Finally: Brooks & Dunn is Working On New Music
We might be finally getting new music from one of the most iconic duos in country music history. Finally.
As wild as it might seem to say, Brooks & Dunn, who released their debut album in 1991, are currently the reigning CMA Vocal Duo of the Year, and might be the most relevant duo in all of country music. They’ve won Duo of the Year 16 times, including consecutively over the last two years. They’re also likely favorites to win the award in 2026 when the CMAs transpire on November 18th.
But in the ironic split screen that is Brooks & Dunn career of being both legendary and relevant at the same time, the Country Music Hall of Famers will be awarded the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 CMAs. And all of this comes from a country act that hasn’t released an album of new original music since 2007, meaning going on 20 years.
But all of that might be about to change.
“Obviously there’s been a resurgence of ’90s music. I feel like we did have a heck of a run in the ’90s. A lot of the parents who really like ’90s music turn their kids on to it…” said Kix Brooks in a recent interview with CBS Mornings.
This is true, and perhaps the primary reason Brooks & Dunn is as popular as they have ever been. But except for a couple of pretty mild and messy reworkings of their previous hits on the albums Reboot (2019) and Reboot II (2024), their music is being enjoyed retrospectively since nothing new has been released.
Now with artists like Zach Top, Jake Worthington, Cole Goodwin, and many more releasing songs inspired by Brooks & Dunn, why couldn’t Brooks & Dunn release some of their own, and successfully?
In the CBS Mornings interview, Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn explain how even though they’ve had plenty of disagreements over the years, they’ve never raised their voices at each other, or come to the point of completely falling out, even when they went on hiatus. Their ability to compromise has been key.
When asked by interviewer David Begnaud, “What was the last thing you had to compromise on?”
Ronnie Dunn responds,“We’re compromising right now. We’re working on a new record. You talk about the ultimate compromise. As songwriters, we’re firing stuff back and forth, you know, we’re criticizing one another’s music, that’s the holy grail, right? I want all my songs on there, he wants all his songs on there. So we have to work that stuff out. And you sweat and bleed every word.”
Kix Brooks adds, “We both realize down deep, that song I wrote is better than that song I wrote. So you have to be honest with yourself and then at some point, we gotta be honest with each other.”
So it sounds like they’re at least going through the writing process of producing a new album. And now that they’re both in their early 70s, it couldn’t come sooner.
These promising quotes from the duo are in stark contrast to what they said about recording new music back in 2019.
“I don’t know,” Ronnie Dunn responded to the question at that time. “I don’t know how that works these days. We know how to make records, write songs. But I don’t know how you work the system to get it heard anymore. Not to sound cocky, but we can write songs as good as we ever could I think. It’s just going through the political process of what you have to do … to make it happen.”
But it is a different day in country music than it was in 2019 at the tail end of the Bro-Country era. Could Brooks & Dunn release a hit record of ’90s country today? They very well could. But just like everything in country music, the appeal for retro ’90s country could be waning too. So it’s better sooner than later. And for Brooks & Dunn, it’s also better late than never.
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October 25, 2026 @ 11:15 am
Brooks and Dunn are my favourite country act of all time. I just hope if they make a new record they produce it to the same standard as their previous records – meaningful lyrics, rich music, country instrumentation. I hope they don’t pander to modern trends and build on rather than detract from their legacy.
October 25, 2026 @ 12:34 pm
Reading their quotes gives me hope that they understand this moment, and that people don’t want a contemporary version of Brooks & Dunn, but one that is reminiscent of their ’90s output, just rendered in new, fresh songs.
October 25, 2026 @ 3:50 pm
No disco songs, please!
October 30, 2026 @ 4:30 pm
I mean this sincerely, not trying to trash talk, more looking at it through the eyes of a therapist – Ronnie is addicted to Radio. Heck he even outright says it here. Doesn’t know how to get music played.
Has no one showed this guy the internet? I honestly think all these publicists and behind the curtain industry people keep the artists in the dark.
These guys have the easiest mass following to take it to the people.
Not less if they even did a moderate amount of little shorts and TikTok’s doesn’t even matter what they do just eat a ham sandwich or sit on the toilet and say hey fans how about that weather
And frankly I think the leaches are always in his ear about money money money – you know Ronnie doesn’t need money but you know the “industry” people around him do
Look at Marty Stuart or Lee Ann Womack or Dwight Yoakam – won’t hear one word about money and they’ve made some of their best work in their post-commercial era.
Heck look at David Allan Coe. That dude cultivated his own folllowimg without internet. He made a mind melting number of records. It’ll take me years to get through it finding gems.
Kix and Ronnie need to to park themselves in a cabin for a month and not tell any Nashville “employee” where they are and those dudes would come off the mountain with the best country record of their career.
October 25, 2026 @ 11:19 am
Good news. One to look forward to.
October 25, 2026 @ 11:40 am
I’m a big fan of their 90s stuff, much less so their 2000s material. The Reboot albums seemed like a lazy cash grab and served no purpose other than to bastardize the songs they were “rebooting”. Hopefully we can get something closer to “Brand New Man” than “Cowboy Town”.
October 25, 2026 @ 12:14 pm
True that!
October 25, 2026 @ 2:46 pm
Those Reboot albums seemed more like tribute albums. Some nice artists. Some hits, some misses.
October 25, 2026 @ 2:08 pm
I’m so thrilled to see someone was paying attention……. These men made it all look effortless and did it with style and grace. I’m so glad I’ll be around to see this all unfold. In the meantime I look forward to the new music that’s coming out of theses lifetime acheivers…….. some body’s got to do it it, I’m so glad it’s them……..🙏♥️
October 25, 2026 @ 3:49 pm
That other perennial nominee duo, The Brothers Osborne, also have new music out, album to come. Of course their output isn’t nearly as notable as Brooks and Dunn’s, nor as in touch with real country. But we can hope.
Too bad the industry is focused on one-off collaborations rather than permanent duos.
October 25, 2026 @ 5:20 pm
God help us if for the musical part of this award they pick Jelly Roll to ruin the song Believe again
October 25, 2026 @ 5:45 pm
B & D is the rare act that managed to come up with one of the Top 5 worst hit songs of all time (Boot Scootin Boogie) and also one of the all-time greatest country songs ever written (Neon Moon).
Aren’t they both over 70 now? I wonder what the record is for oldest acts to hit the top of the country charts
October 25, 2026 @ 7:41 pm
“Neon Moon” isn’t just a good song. It basically created its own country music subgenre that’s still going strong. And it was written solely by Ronnie Dunn.
“Boot Scootin’ Boogie” is a silly song. But it was the fourth single off their debut album after the first three went #1. It was the bullet in the gun they had to fire when they were the hottest thing in country.
October 25, 2026 @ 8:06 pm
Also if you want to complain about bad brooks and Dunn hits, play something country is actually awful
October 26, 2026 @ 6:51 pm
And “Rock My World, Little Country Girl” was bro country years before bro country was even a thing.
October 26, 2026 @ 8:11 pm
Right?! We will not accept “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” slander in this house!
October 26, 2026 @ 7:51 pm
Just curious what subgenre you are saying was spawned by Neon Moon? Thanks
October 26, 2026 @ 8:09 pm
I could probably cite 20+ albums and over 150+ songs with “neon” in the title over the last 5-10 years. “Neon Moon” really is the quintessential ’90s neotraditional country song that has been the blueprint for the Zach Top & Co. resurgence. At least in my opinion.
October 25, 2026 @ 6:33 pm
There’s something about having to make compromises for the sake of a song. The solo works of Kix and Ronnie were good, but that other voice pushing back and asking if this is the best for the song seemed to be missing from those records. Not to say that they were bad albums, mind you, but a little bit of pushback against one’s proclivities helps to make a better overall performance. I think this could be a great album if they both can come together in the spirit of what made them a great duo to begin with.
October 25, 2026 @ 7:31 pm
I’m not a hater, but, OMG duo of the year 16 times. Ridiculous.
October 25, 2026 @ 8:16 pm
@R–Well, the Statler Brothers used to call themselves “the most honored act in the history of country music,” or some such thing–presumably because they won the CMA for “Vocal Group of the Year” for upteeen times. (They also won two Grammys, to be fair.) The competition was not exactly intense in the category….at least until the “Boys” from Oak Ridge went from singing gospel to music mainstream country.
October 26, 2026 @ 7:39 am
That is very true! I thought the Oak Ridge Boys were going to roll over them and win everything. Then Alabama appeared. What a time that was when vocal quartets, actual bands, and duos or duets were colliding for awards.
October 25, 2026 @ 11:02 pm
They had no competition until Montgomery Gentry showed
October 26, 2026 @ 3:50 am
It’s not like they had any serious competition.
Their first album had a lot of good songs, but each successive release had fewer, until eventually, it was all just an embarrassment.
Dunn’s voice is up there with Tracy Byrd’s as the best thing about ’90s country music, but Dunn overdid it way too often, just like ol’ Jones. I lost all respect for Brooks when I watched them live. He treats that nice guitar like a drum set. It looks silly for a grown-up man, and it sounds awful.
The solo albums? Sounds like buried demo records, at best.
October 26, 2026 @ 10:06 am
“Heart Letting Go,” on Ronnie’s Peace Love and Country Music, is very much an exception to your generalization. Dunn does a great job with that Chris Stapleton/Al Anderson song. I don’t know why it wasn’t a single.
October 26, 2026 @ 11:26 am
“Dunn’s voice is up there with Tracy Byrd’s as the best thing about ’90s country music, but Dunn overdid it way too often…”
😂 Stop it. While I like Byrd, as a vocalist he was nowhere near Dunn’s level. Ronnie is one of the best vocalists in the genre (and beyond). And his solo albums were solid, they sounded just like B&D albums only without Brooks.
October 25, 2026 @ 8:07 pm
I’m wondering if in their new songs, the lyrics will give any nod to their ages. Other country legends–Hag, Jones, all the Highwaymen, Strait, Alan, Toby–sang some purely fictional songs, but also some songs that alluded to where they are in life. The other iconic male country duo, the Bellamy Brothers, has made that a core part of their personas and their act.
I think that would make more sense for B&D than making another album that sounds like something they’d have put out in 1995.
October 26, 2026 @ 6:10 am
I’m worried about this. As I recall, Ronnie said all the right things leading up to his albums Peace, Love & Country Music as well as Tattooed Heart. I generally like those records as pop country and both have their fair share of moments, but I feel like they’re a far cry from the sound he implied he was focusing on in interviews. Re-Dunn and 100 Proof Neon ended up better, but I’d imagine Ronnie also had quite a bit less pressure to conform on a solo independent record than he and Kix will have on a major label B&D release (presumably from Arista).
What’s also kind of odd is that B&D seem to insist on treating the Reboot releases as proper albums, despite the fact that they’re re-recordings. Fair enough, they’re new recordings after all. But seemingly every country artist has re-recorded their biggest hits at some point and put them out to try and regain some market share, generally in the form of some ‘Greatest Hits’ or ‘Best Of’ release that tends to fool buyers into thinking it’s the original versions of those songs. David Allan Coe and Johnny Paycheck especially seemed to make a cottage industry out of cutting the same songs multiple times, for instance. But these projects are almost always lumped in with compilations.
All of this is to say, I genuinely hope they’re trying to tap into that neo-honky tonk sound they had in the ‘90s and early 2000s, not whatever they were trying to do on Reboot II. I think the best we could probably hope for is something that sounds similar to Ronnie’s 2011 self-titled album of Kix’s New To This Town album. Very music modern country, but released long enough ago that there were still some sounds leftover from the ‘90s in the mainstream (however fleeting) and enough decent songwriters still around before brocountry shifted everything.
Gonna be really disappointed if this just turns out to be Reboot III with some new songs tacked on at the end.
October 26, 2026 @ 9:28 am
I just would not assume whatever Brooks & Dunn were doing trying to survive through the Bro-Country era is what they’ll do now. I think through their quotes in that CBS interview, they completely understand this current ’90s country moment, and how this is their opportunity to step into it once more. My only question is once they get an album done, with that window be closed again?
October 26, 2026 @ 9:08 am
Why is there a category for “vocal duo,” but not for “trio,” “quartet,” and so on? Why is any vocal group with more than two members simply labeled a “group,” while duos constitute a distinct category? After all, a duo is also a group.
October 26, 2026 @ 9:16 am
Just speculating, but over the years, male/female duets have been a big thing in Country Music. Maybe that’s why there’s a duo category.
October 26, 2026 @ 9:27 am
Yes, the duo category was created during the era when you had iconic duet pairings like Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, and Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty. Comedy duos were a big thing in early country, but there weren’t many dedicated duos until The Judds, then Brooks & Dunn. The problem is now you just don’t have a lot of those collaborative albums between two solo artists, only songs. Ella Langley and Riley Green totally should have won Vocal Duo. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings won Vocal Duo of the Year in 1976. Willie also won it with Julio Iglasias and Merle Haggard. If they would start thinking of the category as also including solo acts that perform as duos, that category would be a lot stronger these days.
October 26, 2026 @ 10:49 am
Speaking of country comedy duos, when Henry “Homer” Haynes and Kenneth “Jethro” Burns weren’t screwing around, butchering songs and making people laugh, they put out a couple jazz albums. Kenneth on mandolin and electric lead guitar, Henry on electric rhythm guitar, produced by Chet Atkins, Kenneth’s brother-in-law. For you guys that like jazzy mandolin and guitar instrumentals, go down the rabbit hole and find these gems.
October 31, 2026 @ 1:22 pm
Maybe the award shows should consider conflating the duo category and the “vocal event” category. The latter category is where one-off duets land nowadays, and the fact that Brooks & Dunn kept winning the duo category even when semi-retired and not having released a new album since 2007 might suggest that there currently aren’t enough high-profile duos in mainstream country to warrant a separate category.
October 26, 2026 @ 11:29 am
It’s simple. Duo means a pair. Having a backing band doesn’t make a duo, a trio, or a quartet a band, it makes them same as solo artist who also having bands backing them.
October 26, 2026 @ 11:31 am
I don’t see Brooks & Dunn having a radio hit at this stage of the game, no matter how good the album turns out to be.
October 27, 2026 @ 5:38 am
…speaking of relevance (still): last friday warren zeiders was flanked by two guitarists – one wore a guns n’ roses t-shirt, the other a brooks & dunn one. so was mr. zeiders himself (till he took it off for the last song). great show in zürich and great showing of brooks & dunn and then some.
October 28, 2026 @ 10:51 pm
By now they have enough money to just go fishing, golfing, hunting… etc. Rest on your laurels and please don’t put out any pop country drivel