Carly Pearce and Ashley McBryde are putting an acoustic spin on their duet, “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” out on Friday. The original version of the song comes off Carly's latest project, 29: Written in Stone.
Eli Young Band, the Texas hitmakers behind chart-topping songs like “Love Ain't” and “Drunk Last Night,” have released a new song. It's called “Love Talking.”
Jordan Davis joins former tour mates Seaforth for their newly-released “Good Beer.” The track came out Friday morning, with a music video to follow at 6 p.m. ET.
Maddie & Tae returned this Friday with “Strangers,” a new song they're sharing ahead of the release of Through the Madness Vol. 1.
“How were we ever strangers?” the song's chorus asks. “Seems crazy to me now / Haven't I known you forever? / Cause the thought of the days without / You and all your love / Have all but disappeared…”
The song, which is the last track on the eight-track Through the Madness Vol. 1 collection, is a harmony-laden ode to life-changing love. It's one of multiple love songs on Through the Madness inspired by band mates Maddie Font and Taylor Kerr's real-life love stories with their husbands, also including “Woman You Got” and the title track, “Madness.”
The full project will be out on January 28. Maddie & Tae are also currently working to reschedule their 2022 tour, CMT Next Women of Country Tour Presents: All Song No Static.
They recently postponed the tour as a precaution, since Taylor, who is pregnant, has been placed on “temporary bedrest” by her doctor.
Miranda Lambert, Jon Randall and Jack Ingram are taking fans inside the making of their Grammy-nominated album, The Marfa Tapes, with an upcoming documentary film.
The movie, which has the same name as the album, will add a visual element to the Texas trio's raw, acoustic project, which they recorded while on a songwriting and music-making trip to Marfa, Texas. The project captures the live energy of the songs, as well as the ambient noises of planes overhead, cows in a neighboring pasture and coyotes howling in the distance.
“It's scary, it's risky, it's very, very vulnerable, to not have any fixes,” Miranda explains in a trailer for the documentary. “To not have any production. To just let the wind blow, and the birds, and the cows, and kinda let it be.”
The Marfa Tapes documentary film premieres January 20 on Paramount+.
Walker Hayes might be “trying to stay out of AA” in his current single, but in his just-released new tune, “Drinking Songs,” he's falling prey to “ciga-regrets” and the kind of heartache only a stiff drink can cure.
It's the first song on the track list of Country Stuff The Album, an upcoming expansion on his 2021 EP of the same title. That project also includes his mega-hit, “Fancy Like,” plus follow-up single “AA” and 10 more tracks.
Though he’s six years sober, Walker says he loves revisiting the heady healing powers of alcohol through the lyrics of his new song.
“Drinking Songs' is one of my favorites off the new album. I don't drink anymore but I still connect with how a song can get you through, just like a drink can for some people,” he explains. “We've all been in a bar full of people singing together, arms around each other. Plus, the lyrics and the beat have a relatable quality to them that feels so country to me.”
Later this month, Walker's kicking off The Fancy Like Tour.
On Friday, Maren Morris dropped what she describes as “My story in a song.” Called “Circles Around This Town,” the track follows her journey from a young country fan growing up in Texas to a songwriter turned country superstar in Music City.
“I drove circles around this town / Trying to write circles around this town / Trying to say something with meaning / Something worth singing about,” Maren sings in the song’s chorus. “I've been kind and I've been ruthless / Yeah, I got here but the truth is / Thought when I hit it it'd all look different / But I've still got the pedal down…”
“Circles Around This Town” even namechecks Maren's big breakout hit, “My Church,” which was her debut single in 2016 and cemented her place as one of country's biggest young stars.
To go along with the new music, she dropped a music video chronicling her journey from small-town Texas to the driver's seat in a vintage car, all the way to her final destination: Nashville.
In the first scene, Maren's puttering around her kitchen when a voice coming from an infomercial on her TV catches her ear. That familiar voice will likely make many country fans' ears perk up, too: It's none other than Reba McEntire.
Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town will split a bill once again: They're co-headliners for a 2022 iteration of The Bandwagon Tour, which will kick off this spring.
It's a return of the two act's 2018 tour of the same name, and this time around, The Cadillac Three will join Miranda and Little Big Town's traveling show as an opening act. The full lineup will kick things off on May 6 with a show in Houston, Texas, hitting amphitheaters across 15 dates and wrapping in June.
“The Bandwagon tour is BACK!! Been dying to share this news,” Little Big Town wrote on social media this morning.
“This is one of the most fun tours I've ever done,” Miranda added on her socials. “See y'all for round two!”
Before the party starts in earnest, Miranda and The Cadillac Three will kick things off a little early, playing three shows without Little Big Town starting a week before the full tour launches.
Tickets go on sale next Friday, January 14 at 10 a.m. local time, except for the May 6 Houston stop, which opens up to ticket sales on January 21. Additionally, there's a special presale for Citi cardholders starting the Tuesday before tickets open up to the general public.
Leaders of the nation’s third-largest school district canceled classes for a third consecutive day amid negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union over remote learning and other COVID-19 safety protocols. The teachers union voted this week to revert to online instruction, telling teachers to stay home starting Wednesday during the latest COVID-19 surge — just two days after students returned from winter break. District officials had to cancel classes each day for students in the roughly 350,000-student district during negotiations, saying there’s no plan to return to districtwide remote instruction.
In a Thursday message to parents, district officials said classes would be canceled Friday but “in-person learning and activities may be available at a small number of schools” based on how many staff show up; a small percentage of teachers have continued to come to schools during what the district has labeled an “illegal work stoppage.” However, the offerings would vary from school to school, and some alerted parents earlier in the day that they wouldn’t have enough staff to have children and preemptively canceled.
Chicago Public Schools, like most other districts, has rejected a districtwide return to remote learning. District officials insist schools can safely remain open with protocols in place, however there was little sign Thursday that either side was softening. Issues on the table including more testing and metrics to trigger school closures.
During an address on Thursday to commemorate the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol a year ago, President Joe Biden criticized former President Donald Trump, denouncing him for sowing a “web of lies” about voter fraud and a “stolen” election and undermined democracy in the United States because he couldn’t come to terms with the fact that he’d lost.
Biden gave his remarks at the National Statuary Hall at the Capitol, the building that was overrun by extremist Trump supporters in an effort to disrupt the Electoral College vote confirming Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. In his speech, Biden said: “I will stand in the breach. I will defend this nation, and I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy. [Trump is] not just a former president, he’s a defeated former president.” Biden accused his predecessor of valuing profit and personal gain over the rule of law and the will of the people.
Biden also noted that Trump did literally nothing to intervene for hours while a radicalized mob broke into the Capitol and looked to harm members of Congress. Said Biden: “It was an armed insurrection. They were not trying to uphold the will of the people. They were looking to deny the will of the people. They were not looking to uphold a free and fair election, they were looking to overturn one.”
The president also had words for the rioters who ransacked the Capitol, saying they were not “patriots” and were not trying to save democracy. Biden said: “You can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t obey the law only when it’s convenient. You can’t be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies. Those who stormed this Capitol, those in instigated and incited it and those who called on them to do so, held a dagger at the throat of America.”
Dustin Lynch capped 2021 with country radio success, as his duet with MacKenzie Porter, “Thinking ‘Bout You,” spent two weeks at the top of the charts.
But back before the song was a hit single, Dustin was on the hunt for the perfect duet partner to record it with, and he chose MacKenzie — a Canadian up-and-comer with three back-to-back chart-toppers on Canadian country radio — through a kind of unconventional process.
“Myself and my team had an idea of, like, ‘What if we just submit to the universe and the country music community — ‘Hey, if you want to be a part of this song, submit an audition,'” Dustin remembers. “But I didn’t want to be persuaded based on the name or the camp they were a part of. So I literally just had a folder full of numbers coming to my inbox.”
Dustin and his team each chose their favorite auditions, and the result was clear. “It all pointed to MacKenzie,” he notes.
“So it was literally a blind audition,” Dustin explains, adding that he and MacKenzie didn’t even know each other at the time. “We had never met. And the first time we met was actually to go into the studio and get [her] part down.”
“Thinking ‘Bout You” originally appeared on Dustin’s fourth studio album, Tullahoma. Recently, he’s continued to find success with country collaborations: He duetted with Riley Green on “Huntin’ Land,” and joined forces with Chris Lane for the summer anthem “Tequila on a Boat.”
Walker Hayes has announced he is writing a new book, Glad You’re Here. The title of the book comes from a line in his 2018 single, “Craig,” which was inspired by his friend Craig Allen Cooper. Throughout his career, Hayes has heavily praised Cooper (who is a pastoral writer), saying he once gave up his own keys to his minivan to help the country singer and his family when they were struggling to make ends meet. The book is said to explore the friendship between the two, sharing the backstory of how they met and how they became neighbors.
Hayes will also talk about how he turned to his spirituality after battling alcoholism and the difficulties it caused with his family, especially his wife Laney. Said Hayes: “I bought the house next door to Craig. The book uncovers the details of our friendship, my testimony, us losing a baby, so I go in detail about losing Oakley and how the Lord has redeemed that. I also talk about my battle with alcoholism and how it’s going. When I met Craig, I was an alcoholic, and now I will be six years sober in October.”
Hayes has yet to share the release date for the project; in the meantime, he will be releasing a new album on Jan. 21 and will kick off the Fancy Like Tour on Jan. 27.
