Month: September 2022

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Garth Brooks is in the midst of a string of sold-out stadium shows at Dublin's Croke Park to end his Stadium Tour, and as he takes the stage, he's back in fighting shape.

“I'm the same weight I was when I played here in 97, that's what I want,” Garth told media outlets before the shows, according to the Irish Mirror, joking that the cameras capturing his performances will add all the weight back.

“The film is going to come,” he continued. “I lost 50 lbs and the film is going to add that right back.”

Garth explains that for years, his priorities were simply different: He was raising kids, and didn't need to maintain a rigorous workout routine in order to play demanding stages. “For 16 years, I was a soccer dad,” he points out.

“And it takes a while to get back to the artist feel,” Garth explains. “It has taken me eight years to get back to it.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Maren Morris is keeping the music coming with a fresh single off her Humble Quest album. For her next radio single, she's selected “I Can't Love You Anymore,” which is the third track on the project.

“Next single let's goooooooooooo,” Maren wrote on Twitter this week along with the single art for her song.

Humble Quest arrived in March, and the project's first single, “Circles Around This Town,” cracked the Top 10 on the country radio charts. Fans have already gotten to familiarize themselves with “I Can't Love You Anymore,” as Maren and her fellow artist husband, Ryan Hurd, debuted the song live at the 2022 CMT Music Awards stage back in April.

In other news, Maren recently returned to the studio with her “The Middle” collaborator Zedd for a new duet, “Make You Say.”

She's also made headlines in recent weeks for her feud with Jason Aldean's wife Brittany over Brittany's transphobic social media comments. Maren launched a t-shirt to commemorate the feud, raising $150,000 to benefit transgender youth causes in the process.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Breland and Thomas Rhett join forces on the boppy, gospel-inspired duet “Praise the Lord,” a song that is one of several mega-watt duets on Breland's just-released Cross Country album.

The duet sounds effortless, but Breland tells Billboard that getting Thomas on the song was actually a fairly involved process: It took “six to eight months” for the song to reach its completed form.

But T.R. — who also penned a verse on “Praise the Lord” — was sold on the collaboration from the get-go because the song got a very important seal of approval. “His family loved it and his kids were listening to it a lot,” Breland remembers.

“He was like, Hey, that's all the confirmation I need. If my kids love it, I'm in,'” the singer goes on to say.

It's no surprise that Thomas' four young daughters are big fans of the song: It includes a shoutout to them on one verse, in which T.R. sings, “Praise the Lord for my three babies and the one that's one the way.” (At the time, his youngest child, Lillie Carolina, hadn't yet been born.)

Cross Country, Breland's much-anticipated full-length debut, arrived last Friday.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Ashley McBryde tells the stories of characters across small-town America in Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville, a new, 13-track collection that will showcase her unparalleled knack for writing story songs.

And she’s not alone in the project: Lindeville is a collaborative effort featuring fellow artists like Brandy Clark and Caylee Hammack. Brothers Osborne‘s John Osborne produced the album.

According to Ashley, the idea for Lindeville was born out of a songwriting retreat with frequent collaborators Nicolette Hayford and Aaron Raitiere.

“We wrote this song called Blackout Betty,' and I realized we had written previous songs called Shut Up Sheila' on Never Will and Livin' Next to Leroy' on Girl Going Nowhere,” she explained. “Aaron had a song called Jesus, Jenny' and I thought, We should keep these characters together and give them a place to live!'”

Ashley and the gang stayed in a rural Tennessee house nearby a lake with “eight bottles of tequila, two cartons of cigarettes, one kitchen table and six individuals out of their minds.” 

Lindeville is due for release on Sept. 30, but you can pre-order the album now. Ashley's Trybe Fan Club will have an exclusive opportunity to purchase the album on limited-edition purple vinyl.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

When Little Big Town‘s Jimi Westbrook and Phillip Sweet got into the room with Tyler Hubbard and Corey Crowder to write “Hell Yeah,” they knew they had something special on their hands. 

Corey had been ruminating on the title for a while, but couldn’t find the lyrics to complete the song. But when he presented the hook that transitions from “hell yeah, I go get drunk on Friday nights” to “but if you’re ever wondering baby if I’m still going through hell, yeah,” the group took off running with the concept. 

“I think that’s the magic of that hook because when you see that, you’re like, ‘I know what this is. This is a ‘hell yeah,'” Jimi says. “[Corey] sang an idea for the chorus and everybody lit up. It was like, ‘I have not heard that before. That’s a different twist on that,’ and that’s what you’re looking for,” he continues. “In songs, that can be really elusive to find that angle on something that you haven’t thought of before. So we loved it from the start.” 

“Hell Yeah” is the lead single off LBT’s new album, Mr. Sun, set for release Friday. 

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.