As I often say, the great thing about the CC50 is that there is always something we haven’t seen before statistically. In May, something new was that almost nothing was new. Unbelievably, the top 16 places in the CC50 had no ranking movement, and the biggest change anywhere was down to #46, where Vincent Mason fell 3.5% and a whopping four spots. This is the smallest “largest change” in the CC50’s history. A potential explanation for this is that both April and May saw extremely high voter turnout, which can produce more stable results with less white noise from small voter subsets turning out in higher or lower numbers than the previous month.
This stable month, with relatively little movement to discuss, provides a great opportunity to look at the CC50’s main purpose: to build a data repository over a long period and gain insights from it. That can be done on a month-to-month basis like we usually do in this column, but with each passing month, the data set gets bigger, and it becomes easier to pick out long-term trends. We’ll kick off this month’s column by sharing this month’s full numbers and then jump straight into more historical data.
All-time Biggest Risers and Fallers over 3-month Span
| 3 Month Growth | 3 Month Period | Artist |
| 24.36% | August-November ’24 | Zach Top |
| 18.33% | October ’24-January ’25 | Sam Barber |
| 14.96% | November ’23-February ’24 | Wyatt Flores |
| 14.85% | September-December ’24 | Treaty Oak Revival |
| 14.16% | November ’23-February ’24 | Dylan Gossett |
This month, we’ll look at the biggest 3-month gains in the CC50’s history. Three months is a good span to look at because it eliminates some of the month-to-month volatility that can occur with a shifting voting base. However, it is also a short enough time period to isolate key hot streaks. If nothing else, the list of the five biggest 3-month gains confirms the CC50 voting accuracy to some extent, as it reads like a who’s who of rising artists over the last 2 years (Ty Myers narrowly missed the cut at #6). While each has its distinct brands (particularly Treaty Oak Revival, which is a bit of an anomaly here), common themes run through Top, Barber, Flores, Gossett, and Myers and point to the direction country music has moved in over the last 2 years. Perhaps the most interesting observation to be drawn here, though, and one that took me by surprise, was that every single one of these rises occurred in the late fall-early winter period, both in 2023 and 2024. We only have 2 years of data, but it raises an interesting question of whether it is easier for newer artists to break out during quieter seasons when the big-name artists aren’t dropping big albums to capture audience attention.
| 3 Month Decline | 3 Month Period | Artist |
| -27.42% | September-December ’23 | Oliver Anthony |
| -17.82% | July-October ’24 | Blake Shelton |
| -15.48% | May-August ‘24 | Willie Nelson |
| -14.99% | October ’24-January ’25 | Post Malone |
| -14.93% | September-December ’24 | Zach Bryan |
On the flip side, the group of biggest 3-month declines is far more diverse cast. For Oliver Anthony, Willie Nelson, and Post Malone, their declines had less to do with people suddenly disliking their music and more with sudden increases in interest based on one song or album that didn’t have much-staying power, so the air left the balloon as suddenly as it had grown. Zach Bryan was the perfect storm of negative headlines and fatigue from his music, knocking him from superstar to “merely” a liked if polarizing, artist. Shelton seems a bit out of place on this list other than that by the summer of 2024; he had been on a prolonged streak of no new music that has since changed. Notably, the biggest faller in the history of the CC50, HARDY, was absent from the biggest 3-month declines. This points to the nature of his fall, which was less a release of overdone hype propping him up and more a slow, gradual descent as his country fans became disillusioned with the direction of his music.
Quick Hits
Pivoting back to this month’s voting, Post Malone has seemingly halted his months-long slide, stabilizing around 28% for four straight months. We already knew he was something less than the new country superstar. His Interest numbers last summer seemed to show, but now we have to wonder if he is also something more than a gimmick flash in the pan. His music is more interesting and substantive than most artists who decide to “go country,” and there seems to be a portion of the CC50 audience that has continued to come back to F-1 Trillion for listening in a way that other hyped debut releases from outside the genre haven’t seen. It will take more time to tell, and almost certainly more music from Post Malone, but surviving the bubble collapse is a huge step in the right direction for him.
- Congratulations to Avery Anna and Bayker Blankenship (no, this is not the start of an alphabet book; Charley Crockett is not in the CC50 at the moment) for staying up in the CC50 one month after their first and second promotions, respectively. Anna has been able to build interest leading up to this month’s album release, let go letters, which are a very good sign for an as-of-yet relatively unknown. If the album resonates with listeners, Anna can dream of following Ella Langley’s rapid ascent up the CC50 from obscurity. Baker had previously made a one-and-done appearance in the CC50 a few months ago, so making at least a 2-month appearance this time around marks progress for the young musician.
- Overall listener interest slipped in May to an Interest percentage of 38.9% (indicating that the average artist on the CC50 has 3.9 in 10 audience members interested in their releases), down a point from April but still up from recent months. The overall vote count was 493,099, a very strong number.
Wildcard Watch
May’s batch of Wildcard promotions (Midland, 49 Winchester, Dylan Marlowe, Sturgill Simpson, and Kameron Marlowe) felt exceptionally familiar, which made me curious – who are the all-time leaders in the frequency of Wildcard promotion? The results were unsurprising, with all 5 of this month’s promotions falling inside the top 10. Kameron Marlowe and 49 Winchester top the all-time leaderboard with six apiece, meaning they’ve been through 6 different promotion-demotion cycles, an impressive feat in a little more than a year and a half. The rest of the leaders fit a similar mold of formerly big-ticket artists who haven’t had much in the way of successful releases. They have big enough names to win votes in the Wildcard voting, but can’t make meaningful traction in the actual CC50. The full top 10 is below.
| Artist | # of Promotions |
| Kameron Marlowe | 6 |
| 49 Winchester | 6 |
| Sturgill Simpson | 4 |
| Miranda Lambert | 4 |
| Midland | 4 |
| Chase Rice | 4 |
| Carrie Underwood | 4 |
| Warren Zeiders | 3 |
| Larry Fleet | 3 |
| Kelsea Ballerini | 3 |
| Dylan Marlowe | 3 |
| Darius Rucker | 3 |
We’ll wrap up there for now, but we will have much to go over next month, with June’s voting revealing early audience impressions of albums from Wallen, Shelton, Church, ERNEST, and Anna. Vote in the CC50 and CC50 Wildcard voting over the next couple of weeks to weigh in; let me know anything you want me to analyze in the comments on Instagram statistically, and I’ll see y’all back here in a month.
