Well, folks, it’s already August, and college football is just a week away! As sad as it is to bid farewell to summer lake days with Kenny and Alan, we’ll get one last hurrah here on Labor Day weekend. In more personal news, your favorite (and only) country stats journalist got engaged this past month, so this article is a quick change of pace from the whirlwind of suit colors and wedding venues that has encompassed my August! But as you all know, there’s always time for country music (confession: yours truly may or may not have listened to CoJo’s “Diamond in My Pocket” en route to proposing), so let’s jump in!
After last month’s foray into mid-year analysis, we return to our regularly scheduled programming of month-over-month changes. The first thing that stands out here is more movement than we’re used to seeing month-over-month. There are a few reasons, but the biggest is we switched back to single-day voting rather than breaking it up into two days. There are some methodology complexities I won’t bore you with, but the upshot is that the bottom half of the CC50 got a boost in the 2-day voting (less engagement drop-off between the first slide and the 20th slide versus, say the 44th slide) and now with the switch back those changes have reverted. The result is a lot of green at the top of the rankings and red towards the bottom.
That said, there was some notable movement beyond that. Zach Bryan’s wavering pedestal atop the CC50 officially collapsed as he fell below #2 for the first time and nearly fell out of the top-five altogether. Meg Moroney hit a new peak at #7 ahead of her album release, while Post Malone stalled slightly, leading up to F-1 Trillion. It will be worth watching how listeners’ impressions of those albums impact September’s voting. Further down, Zach Top’s meteoric rise continued, breaking into the top 10 for the first time.
Biggest Risers and Fallers
Some familiar names here, such as Zach Top, Meg Moroney, and Wyatt Flores, have been some of the most consistent residents in the Biggest Risers list since the inception of the CC50. Top, in particular, had a huge month, crossing the 50% Interest (over half of CC50 voters are interested in his new music!) and top-10 thresholds for the first time. George Strait is also an interesting member of this list. Strait is just one of several classic artists to have released musically (most notably Willie Nelson and Randy Travis) but he is the only one who has turned short-term release hype into a lasting CC50 presence. Obviously, all of those artists are legends, but at least to me, only Strait’s recent songs were ones I would listen to if they were by some random up-and-coming artists; the rest felt fairly derivative.
As mentioned earlier in this column, the bottom half of the CC50 was hit hard by the shift back to single-day voting, and several of the biggest gainers from the last month slid back to where they had been previously. It’s also of note that both Rhett and Rice released music the previous month. TR’s album was fairly bland and honestly might hurt his ranking, but Rice’s “Haw River” single was hauntingly beautiful and one of the best releases of the year, in my opinion. It’s a shame he fell out of the CC50, but it would not surprise me if we don’t see him back in the CC50 as a wildcard soon.
Quick Hits
- Last month, this (incredibly scientific and insightful) column predicted that August would be the month that Riley Green would break up the top 5. Well, that did, in fact, happen, but it feels like an understatement. Not only did Riley Green move past Stapleton and into fifth, but he vaulted into fourth due to Zach Bryan’s sudden collapse. I would not be surprised to see ZB bounce back next month, but I think Riley Green has enough steam to stay in the top 5 for a while. It’s a remarkable achievement for Riley, especially given his lighter catalog compared to some of the other names here.
- August was a big month for CC50 releases, headlined by massive albums “F-1 Trillion” and “Am I Okay?”. Post Malone and Meg Moroney saw building interest ahead of the releases, but the proof will come in September’s voting. While artists often see a post-release CC50 boost, a middling album can often lead to a dip, as even heavy hitters like Stapleton and ZB have experienced. As such, Thomas Rhett may be in some dangerous territory, already dropping to the 20% range before his “About a Woman” album. I enjoy TR, and “Church” was a solid song, but the rest of the album felt uninspired, especially after seeing how good he can be on Country Again.
- Overall listener interest decreased in August, with a percentage of 36.7% (indicating that the average artist on the CC50 has 3.5 in 10 audience members interested in their releases). This dip was partly a result of the return to single-day voting and partly a down month in general for country music interest. The overall vote count was 267,942
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Wildcard Watch
Believe it or not, even we here at Country Central make mistakes. Hence why, I have to start this section by sheepishly admitting that in last month’s column, I alluded to “one month after Jelly Roll set the highest debut ever for a wildcard”when Jelly Roll was not, in fact, a wildcard, and has been a staple in the CC50 for quite a while. More astute readers may have realized that I meant to refer to Post Malone, who recently splashed into the CC50 with a similar blue-collar, unvarnished voice. Regardless, it was a rather funny Freudian slip, and we’ll do our best to avoid sticking our foot in it again this month.
Moving on to this month’s *actual* wildcards, we had our third consecutive top-20 wildcard debut, with Ella Langley breaking in at 37% Interest. After several months of revolving door wildcards, it’s been fun to see some real shakeups in the CC50, and unique circumstances have allowed Post Malone, George Strait, and now Ella Langley to leap to the top of the chart in very short order. Further down, Zeiders, 49 Winchester, and Midland returned to the chart, although it remains to be seen if they will stick. That said, all three have released music recently and seem to have at least marginal momentum, so I don’t necessarily see any of them yo-yo-ing immediately out again.
Well, that’s all for us here at the CC50 headquarters; it’s time for me to get back to listening to “Haw River” and Miranda Lambert’s clever new release “Alimony” on repeat while doing my best to give input on wedding photographers (spoiler alert: I know nothing about photography). Rice and Lambert’s songs couldn’t be any more different in tone or topic, but they represent some of the best story-telling in modern country music with traditional instrumentation. We’ll see you back here in a month with y’all’s verdict on Post Meg and TR’s albums. Until then, stay awesome, and vote in the CC50 and Wildcards next month!
