AvIt’s hard to believe summer is almost over; in fact, here in Tennessee, schools have already been back in session for the last few weeks. Perhaps part of what makes it hard to believe is that there have been remarkably few changes to the CC50 since temps started creeping into the 80s back in May. In fact, not only are the top 10 artists the same as they were three months ago, there have been only two changes in rankings among the top 13 artists (all of whom were in the top 13 back in May as well). Luke Combs has taken the #2 spot from Zach Top, and Wallen and Green have flip-flopped to #5 and #6, respectively. For a season known in the industry for big headlines and blockbuster releases, this summer has been a veritable snooze-fest. That said, there have been a few notable changes that we’d be remiss to gloss over, like Avery Anna’s breaking into the top-15 for the first time, Luke Bryan’s brief CC50 exit and current tight-rope walk at #45, and even Zach Top’s first finish outside the top two in nearly two years (20 months to be exact). There are some big changes on the horizon, with this almost certainly being George Strait’s last month on the CC50 and a big change coming to how we vote on the CC50. We’ll get into both of those in our Quick Hits section, but first, here are the full rankings for August:
Quick Hits:
- We love Charley Crockett as much as anyone here at CC50, but wow, a minuscule 8.3% of Interest caught all our eyes in the above chart. It’s common for wildcards to make underwhelming debuts for a couple of reasons. First, Wildcard voting is usually a smaller subset of voters than the full CC50, so a small, motivated segment of voters can elevate a Wildcard to the CC50 beyond their broader level of support. Second, slotting in at the 49th slot of the Instagram stories is a tough spot to be in, as voters are fatigued by the time they reach the wildcard spots. Still, getting less than 10% Interest stood out at first glance. In fact, as we dug into it further, it turns out it is the only instance of any artist failing to get 10% of voters to vote Interested. Below are the lowest Interest% in CC50 history. Notably, all were Wildcards, and only Crockett and McBryde have made multiple CC50 appearances. McBryde hasn’t made it back to the CC50 since this performance, though, and Crockett will have to hope to bounce back if he wants to make it back up.
- George Strait has had a great run on the CC50 since his debut back in the summer of 2024, when he began releasing music from his September album, Cowboys and Dreamers. Next month’s voting will mark the 2nd anniversary of that album, which invokes a little-known rule of the CC50. Once an artist goes two years without releasing new music, they become ineligible until they release new music again. Only Colter Wall and Brad Paisley have ever fallen afoul of this rule, and they both renewed their eligibility within the last year due to new music. The reason for this rule is that it prevents “legacy voting”, where artists stay on the CC50 because of their past music, not because of any real interest in new music they might release. While Cowboys and Dreamers was anything but coasting for Strait, it was a very solid album; the fact that his Interest% has not fallen at all in the two years since then is a great illustration of why this rule is in place. The chart below shows how static voters were on voting for Strait.
- On another administrative note, we’re pleased to announce the biggest step forward in the three years we’ve been doing the CC50! Starting with October’s voting, we will start shifting our voting from Instagram to a new platform on the Country Central website. This will improve the process for everyone, allowing voters to vote over a longer period of time, giving access to voters who don’t have Instagram, and (most importantly to me) unlocking better statistics, including correlations between artists. Look for a bigger announcement on this in the near future!
- Overall listener interest held steady, with an Interest percentage of 35.5% (indicating that the average artist on the CC50 has 3.5 in ten audience members interested in their releases). This falls in line with this summer’s numbers, which have been consistently lower than previous summers. The overall vote count was 270,116, a small step up from July.
Biggest Risers and Fallers
Avery Anna has gotten a lot of love in this column in 2026, and with good reason. She has gained Interested voters in all but one month and appeared in the biggest risers section a whopping four times. She’s done this by slashing her Unsure% from 50% all the way down to 33% with still a third of the year to go. In layperson’s terms, that means that coming into 2026 half of voters were not familiar with her music, and now only a third are unfamiliar. This has come with a slight uptick in Disinterested voters (up to 23% from 19% at the start of the year), but that means that the vast majority of the 17% of newly familiar voters are voting Interested rather than Disinterested. Of course, that could shift when she puts out a larger body of music and the opportunity for fatigue sets in, as we’ve seen with Zach Top, but for now, I would easily put her on top ten watch.
On the flip side, Jon Pardi has given away all the Interest he built from the bonus tracks on the California Sunrise 10th Anniversary album. As much as I’ve loved his sound in the past, I can’t say I disagree with the voters here, as none of the three songs really grabbed my attention or made me more interested in his music. Riley Green has been fairly volatile recently, but the overall trend here is concerning. He’s now dropped 12 points of interest since the start of 2026 and is looking up at the top 5, an unusual position for the former CC50 #1 who posted 12 straight months of 70%+ interest between 2024-2025. His music hasn’t felt as creative lately, and the voters evidently feel similarly.
September’s voting here in the next week or two will mark three full years of the CC50. Be on the lookout for this column, as we’ll have more long-term analyses and reminisce about what the CC50 chart looked like all the way back in Fall of 2023, when we got this thing off the ground. October’s voting will also be an exciting opportunity as we launch the website voting platform, which will unlock even more statistics and goodies for me to share with y’all. Be sure to look for September’s voting on Instagram, and I’ll see y’all back here in a month!
