Eleven months later, Zach Top’s reign atop the CC50 has finally come to an end. When he unseated Morgan Wallen in November ‘24, it sent shockwaves through the CC50 and gave yours truly plenty of content to write about. Over the next year, however, it became almost commonplace to see his name up there to the point that even though the slide started a few months ago, it was still surprising to see his name on the second line of the chart this month. The next in line? Riley Greene steps into the well-deserved spotlight after an almost incredible 10 2nd-place and 3 3rd-place finishes. The rest of the chart was remarkably stable in October, with Avery Anna continuing one of the stronger Wildcard runs this year by jumping six spots, and Post Malone and Tim McGraw each dropping four spots. The full chart is below:
Biggest Risers
There wasn’t a ton of movement this month, but Texas landed two in the top 5 biggest risers with Hudson Westbrook and Parker McCollum both posting solid numbers. Westbrook has particularly shone recently, gaining 10 points of Interest over the summer and hitting his all-time high in October. McCollum, too, has had a good run, with last month and this month marking his 2nd- and 3rd-highest Interest% ever. His self-titled album initially flew under the radar at its release but has gained popularity with listeners as it has aged. This month is a great example of why the Market-Adjusted Increase statistic we use to create these Top and Bottom five categories is, in fact, market-adjusted. So even though McCollum actually objectively dropped 0.1% in Interest since September, because the average artist dropped 1.8% since September (a significant decrease!), he actually increased relative to the other artists on the CC50.
Biggest Fallers
Zach Top is the headliner here, but we’ll pass him over for now as the Quick Hits section will be devoted primarily to him. Regular readers will remember seeing Kenny Chesney’s name in the Biggest Risers section back in the spring, where we explained he was the poster child of a “seasonal artist”. Well, right on cue, as the leaves drop, we’re seeing Chesney’s numbers fall back into winter hibernation. Other artists see similar seasonal shifts, but none as strong as the king of Spring Break and lake days. For reference, his average Interest from April to August (the peak spring/summer months) is 34.6%, a whopping 7 points higher than in all other months (27.8%). We’ll see if that trend continues into year 3 of the CC50, but with 26 months of voting stats, it is undoubtedly becoming a more and more credible (and interesting) statistic. Seeing other big names like Stapleton and Moroney in this biggest drops list isn’t surprising either, as the voting base shrinks in the fall/winter, the broader-appeal artists tend to take a hit, and smaller artists with more dedicated fanbases tend to get a boost.
Quick Hits
- When a long-running #1 artist takes a tumble from the top spot in the rankings, it always comes as a bit of a surprise and generates buzz. That said, there have been warning signs for Zach Top really since the start of summer. If you look at the chart below, which maps his CC50 Interest and Disinterest since his debut in January ‘24 (time flies), you can see three distinct timelines. The first 11 months are a remarkably consistent ascent in Interest, taking the #1 spot from Morgan Wallen in November and hitting his all-time high Interest% in December. The following 8 months are pretty consistent, holding steady and possibly even slipping a little (to be fair, maintaining an 80% Interest Rate is very challenging). Since July, however, it has been a steady slide for the “I Never Lie” singer.
- There are two particularly concerning elements to this slide. First, the slide began as he started rereleasing music for the first time since his April 2024 album, Cold Beer & Country Music. “Good Times & Tan Lines” and the ensuing album Ain’t In It For My Health failed to grip listeners the way previous efforts did. No artist wants to see their interest slip as they release music. Still, it is especially damning in Top’s case, as his rise in Interest essentially occurred during a period when he wasn’t releasing music, potentially indicating that the surge built hype that new music couldn’t possibly live up to. Slower growth, correlated with a larger catalog of music, is generally more predictive of sustainable success, as the artist is more of a known quantity at that point.
- The second concerning slide is that his decline in Interest isn’t just among new voters who aren’t familiar with him or unsure whether they are interested in his new music. In fact, the portion of voters who vote Unsure or skip his slide has remained remarkably consistent. Looking at the above graph, you can see that the rising disinterest is due to a fall in interest among former interested voters who are now voting Disinterested. Whether it is artist fatigue or a dislike for the largely bland writing on the last album remains to be seen. Still, we are talking about a complete 15% of voters changing their votes from ‘Interest’ to ‘Disinterest’ in just four months of voting —a concerning trend, to say the least.
- We’ll finish this Zach Top-themed Quick Hits section on a positive note. The mustachioed Washingtonian (say that three times fast!) still holds a massive market share with 65% of CC50 voters interested in his music. He has undoubtedly mastered a fantastic ‘90s sound that never fails to evoke nostalgia. With more creative writing about future releases, he could cement himself as a leader in the neo-traditional space, much as Jon Pardi did a decade ago. To find himself as the #2 artist in the CC50 at 28 and only three albums is remarkable; he needs to continue to make a quality product that stands out from the inevitable copycats to beat audience fatigue, something Zach Bryan has struggled to do in an era with a hundred imitating artists with low production and not much melody crooning in a microphone.
- Overall listener interest continued its usual seasonal decline, slipping to 38.2% (indicating that the average artist on the CC50 has 4 in 10 of their audience members interested in their releases). The overall vote count was also lower, at 332,797.
Wildcard Watch
The Great Wildcard Losing Streak continued in October, with all 5 of September’s wildcards bowing out with barely a whimper. Cody Jinks fared the best, missing out on another month in the rankings by 0.6% (21.3% to #45 Midland’s 21.9%, while the other four wildcards failed even to break 20% Interest. Only four of the 30 promotions in the last six months have stayed in place, and only one of those, Vincent Mason at #31, promoted in June, is outside the bottom 10 of the CC50. It’s always been tough sledding for newer artists to make a dent in the established CC50, but it’s been further compounded by a lack of breakouts this summer. We don’t yet have sufficient seasonality data. Still, the small sample size we do have (two years) suggests that summer is a particularly challenging season for newer artists to establish themselves, as established brands tend to use the summer for their most significant releases. Winter is much kinder to younger artists as there is less attention on the industry as a whole, and organic hype can grow among a smaller number of dedicated listeners. Two of the more notable young artist breakouts we’ve seen since the CC50 started tracking this data, Zach Top and Wyatt Flores, both made their surges in the winter months. We’ll see if anyone can match that in Winter 2025-26! - A good potential candidate will be joining the CC50 as part of the new batch of wildcards. Braxton Keith cruised through qualification, finishing a full 20 points ahead of Corey Kent, the second-most-voted wildcard. Keith also becomes only the 6th artist to clear 60% Interest in the Wildcard voting (most recent being Tim McGraw in August, ’25). While Braxton has made a few appearances in the CC50 before, this latest promotion comes with plenty of momentum from his string of summer and fall releases, including this month’s “The Chair”. His retro sound fits right in with the mini-90s revival sound that has become increasingly popular recently, setting him up for a potential run up the CC50 rankings.
- We’ll wrap up this month’s article with a warning that by the time we meet back here in a month, you will already be getting pelted by Christmas covers you never knew you needed (yes, there do exist Luke Bryan renditions of “O Holy Night” and “Run Run Rudolph” for whatever reason). In fact, if you strain your ear enough, you can almost hear another Brett Eldredge Christmas release coming, everyone’s favorite fall tradition, a couple of months out from the holiday (upon further investigation, it would appear the Eldredge has already made my joke dated, as he released a self-written song “Sweet December”… in September). So give your summer and fall playlists a few final spins, vote in November’s CC50 and Wildcard voting, and we’ll see you here in a month to commiserate and see what Christmas covers we get gifted with this year.
