Is Stella Lefty an “Industry Plant”? Was her career “Astroturfed”? Is she a “Nepo Baby?” Frankly, I really don’t care. Frankly, I really don’t care. But the more the legacy media tries to convince me that Stella Lefty isn’t a Nepo Baby, the more I think she is.
All of the Ella Langley accolades and attention have somewhat overshadowed the rather incredible success of another song, Stella Lefty’s “Boston.” Whether it deserves to be or not, it has also been assigned to the domain of “country.”
In 2026, the Grammy Awards have brought back the “Best Contemporary Folk Album” category that was eliminated in 2012, while also founding a new “Best Traditional Folk Album” category.
The New York Times did do something last week to help address the continuing controversy around their songwriters list, and it became an excellent illustration of the deeper cultural rot at the heart of elite music coverage.
Sam Barber is a contemporary folk artist who has so much more similar in style, sound and approach to the music of Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, Joshua Slone, and other massive artists that have been dominating charts.
What is indisputable at this point is that Ella Langley is nothing short of a country music superstar. She is one of the biggest stars to be launched from the country genre in years, and is one of the biggest artists in all music.
Every once in a while, the releases on a given Friday get so hectic, it becomes imperative to offer an addendum to the regular Release Radar. Friday, April 24th is one of those days.
as bad of an assessment as one might come to about what’s unfolding on the country charts, nothing compares to the monstrosity that is transpiring over in rock. Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and Taylor Swift?
Slone’s career was given a jump start when he appeared in a handful of collaborative videos with Zach Bryan in April. This subsequently blew Slone up on TikTok and Instagram where he’s been posting videos.
Due to inclement weather, the sets for the Saturday night headliners were washed out, with many fans taking online to complain, one fan dying, and now a class-action lawsuit is being threatened.
Similar to many recent Super Bowl halftime performances, the Grammy Awards were primarily dominated by lip-synced performances and choreographic dancing without a live instrument to be seen on stage.
Zach Bryan’s breakup with Brianna Chickenfry has gone from a matter for the kind of gossip podcasts that Brianna is famous for participating in, to a matter that has touched on serious issues that affect the freedom of artists.
The world is waking up to just what a wonder it has in its midst with songwriter and performer Sierra Ferrell. From busking on street corners for ragged dollars, to now being recognized with some of the top awards in the industry.
Clearly the crowd in attendance thought the duet was killer. Most of the reception has been positive. But there has also been quite a few criticizing Tyler Childers for agreeing to the collaboration.
The 2024 ACM Awards had many pondering the question, is it better for an awards show to be bad for the inadvertent entertainment value as opposed to being so boring you want to gouge your eyeballs out?
Instead of importing pop stars to fill out the performance roster, why not pick up on some of the fast-rising independent stars that are quickly outpacing the popularity of country’s 2nd-tier mainstream performers?
As strange as it may sound, the term “saving country music” or “save country music” has been said and written more in the last few months than at any other time in history. This begs a deeper discussion about the term.
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is officially the #1 album on the Billboard Country Albums chart. This is despite Beyoncé explicitly stating in a March 19th statement, “This ain’t a Country album,” and later underscoring this statement.
It nears the realm of impossibility to put enough emphasis on how monumentally important the seismic shifts occurring in the music business at the moment are, and how they’re reverberating throughout every sector of the industry.
On Monday, February 19th, Wyatt Flores announced that he would be cancelling his upcoming show in Oxford, Ohio. Other upcoming shows in Detroit and Toronto will also be rescheduled to a later date.
Instead of a return to country like was being buzzed about, Musgraves adopts a Greenwich Village folk motif of classical guitars and dressing like an English goat farm lass in the “Deeper Well” video.
When the future looks back at this current moment, it will be with envy about how people got to experience when Zach Bryan, Charles Wesley Godwin, the Turnpike Troubadours, and others all released landmark albums.