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In spite of their chokehold on pop culture, last year’s best-selling US album was not one by Taylor Swift or Beyoncé — nor was it the Barbie soundtrack. Instead, 2023’s kingpin was Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At A Time, which sold the equivalent of 5.4mn albums, making it the biggest album in eight years.
It was the second smash hit record in three years by the Tennessee country singer. His songs — which revolve around whiskey, women and pick-up trucks — have gone thoroughly mainstream, becoming the soundtracks to teenagers’ TikToks and shopping mall queues.
Wallen’s soaring success mirrors a wider renaissance for country music. The genre is having a moment, reaching a level of mainstream popularity and financial power not seen in several decades, according to music executives. It’s a phenomenon that reveals how changes in technology such as streaming can help mould culture.
Here are some of the numbers. Last year, four country songs soared to the number one spot on the Billboard charts — the highest count for the genre since 1975. Wallen’s hit song, “Last Night” — which was streamed more than 1bn times — sat at number one for 16 weeks. It was also the first time since 1981 that a male solo country artist hit number one in mainstream pop. Consumption of country music as a whole jumped by nearly 22 per cent last year, according to Luminate.
“[Country artists] are fucking rock stars,” summarised the chief executive of one of the world’s largest record labels. “They’re the new rappers.”
Beyoncé is making a country album. So is Lana del Rey, who told a Grammy’s event in January: “If you can’t already tell by our award winners and our performers, the music business is going country . . . That’s why Jack [Antonoff] has followed me to Muscle Shoals, Nashville, Mississippi, over the past four years.” Lainey Wilson said last year: “It’s like everybody, all of a sudden, is wanting a horse and wanting to wear a cowboy hat.”
The music business has indeed noticed. Over the past year, global music companies have been sending executives to Nashville, the centre of country music since the 1920s, where they are splashing out money on promising talent. “Every single label that only dealt in pop, rock and urban [music], they’re all diving into the [country] space,” said Cris Lacy, co-president of Warner Music’s Nashville division.
There’s a straightforward explanation for country’s sharp rise. Country music listeners are usually slower to adopt new technologies, lagging behind by about three to five years, according to music executives. These fans are now catching up to streaming, and so country as a genre is finally getting its proper due. This follows an earlier phase of streaming, from 2016 through around 2020, when younger listeners had adopted Spotify and were voraciously streaming rappers such as Drake or Lil Uzi Vert, propelling hip hop songs to the top of the charts.
Wallen boasted the highest-selling US album in both 2021 and 2023, a stretch of domination in the music charts not seen since Drake’s blockbuster run from 2016 to 2018. And similar to Drake, Wallen’s success is owed almost entirely to streaming — an unusual feat in country music, which has long been dominated by traditional radio and physical album sales.
Other younger country stars, such as Zach Bryan, are also emulating the hip hop playbook: skirting traditional radio promotion and releasing music frequently.
Executives in Nashville say there’s also a political undertone to the current popularity of their work, pointing to phenomenons like Oliver Anthony, a previously little-known musician who scored a number one hit with “Rich Men North of Richmond” — a protest song propelled by rightwing personalities on social media.
Nashville is itself going through a complicated growth spurt. Having become a destination for transplants from New York or Los Angeles during the pandemic, the city’s downtown is cluttered with construction sites as it races to get bigger. “Music City” has long been a liberal oasis within the conservative state of Tennessee, but in recent years influential rightwing figures have moved to Nashville, including Tomi Lahren and Candace Owens. Ben Shapiro relocated his Daily Wire headquarters there.
Warner’s Lacy says the influx of interest is “exciting” but comes with “trepidation”. “Anytime something becomes too big, it runs the risk of being watered down . . . everybody wants a piece, and then it becomes a thing nobody wants anymore,” she said. “So I think we’re all aware that that’s the cycle.”
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