Month: December 2022

Darius Rucker will receive the Music Heals Golden Ukulele at Musicians on Call's annual Millions of Moments event in Nashville in January. The award is in recognition of Darius' support for Musicians on Call, which brings live and recorded music to hospitals and other medical settings.

Singer and 17-year Army veteran Craig Morgan recently brought some holiday cheer overseas during a USO trip to Germany. It's the 13th trip Craig has made since his first USO tour in 2002.

Brett Young and Rhonda Vincent are joining the American Pops Orchestra for a New Year's Eve performance set to air on PBS.

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Dustin Lynch's “Something That Makes You Smile” is all about finding joy in life, and in the music video for the song, the singer brought joy to kids all across Tennessee.

The first scenes of the clip show Dustin stocking up at a Nashville toy store before heading out to play Santa for kids in Music City and beyond. His first stop is the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital, where he hangs out with the patients – with his sack of Christmas gifts, of course.

Elsewhere in the music video, Dustin heads down to his hometown of Tullahoma, Tennessee, for his annual Dustin Lynch and Friends Benefit Concert, which raised over $30,000 for Shepard's House, Tullahoma Sports Council Inc. and Hands-On Science Center.

The best part of the video is watching the kids open their gifts and meet Dustin. 

“Something That Makes You Smile” comes off the track list of Dustin's Blue in the Sky album.

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Sam Hunt will kick off 2023 in Boston. The singer announced on Twitter this week that he'll play a free show ahead of the 2023 Discover NHL Winter Classic.

Game day will kick off with a new fan experience, Breakaway, which serves as the preparty for the main event. Sam's performance there will take place at the Brookline Lot, which is directly across the street from the venue for the big hockey game, Fenway Park.

This year's matchup is between the Boston Bruins and the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Breakaway event takes place between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on January 2, featuring an air hockey table and libations, in addition to Sam's set.

The game itself starts after the preparty, which is free and open to the public. Tickets to the Winter Classic are available now.

In other news from Sam, he dropped a new song called “Start Nowhere” last month and hinted at some more new music that he hopes will come out soon. Most recently, he was at the top of the charts with Ingrid Andress thanks to their duet, “Wishful Drinking.”

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Blake Shelton is stepping away from his coaching role on The Voice after the show’s upcoming 23rd season, and he has said that a big part of that decision comes from wanting to prioritize his family life with wife Gwen Stefani and her three children.

“I love all the cool things I get to do with my job. But those things all take a back seat now to Gwen and the kids,” the singer explains to ET online. “It's just a new phase of my life.”

But that doesn't mean Blake’s saying goodbye to his career in country music. On the contrary, he says he'll keep performing and putting out music for as long as fans want to hear from him.

“I wanna keep my music side of what I do alive from now til they fire me, fans fire me. You know?” the singer goes on to say.

With his long career on the Voice now under his belt, Blake says he's drawn in a wider fan base than he had before his TV spot. “It's actually helped pour over into my music,” he points out. “I've pulled an audience from TV that maybe didn't even know who I was.”

He adds, “At the end of the day, having songs on the radio, being able to go out and tour and play — that's what I do. I'm a country singer.”

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Family has always been important to rising star Jelly Roll, so after his mom suffered an injury and wasn't able to make it to his recent headlining Bridgestone Arena show in Nashville, her son decided he had to do something to make it up to her.

As she continues to recuperate, Jelly says he's bringing the party to his mom’s nursing home for a stripped-down set this week.

“My mother fell and broke her ankle right before the Nashville show…she's been sad she missed the show,” the singer explained to his fans on Twitter. “So this week I'm going to the nursing home with the guitar and putting on a show.”

Jelly's early-December Bridgestone date was more than just a show: It was a marquee, sold-out performance in the singer's hometown, punctuating a career rise that the singer described to Billboard as a “Cinderella story.”

It was also a reflection on how far he's come. Proceeds from that show went toward Jelly's $250,000 donation to a new recording studio at the Davidson County Detention Center, the facility where he was incarcerated as a teen and where he first discovered his love of music.

Over the course of his short but impressive career, Jelly's made it clear that family is priority number one. During an October show in Houston, the singer brought his wife Bunnie and daughter Bailee Ann to the stage, the latter of whom even performed a duet with her dad.

This fall, the singer also grieved the loss of two close family members: His wife's mother, and his nephew, the latter of whom was shot and killed in Nashville.

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There’s one Christmas song Brett Young loves so much that he says it actually creeps into most of his music: “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which was originally introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis.

“Before you dig too deep about the lyrics, it’s the ballad that I try to put out with every single song I ever put out,” he reveals. “So that is obviously what I gravitate towards.”

“But there’s something about the lyric matched with the music that makes – it’s even in the lyric, ‘Let your heart be light.’ It just literally makes me feel that way,” he says.

Most of all for Brett, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” evokes what he loves most about the holiday.

“For me, Christmas is always about being with family,” he reflects. “And whether it’s said that specifically or not in the song, everything about the lyric makes me feel like I’m sitting in the living room with my family. And that is the holidays for me.”

The Californian recorded his version of the song for 2021’s Brett Young & Friends Sing the Christmas Classics. It’s a duet with Australian pop star Sam Fischer, though Brett originally intended to record it with his CMT Crossroads partners Boyz II Men.

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