The dog days of late summer are upon us, and much like a worn-out baseball team limping to the playoffs patched together with duct tape and the power of friendship, the CC50 voters showed some fatigue in August. Through a combination of the summer seasonal bubble coming down and some disappointing releases (looking at you, Wallen, Childers, and Top), the top of the CC50 struggled mightily. 8 of the top 10 and 11 of the top 15 artists saw drops in interest, and all drops were 1% or greater. Childers, Wallen, and Top suffered the most, as they combined to shed 15% of their interest in the wake of underwhelming offerings. Not everyone had an August swoon, however. Gavin Adcock, riding a wave of recent publicity, continued his surge in the rankings, setting the pace with a 10% interest gain, followed by several other artists with similar voting bases—Gossett, Westbrook, and Barber. We’ll dig into all these numbers, but first, the full data table:
Biggest Risers
We’ll touch on Adcock more later in this article, as he soared to his 3rd straight month of chart-topping growth, but the artists he has brought along with him have been equally impressive. We’ve discussed correlated artists a few times, but there might not be a more remarkable correlation than the Adcock-Gossett-Barber trio. Obviously, there are some differences, but the general pattern of the three artists’ interests over time is highly related. All three broke into the rankings in mid-2024, surged during the Zach Top wave last fall, plateaued for most of 2025 (with all three dipping in February and rising in March in unison), and then surged again this summer. While we don’t have detailed enough statistics to say for certain, it would be a very safe bet to say that there is a lot of overlap between voters excited about Gavin Adcock, voters excited about Dylan Gossett, and voters excited about Sam Barber.
Biggest Fallers
Just last month, we were surprised to see the top five artists drop a combined 7.5 points of interest, marking the second-worst month of all time for the Top five. Well, evidently, Top, Green, Stapleton, Combs, and CoJo all read this column regularly (the only logical explanation). It said “hold our beer”, dropping exactly 7.55% points of interest to one up last month’s slide. At the end of the day, there really isn’t any real concern for the top five outside of some typical fatigue and a lack of output (Top addressed that this month).
The real concern lies with two artists just outside the top 5. Last month in this column, we wrote, “Childers may run into some headwinds based on early audience reactions to Snipe Hunter, but generally speaking, any new music is good new music, especially for artists like Childers”. Well, as it turns out, any new music is not good music, as listeners resoundingly gave their disapproval to Snipe Hunter and continued to pile on Wallen’s I’m the Problem. Wallen has now slid 16 points since the release of the overly-long album and shows no signs of stabilizing his support. Megan Moroney and Treaty Oak Revival now sit within 2 points of him, and will look to move past the former CC50 #1 in the rankings for the first time.
Quick Hits
- We’ve mentioned it twice already in this article, but Gavin Adcock is on a winning streak we haven’t seen since Zach Top this past winter and Post Malone last summer. What makes Adcock different from those comparisons, interestingly, is that he isn’t an upstart Wildcard artist. In fact, Adcock has a fairly long track record in the CC50, sitting comfortably in the back half of the rankings since April 2024, 16 months ago. While his general trend has been up, he’s lacked a big breakout moment until the buildup to Own Worst Enemy, as he has surged to not one, not two, but three straight months as the biggest riser in the CC50. An 18-point jump over 3 months is, in fact, the 2nd biggest 3-month jump, to only Zach Top September-December ‘24 (24.4% jump). Sam Barber has the 3rd biggest jump with 18.3% between October ‘24-January ‘25.
- Recently promoted Jordan Davis picked the perfect time to release an album, with Learn the Hard Way coming out the same month that he garnered enough Wildcard votes to return to the CC50. I am admittedly partial to Jordan Davis; Home State remains one of my favorite albums, featuring clever, unpretentious songs like “Slow Dance in a Parking Lot”, “Leaving New Orleans”, and, of course, the guilty pleasure “Take It from Me”. While Learn the Hard Way is admittedly a mixed bag, like Davis’s more recent catalog, he successfully blends swampy Louisiana themes with his signature polished, poppy production. “Son of a Gun”, “Louisiana Stick”, and “Muddy the Water” are rollicking standouts while “Know You Like That” and “Jesus Wouldn’t Do” showcase more of Davis’s reflective side. If you’re willing to overlook some of the album’s bloat, it’s well worth a listen and a return to form for the Louisiana native.
- Overall listener interest dropped back a full point from July to August, with an Interest percentage of 39% (indicating that the average artist on the CC50 has 4 in 10 audience members interested in their releases). The overall vote count was also lower, at 246,828, following summer peaks in June and July.
Wildcard Watch
Well, that was underwhelming. One month after Vincent Mason entered the CC50 with a bang (his rise stalled out a bit this month, but he held onto his top-30 ranking), July’s wildcards went out with a whimper, with only Thomas Rhett squeaking out another month with a 45th place ranking. While not unexpected, given that all five of the promoted artists have been up and down on the wildcard carousel quite a bit, it does make for less compelling storylines.
That will almost certainly not be the case in September, however, as Tim McGraw prepares to make a triumphant return to the CC50 in the buildup to the as-of-yet unnamed album he is working on. He received 60% Interest from Wildcard voters, the 10th highest number in Wildcard history, and every artist who has received 60% or more interest in Wildcard voting has survived for at least one month. 49 Winchester, Jordan Davis, Midland (yes, Midland again), and Dylan Marlowe rounded out the five promotions, all in the regular 35-45% Interest range, and unlikely to make any lasting presence.
We’ll wrap it up there, but be sure to vote and come back here next month. In case anyone was keeping count (if you are, congratulations—you have a better memory than I; I definitely didn’t realize this while writing this article), this marks 24 months of CC50 data and articles. For those of y’all who have been intrepid enough to read this column for the last two years, we’ll throw a 2-year-birthday party next month, the only way we know how – weird statistics-style. So we’ll dust off our party hats and off-key “Happy Birthday” singing and see y’all back here in September for a 2-year lookback on the Inside the CC50 column.
