Opening Day is 2 months away, and there’s snow on the ground as I write this, but somehow, I’m still getting that feeling of anticipation as I look at this month’s CC50 rankings. Sure, Zach Top and the Los Angeles Dodgers look unstoppable on paper right now with a 7-point Interest lead and a $400m payroll (I’ll let you guess which one is which), but didn’t we say that about Zach Bryan and the defending champion Texas Rangers last January? Meanwhile, much like the lightly-regarded AL Central landing 3 of the 4 American League finalists, Zach Top had a scant 18% audience interest, and Post Malone and Ella Langley weren’t even on the CC50. On the off chance y’all aren’t baseball fanatics, I’ll let this analogy mercifully die, but the point stands: a lot of weird stuff we couldn’t have predicted last January happened in 2024, and a lot of weird stuff we can’t predict now will happen by January 2026. Let’s look at the numbers and see if we can’t make some conclusions from them.
Biggest Risers and Fallers
As promised, rather than our standard month-over-month view, this month, we’ll look at the change we’ve seen over the last year. Of course, this is tricky for artists like Ella Langley, who didn’t get voted into the CC50 until the middle of last year, so for those, we take the first month that they appeared in the CC50 in 2024 vs. January 2025. The five biggest risers are no surprise here, and a lot of ink has been spilled in this section about these two breakout young stars (Zach and Ella), resurgent veterans (Riley), and two bands with growing fanbases (Treaty Oak Revival and Red Clay Strays). A combination of good promotion and good music was the common denominator, with all but Treaty Oak Revival releasing successful albums and the three solo artists seeing radio success. One thing to note, as we’ve kept an eye on the last couple of months, is Zach Top has finally found the proverbial ceiling in audience interest, bumping into 80% Interest and slightly slipping in January (the first negative month for him since he entered the CC50 rankings).
On the Biggest Fallers side, the Instagram comment section will be happy to see Noah Kahan topping the list here, potentially on his way out of the rankings in the next few months. His Stick Season album drew the interest of country music listeners in 2022-23, with its themes resonating with a largely rural genre. Still, he has never shown any interest in moving in a country direction, and there hasn’t been much new music from him, so this drop was entirely predictable. Post Malone is a bit deceiving on this list, as he didn’t appear on the CC50 until his album release, when his audience Interest % was flying high at 47%. While interest in his music has cooled off substantially since the album release, the fact he was charting that high at all this past summer was an achievement. Turnpike Troubadours and Bailey Zimmerman suffered from a lack of music and headlines, although BZ’s “Holy Smokes” was a personal favorite of mine in 2024.
Quick Hits
- Since the November release of Restless Mind, Sam Barber has continued to roll, posting his second straight 5% increase to push him up to 46% Interest and #15 ranking in the CC50. Both marked career highs for him, with his previous high coming back in November 2023, when he charted at 40% in the aftermath of his successful EP Million Eyes. You can see in the chart below the rising audience apathy throughout 2024 (notice the Disagree% didn’t increase though, indicating audiences didn’t start disliking his music, they just didn’t think about it much) before interest immediately shot up on the release of his album in November 2024.
- George Strait has impressively maintained audience interest compared to many other older artists who have released music in the last year. Even compared to Post Malone, who similarly released what many might consider a novelty album at the same time as Strait this summer, Strait has not suffered from post-release fatigue. In July 2024, Malone outperformed Strait by 52.6% to 52.5% in Audience Interest. Fast forward six months, and the King has gone up to 56.6% while Malone has tumbled to 29.9%, nearly a 30-point gap. It would be hard to sustain, but it would be a bad idea to bet against the King.
- Overall listener interest held steady in December, with an Interest percentage of 38.5% (indicating that the average artist on the CC50 has 3.9 in ten audience members interested in their releases), matching last month’s mark of 38.5%. The overall vote count was 493,845, the highest since March last year. 14,000 voters weighed in on each of Morgan Wallen, Zach Top, and Meg Moroney, all within the top 12 single-month totals in the history of the CC50.
Wildcard Watch
January was one of the most underwhelming Wildcard classes in a while, with there nearly being the first time all five dropped right back out. Dylan Marlowe scraped by at #45, the last position before the cut-off, but 49 Winchester, Midland, Sturgill Simpson, and the Castellows fell right back out. Those four have combined to be promoted and demoted again nearly 20 times, the definition of on the bubble.
Speaking of on the bubble, February’s wildcard class also features a lot of familiar CC50-Wildcard shuttlers. Fresh off his first demotion, Jordan Davis reappears, accompanied by A, Warren Zeiders, Miranda Lambert, and Chase Rice. While these are all excellent artists, the lack of new music from them makes it hard to see any of these promotions sticking long-term. Carrie generated some buzz with her performance of “America the Beautiful” at the recent presidential inauguration, so that could see interest in her music increased. Zeiders also has an album, Relapse, Lies, & Betrayal, due to come out in March, so if he can hang around a couple of months, he may see a boost in these rankings.
With that, we’ll wrap up our first column of 2025 before I talk y’all’s ears completely off. Enjoy the cold weather; it’s the perfect backdrop for a little sad country music. An Ohio State national championship and a Taylor Swift vs. Tush Push Super Bowl are nothing a little Hank and a lot of bourbons can’t fix.
