someone who from day one wrote ‘I Run To You’ about being unified and leaning on each other and loving each other and running from hate, we never want to stand for anything that would be a barrier to our music.”
Dave admits they never considered any negative ramifications from changing their name to Lady A, until the lawsuit.
“Changing the name, the decision was easy once we had all of those conversations and facts in front of us,” he says. “And going by Lady A, which we’ve had trademarked for our entire career, was the decision.”
Lady A will wrap up their What a Song Can Do Tour on October 10.
A new album is coming from Pistol Annies, this time a Christmas one.
The trio, made up of Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley, announced that their Hell of a Holiday album will be out on October 22. The 13-track record includes both original and cover songs, including “Auld Lang Syne,” “Make You Blue” and the title track.
Pistol Annies teased the news earlier in the week. “We’ve been thinking about…finally sharing the news we’ve been holding onto for months early tomorrow morning,” the group posted on social media Wednesday. “Whew we’ve had a hell of a time holding this one in.”
Fans who pre-order Hell of a Holiday will receive “Snow Globe” from the project, out at midnight tonight. The record, which will also be available on vinyl, will be released on October 22.
This is the Pistol Annies’ fourth studio album. They previously released Hell on Heels in 2011, followed by Annie Up in 2013 and Interstate Gospel in 2018.
Carly Pearce got really, really personal on all of the songs from her latest album, 29: Written in Stone, including her “Never Wanted to Be That Girl” duet with Ashley McBryde.
Carly, who says Ashley is one of only two of her artist friends that she wanted to write with — the other being Luke Combs, with whom she wrote “I Hope You’re Happy Now”– hoped that Ashley would also want to write a duet, on on which they would both sing together.
“I was hoping that she would want to write a duet,” Carly tells Country Now. “We had this honest conversation about ‘Where else could we go? What was the perspective that hadn’t really been talked about?’ I think that the sad truth is that no woman wants to find themselves in this situation.”
Carly adds, “No matter if you’re the mistress or the wife…I think this is the realization that they are having the exact same feeling in real-time about being burned by the same man, even though they are both innocent.”
On this day in 2015, a singer from a popular country group announced he was embarking on a solo project, amid rumors that the band was splitting up — rumors that, thankfully, proved false. His sole solo album, The Driver, included Dierks Bentley and Eric Paslay on the title track. Who is it? ANSWER: Lady A‘s Charles Kelley.
Thomas Rhett and his wife, Lauren Akins, will welcome their fourth daughter later this year, and they are already pretty close to picking out a name. The couple, parents to Willa Gray, Ada James and Lennon Love, are looking to a Southern state as a possible inspiration for their upcoming baby girl.
“This has been hard, just because you put so much thought in the first one, and second one and the third, and you’re like, ‘Well we have to spend a lot of time on this one as well,'” Thomas tells ET Online. “And so we’ve gone back and forth and thinking about state names, thinking about flower names, thinking about places that we love. Could that resonate into a name?
“So we’ve landed on a couple,” he added, sharing the name that is currently at least a top contender for his next daughter.
“Georgia is my first choice,” he says. “I love the name Georgia for a girl.”
One of Lee Brice‘s favorite things to do is perform in front of his fans, night after night. But after more than a year off of the road, Lee admits it has been a bit of a challenge to remember how to put on a live show.
“I had to kind of learn how to sleep on a moving loud bus again, which, it’s different cause you got used to sleeping in the still bed,” Lee tells The Country Daily.
“Another thing is that even when I get on, I’m about to go on stage I’m thinking ‘Okay I got all these songs that I’ve sang a million times and I’m like wait a minute…what’s the second verse?’ he adds. “You’re almost afraid you’re going to get up there and maybe forget lyrics to something that you’ve sang a million times.”
Lee is currently celebrating a top-five single with “Memory I Don’t Mess With.” The song is from his 2020 Hey World album.
Lady A‘s uptempo hit, “Like a Lady,” has been one of country music’s stand-out, feel-good songs of the summer.
It’s the first release from the trio’s seven-track What a Song Can Do (Chapter One) collection, which came out in June. But when Lady A’s full-length eighth album arrives next month, we’ll get a better look at what Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood have been feeling, amid both the COVID-19 pandemic and the controversy over their name change.
“The songwriting, the songs that we wrote and recorded, were our way of really, I think, trying to just cope with really uncertain months,” Hillary explains. “And it was our way to really have a creative outlet.”
“I think it was therapeutic for all of us,” she reflects. “I think we wrote a lot about just how we were feeling about a lot of things.”
Hillary adds: “I think the whole album, when it comes out in October, you’ll get to hear some of the outliers of where we kind of explored and took some risks from a song standpoint and production.”
More than anything, the three friends are thankful for the way music has transformed their lives.
“Ultimately, I think it’s just so present for us, and we are just so grateful,” Hillary says of the record. “The reason why we named the album What a Song Can Do is because these songs and the songs of our career have gotten us through such hard times.”
“And then they’ve also allowed for us the greatest times, you know, in the live show, and all of the years of being a band,” she points out.
What a Song Can Do doubles in size, growing to fourteen cuts when the full record arrives October 22.
