Ford (Photo: Gene Reed)
Radio Vet Kelly Ford Launches 'The Kelly Ford Show' Podcast
Radio industry veteran KELLY FORD is launching a new podcast, "THE KELLY FORD SHOW," via SPOTIFY and YOUTUBE. With new episodes recorded in her NASHVILLE studio set to drop every THURSDAY, the premiere edition, out now, features WARNER MUSIC ...
Report: Rachel Fontenot Departs Startup Label Leo33
MusicRow.com broke news TODAY (6/2) that RACHEL FONTENOT has departed NASHVILLE-based startup label LEO33 just two months after it was announced. FONTENOT, along with KATIE DEAN, was one of ...
An intriguingly provocative title draws the listener into this beautifully-written song. But rest assured, no crime has been committed here. Offerman explains that in the first two lines: “There ain’t nobody calling the cops / There ain’t no body circled in chalk.” Yet she broke up with a guy in his driveway, and watched “the light go out of his loving eyes” before she got in her car and made her getaway, riddled with guilt. That story unfolds further in the emotionally rendered chorus, where the Berklee College of Music graduate sings, “He begged me not to let him go / But goodbye don’t give a damn / They won’t lock me up for this one, no / But his heartbreak's on my hands / I just killed a man.” It’s an extraordinarily promising radio debut for this native of New Braunfels, TX, who wrote the song with Ryan Beaver, Joe Clemmons, Benjy Davis and Jessie Jo Dillon for her upcoming debut project. Says the singer, “No one’s ever said it like that before. It’s a different and brutally honest way of saying, ‘I just broke this dude’s heart.’ It’s about a guy I loved who I wasn’t meant to be with.” She adds, “I love the line in the bridge that says, ‘Just because it ain’t a crime, don’t mean I won’t be doing time.’ Even if you’re the one doing the breaking up, it still kills you like nothing else. I knew from the first second this song was spoken into existence that it was something special. My hope is that others feel that when they hear it.”
The latest trend in Country music is interpolations of older songs, which make the new material instantly familiar. Recent examples have included Cole Swindell’s chart-topping “She Had Me At Heads Carolina” and, more recently, Kimberly Perry’s “If I Die Young Pt. 2.” Jake Owen’s summery new single, “On The Boat Again,” is the latest example of this trend. It takes one of Willie Nelson’s best known hits, “On The Road Again,” and reimagines it as a boating anthem. The song couldn’t have been birthed from stronger source material. Written by Nelson (reportedly on the back of an airline barf bag) for the film “Honeysuckle Rose” (in which he also starred), it earned the Red Headed Stranger a Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1981. Nelson is, of course, credited as a songwriter here, along with the crew who updated the song for 2023, Rocky Block, Devin Dawson, Kyle Fishman, and Blake Pendergrass. The first verse sets up a hard-working, time clock punching man in need of some down time, leading to the sing-along chorus: “On the boat again / I just can’t wait to get on the boat again / The life I love is drinking cold beer with my friends / Yeah I can’t wait to get on the boat again.” In the final chorus, the second and third lines are replaced with, “I just can’t wait to get out and float again / Cast a line and see if I can’t reel one in.” The song is the first sample of Owen’s seventh studio album, “Loose Cannon,” releasing on June 23rd. Toss this one into the race for potential Country song of the summer.
Just in time for the warm weather months comes a song about a summer romance the guy doesn’t want to end. Brian Kelley describes his new single this way: “You ever fall hard for someone you met at the beach, and once you’re back home you just can’t live without ‘em? ‘See You Next Summer’ is all about not letting that love go.” Clocking in at a lean two minutes and 37 seconds, this song — produced by Dann Huff and written by David Garcia, Michael Hardy, and Hillary Lindsey — has both the tempo and the temperature for the dog days. As the song unfolds, a Gulf Coast romance is threatened by the end of the season, when the girl’s about to head back north and the guy back west. But in an attempt to keep it going, he tells her, “I gotta get this off my sunburned chest, I swear / I think this thing we got could go somewhere.” In the chorus, he tries to convince her the attempt at a long-term thing is sincere, and not just ”a margarita, can I get your number / ’Meet me by the water’ text, hookin' up / See you next summer.” Nope, he wants to follow her home to Jacksonville, GA, and “add one more on that population sign.” Kelley says of the song, “When I first heard it, I was smiling the whole way through. I’ve lived this song. It was striking chords all over my body, I felt it in my soul.”
If you’re missing Country music in your Country music, Joe Nichols has you covered. In the immensely capable hands of neo-traditionalist Nichols (coupled with the production of Mickey Jack Cones and Derek George) this modern day dancehall ditty will have your toes tapping in the first few lines. It’ll make you want to get up and two-step, even if you’ve never two-stepped in your life. Written by Marv Green, Rhett Akins and J.T. Harding, it’s a breakup song that, in a meta twist, laments the fact that there’s just not enough heartbreak songs in the format for their liking. Nichols lends his smooth baritone to the chorus, singing, “Ain't no cryin' in your beer / Ain't no she walked out the door / Ain't nobody brokenhearted / In Country music anymore.” Like many good radio songs, the lyrics actually reference radio, when Nichols sings in the second verse, “It killed me when you left me / I thought I was your baby / I was going all kinds of climb the wall crazy / Searching for a sad one on the radio dial / But all I heard was smiles.” The lyrics are funny, summery, and instantly sing-able. Just try to resist warbling along to the lines, “Everybody's hookin' up, gettin' down / Tearin' up their little town / Loadin' up their cooler / And headin' south, beach bound.” Not to be confused with Nichols’ 2002 #1 hit, “Brokenheartsville,” this one is the next single from his 10th studio album, 2022’s “Good Day For Living.”
The on-brand new single from Jason Aldean, “Try That In A Small Town,” paints a picture of the perceived difference between big city life, and small town living, particularly when it comes to crime. The first three lines read, “Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk / Carjack an old lady at a red light / Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store,” all leading to the chorus that taunts the offender to “try that in a small town.” In rural America, the song posits, “we take care of our own / You cross that line, it won't take long / For you to find out, I recommend you don't / Try that in a small town.” That includes such acts as spitting in the face of a cop, and burning a flag, all things not recommended in a place filled with “good ‘ol boys raised up right” (or anywhere, really!). The song got a major debut at radio on Friday (5/19) with world premieres across iHeartMedia, SummitMedia, and Townsquare Country stations, resulting in a #38 debut on the Mediabase chart. Aldean says the song “summarizes the way a lot of people feel right now. When you turn on the TV or wake up in the morning and hear of something else that’s happened in the world, it can almost feel like there’s crazy stuff happening on a daily basis, and that feels unfamiliar to a lot of us that didn't grow up that way … This song sheds some light on that.” Written by Kurt Allison, Tully Kennedy, Kelley Lovelace, and Neil Thrasher, “Try That In A Small Town” is the latest release from the Country superstars’s forthcoming new album, following the TV debut of another new song, “Tough Crowd,” on the May 11th Academy of Country Music Awards” after its surprise release earlier that week. Watch for Aldean performing it live this summer when his 30-city “Highway Desperado Tour” kicks off in mid-July.
Superstar in the making Lainey Wilson lends her sweet voice to this nostalgic song looking back on a first young love. Tying memories of that romance to a fruity alcohol, the single is destined to draw favorable comparisons to Deana Carter’s 1996 breakthrough smash, “Strawberry Wine.” Set in the summer after senior year, Wilson’s “Watermelon Moonshine” recalls with specific rural details how the song’s young lovers were “bein’ brave as 18 gets,” giving each other “more than our hearts, with the help of a mason jar.” She sings in the chorus, “Too young to know what love was / But we were learnin' on a sweet buzz / There's never nothin' like the first time / And mine's always gonna taste like / Watermelon moonshine.” Written by Wilson, Jordan Schmidt and Josh Kear, the song has been heard on Paramount’s “Yellowstone,” where Wilson has a supporting role, and is the next single from last fall’s “Bell Bottom Country” album. Wilson calls it, “a nostalgic song about getting buzzed on that young, wild, crazy kind of love. A time in your life when nothing else mattered except for the way that you were feeling in that moment. I remember being 15-16 years old, all in love, my boyfriend coming to pick me up, finding a turn row or somewhere in behind a grain elevator. Those were the days.” The follow up to her four back-to-back #1 singles, “Watermelon Moonshine” seems likely to become lucky number five.
Dolly Parton has always been careful not to speak out on political matters, but in her new single, “World On Fire,” it’s clear she knows all is not right in the world, and she’s petitioning for change before it’s too late to turn the tide. Debuted as the dramatic closing performance on the May 11th Academy of Country Music Awards, Parton’s self-penned song describes a world filled with “greedy politicians present and past / They wouldn't know the truth if it bit 'em in the ass,” and asks, “Have we all lost sight / Of common decency / Of wrong and right?” She goes on to inquire, “How do we heal this great divide / Do we care enough to try?” all building to a sweeping verse where she implores, “Can’t we rise above / Can’t we show some love / Do we just give up or make a change / We know all too well / We've all been through hell / Time to break the spell in heaven's name.” In the nearly four and a half minute-long song’s final lines, background singers rhythmically chant the chorus while Parton sings over them in her airy soprano, “Show some love / Let's rise above / Let's make a stand / Let's lend a hand / Let's heal the hurt / Let kindness work / Let's be a friend / Let hatred end.” The song optimistically insists we can and should do better, and its compelling theme of healing will likely resonate universally. It’s the first single from Parton’s 30-track “Rockstar” album, due in November. And Parton says, “This is a song I felt very inspired to write. I think it speaks about everything and to everyone this day and time. I hope it is something that will touch you and maybe touch enough people to want to make a change for the better.” Let’s do it for Dolly!
Riley Green first released “Different ‘Round Here” as the title track of his debut album in 2019. But after befriending (and now touring with) Luke Combs, he went back into the studio and re-cut it in a new, collaborative version with Combs. Green wrote the song with Randy Montana and Jonathan Singleton, and the original version is certified Gold and has garnered nearly a half million streams, guaranteeing it already has plenty of familiarity with radio listeners. The song pays tribute to an idealized American way of life, where “proud is what you say about where you’re from / Heroes are daddies and mamas are love / The right is right and wrong is wrong.” It also salutes young members of the military with the line “Brave is 18 wearin’ Army green,” and patriotically declares, “We stand for the flag, and if you don’t like it we don’t care.” Combs steps out solo on the second verse, and the two artists sing the chorus together. Says Green, “Ever since we originally released the song a few years ago, we have seen so many military families, athletes, and hard-working everyday people use the song in their own videos. It has also been one of those songs that proud hometown fans sing along to the loudest, night after night. While up in Canada with Luke at the end of last year, we saw the same thing, and it felt right re-releasing it together.” Watch for the two artists performing it together on Combs’ current stadium World Tour, continuing through the summer.
Kimberly Perry was the sole writer on her former family band’s biggest hit, The Band Perry’s 2010’s Grammy-nominated “If I Die Young.” Now a solo artist, married and pregnant with her first child, Perry has had some time to reflect on the melancholy message of that song, and she’s done some re-thinking. In an updated version, written alongside Nicolle Galyon and Jimmy Robbins, Perry largely retains the original song’s memorable chorus, but reframes it with new verses. She sings, “I’m changing my tune,” then tacks one game-changing line onto the end of the chorus: “Now I know there’s no such thing as enough time.” Almost chiding herself for the girlishness of her original hit that romanticized the idea of dying young, Perry sings in the updated version, “It was so dramatic / Beautiful but tragic / Throwing my emotions in a poem ‘bout a casket / But, I’ve had time to bloom.” Later, she adds, “I’m glad I’m here now / Instead of somewhere underground.” Explaining the significantly less morbid update, Perry says, “It turned out the story wasn’t finished from the original. Over the past decade, life has brought me a fair share of blessings, and hard-won wisdom, and dreams come true.” She calls “Pt.2” a “story continued. It’s me here over a decade later learning so much from just love and life. And I’ve decided at this point there’s absolutely no such thing as enough time.” The most-added single at Country radio during its impact week, “If I Die Young Pt. 2” is the first taste of Perry’s new EP, “Bloom,” due out on June 9th.
In his latest album release, January’s “the mockingbird & THE CROW,” HARDY experimented with showing off both his Country and Rock sides in one project. In his latest single from that release, “Truck Bed,” he’s showing off those two sides in one song! The subject matter is undeniably Country (what could be more so than lyrics about sleeping in a pickup truck bed with an empty bottle of Jack Daniels, using an old corn sack as a pillow and a camo jacket for a blanket, and threatening the lives of the local bird population with a .45?), but in the last two repetitions of the chorus, his vocal delivery shifts in a decidedly rock direction. Grammy.com said this banger “shows the influence of Nirvana and post-grunge songcraft alongside his distinctive, rhythmic lyrical delivery.” The under three minute song, written by HARDY, Ashley Gorley, Ben Johnson and Hunter Phelps, utilizes an unusual structure that opens with the chorus, and the expletive in the final verse (directed at those dang birds) is muted in the radio edit. But its theme is familiarly Country (the guy slept in his truck after his wife or girlfriend locked him out of their home for going to the bar), the lyrics are funny, and the rhymes clever (“Damn, she got some nerve, when she kicked me to the curb”). But perhaps the biggest surprise about the song is the ease with which its chorus will get stuck in your head: “I woke up on the wrong side of the truck bed this morning.”
For a happily married guy, Ben Gallaher can sing the fire out of a breakup song. In his new single, “Lovin’ You Gets In The Way” (co-written by another happily married guy, Jason Aldean), Gallaher wonders how long an excruciating split will take to get over, singing in the second verse, “Like a roadblock, like a rockslide / Like a bridge out over to the other side / Like a bad dream, like a long train / How much longer is losin' you gonna take?” He wants to be able to pour a drink just to have one, not to obliterate a memory. He even tried taking everything his ex ever gave him, right down to the photographs, and burning them in his backyard, but found himself unable to strike that match. And as he laments in the poignant chorus, “I wanna wish I never met you / I wanna wish I'd never seen your face / But every time I try to hate you / Lovin' you gets in the way.” Who hasn’t been there? Aldean wrote the song with Lee Miller and Neil Thrasher, and it’s one of the 15 tracks on Gallaher’s tremendously promising “Country In The House” album, released in February. Catch the Pennsylvania native and triple threat singer, songwriter and musician touring with former Rascal Flatts member Gary LeVox through May.
A perfect fit for that Friday afternoon mood, along comes Chase Rice’s fun new single sporting what is already our favorite song title of the year: “Bad Day To Be A Cold Beer.” Channeling end of the work week energy, Rice opens the song describing how, “This workin' like a dog has got me dog tired / Pushing 12 hour days, pullin' all damn nighters / But come five o'clock I'm the hell out of here.” From there, it’s straight off to the bar, where “some hell-bent people wanna burn right through.” Those kegs in the back don’t stand a fighting chance against this crowd, who were “swinging like a wrecking ball when they came in” and “drinkin' so loud the whole bar could hear.” The catchy, sing-along chorus goes: “Line 'em up, up / Throw 'em down, down / Nah, we don't need much, just another damn round / Man, it's abracadabra, they all disappear / It's a bad, bad day to be a cold, cold beer.” The song, from Rice’s newest album, “I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go To Hell,” includes a surprising name among its co-writers: PGA champion Justin Thomas. It was an off-hand remark Thomas said to Rice during a golf game at the Troubadour Golf & Field Club near Nashville (“Boys, it’s a bad day to be a cold beer”) that inspired the single, which Rice finished composing with Blake Pendergrass and John Byron. We’re not sure who gets credit for the song’s best, laugh-out-loud couplet — “I got 'em in the crosshairs like an old Red Ryder / When it comes to a pop top, it's ‘Ready! Aim! Fire,’” — but they deserve a pat on the back, or perhaps a cold, cold beer. Recalling the day on the links that inspired this “pretty simple” song, Rice says, “We ended up having an awesome day that day. A bunch of Country music singers were around, a bunch of golfers, [golfer Jordan] Spieth showed up. We just had an awesome day. I think at one point we had, like, 30 guys on a tee box. Every tight end in the NFL was there for something they had going in Nashville. So, that was the worst day to possibly ever be a cold beer, ‘cause I think we drank every one in Tennessee that day.”
The warm weather months find Country programmers seeking tempo more than ever, and they’ll happily find it in Thompson Square’s upbeat ode to lasting love, “Without You.” Married for 24 years, Thompson Square’s Keifer and Shawna Thompson relate to the song strongly, even though they didn’t write it themselves. Says Keifer, who takes lead on the first verse before being joined by Shawna’s harmonies for the rest of the song, “Sometimes a song comes along that fits so perfectly, you know right away that you have to record it. ‘Without You’ is one of those songs. [It] was written by Tim Nichols, Anthony Olympia and Brent Rupard, and even though we didn’t pen this song with them, it felt like we were in the room. This song is so ‘Thompson Square.’ It feels like summer. It feels like fun, and we can’t wait to share it with our fans and the rest of the world.” He’s not wrong about the three-minute, banjo-forward song’s summer vibe. In the lyrics, they compare a painter with no paint, a guitar with no strings, and an eight ball without a cue to how they feel separated from one another. They reinforce that point in the bridge, where they sing, “I don't know what I'd do / If I had to live this life without you.” The catchy, rapid fire chorus will quickly have your listeners singing along with the Grammy-nominated couple as they belt out, “Without you I'd be just another same old plain old son of a gunner / No shotgun solo roller, all chrome no motor / Sunsets all black and white / But you put the tie dyed in my life / Might sound crazy but baby it's true / Ain't no good without you.” Pop the top down and crank it up loud.
If the ladies in Lorrie Morgan’s 1992 hit “What Part Of No” or John Anderson’s 1991 chart-topper “Straight Tequila Night” were being observed in the bar by a male patron, their actions could very well have served as the inspiration for Ryan Griffin’s new single, “Heart To Break.” In it, he tells a similar story — from a male perspective — about a woman who’s all dressed up in a bar, but definitely not looking for love. The narrator of Griffin’s song empathetically tells another man that the beautiful woman everyone is watching on the dance floor is hiding her hurt, and advises his friend not to be offended by rejection, because the lady is “all out of heart to break.” He says, “Don't take it personal if she don't wanna talk / You got to understand that girl has heard it all / She'll drink the drink you buy and then she'll walk away.” There’s further fair warning that, “That dress, that hair, those heels, that lipstick ain't for you / That's just for just in case he walks into the room / She'll make him miss her, wanna get her back but it's too late,” and an additional caution that if the man who jilted her “shows up tonight, she's gonna wreck him.” It’s classic Country heartbreak fare, penned by Adam Hambrick, Ben Stennis and David Fanning, and produced by Jay DeMarcus and Sam Ellis. DeMarcus calls it “the perfect marriage of a big song with a big voice. Ryan delivers an emotionally charged, powerful performance, maybe one of his best ever, on what I believe is one of the best songs I’ve heard in a long, long time.” The song shows a completely different side of Griffin than his summery previous radio single, “Salt, Lime & Tequila,” which has accrued more than 22 million streams and claimed the #1 spot on SiriusXM The Highway’s “Hot 30 Countdown.” Griffin says of his new single, “I’ve never heard a heartbreak song said quite like this one. It’s a message about living in that in-between space, where your heart’s not ready to try again but you want to move on. It’s been incredible seeing people instantly connect with this message.” Watch the lyric video 
Never underestimate the power a little black dress holds over an evening of romance … or over a hit song! Chris Young scored his first chart topper in 2009 with “Gettin’ You Home (The Black Dress Song).” Now, Chase Matthew’s new radio single, “Love You Again,” similarly describes an envisioned night of romance that starts because “that black dress got your boy seein’ red / Slippin’ off your shoulders pullin’ me into bed.” One advantage Matthew has here that wasn’t available to Young in 2009: TikTok! Even before the young rising star released “Love You Again” to DSPs early last December, he’d shared a snippet of it on social media, sparking last fall’s #BlackDressTrend. That means listeners have had months of familiarity with the song even before it went to radio. The under three minute single describes a guy “on a mission” for love after “a hell of a week.” As he enticingly tells his lady love in the chorus, “Let the midnight go where it's gonna go / Let the candlelight shadows put on a show / Talkin' sunset to sunrise / Tonight, I'm gonna love you like I'm never gonna love you again.” Written by Matthew, Taylor Phillips and Casey Brown, “Love You Again” will be included on the Nashville native’s 25-track major label debut album, due out June 9th.
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