The Field & Stream Music Festival has been cancelled for the second year in a row. The festival was set to be held in Winnsboro, South Carolina October 3-5, 2025
George Strait is stepping up big to help his fellow Texans affected by the severe flooding over the 4th of July weekend in Central Texas. Strait’s sphere of influence is definitely felt strongly throughout the region.
The ACM Awards continue to spiral towards irrelevancy. That said, there are some interesting names in the nominations for the 2025 ACM Awards released Thursday.
You can’t save country music while ignoring commercial country. One of the ways we address the mainstream is by highlighting the best albums in the mainstream in hopes they help influence country moving forward.
Instead of exploiting a moment when Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn still have tread left on the tires to give it another shot with original songs, we get a second installment in their Reboot series.
“I was gonna write a speech,” Johnson said as he took the podium. “But like everything else I did while I was here at Jacksonville State I have procrastinated until the last possible second.”
Saving Country Music spends the vast majority of the time focusing on artists and bands that get overlooked and under-appreciated in popular country music. But that doesn’t mean that mainstream country is entirely terrible.
To Riley Green fans, he’s the real deal in country music, and nowhere near those mainstream pop country lightweights like Dan + Shay or Parmalee. Riley Green is an actual country music star singing actual country music songs.
Flatland Cavalry have their work cut out for them in the coming weeks and months. They’ve already been announced as one of the big beneficiaries of the massive stadium tour Luke Combs is throwing this year. But they won’t be sitting on their laurels in between.
If 90% of mainstream country music is bad, then it stands to reason that 10% of it must be good, or at least decent. So under the philosophy of celebrating what stands out in hopes it sustains, the idea that mainstream country fans deserve good music too, and to not be independent music music snobs […]
Starting with his hit “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” Riley Green has delivered one song after another that labors and often achieves to touch something deeper in the listener than just their vapid, passive-listening pleasure zone placed in the bullseye of the likes of 101.1 FM.
Remember, it’s just the ACM Awards. Less prestigious than the CMAs, and more susceptible to bloc voting and other dubious practices than most any other awards apparatus in country music and beyond, think of it more as a performative infomercial for the mainstream of country music.
Riley Green’s “Bury Me in Dixie” has returned to streaming services after it was pulled due to a controversial line in the song. “I wish Robert E. Lee could come and take a bow” is the line that was deemed too incendiary to continue to serve to the public, and the song was pulled from streaming services in late October.
It’s a new era in mainstream country music. Artists like Riley Green, and songs like “I Wish Grandpas Never Died” featuring ample steel guitar and twang aren’t being shied away from. They’re being favored as the hot commodity of the moment amid the dying embers of Bro Country. You can thank performers like Chris Stapleton, Jon Pardi, and Luke Combs for opening up this opportunity.