Pop Acts Seem to Be 'Going Country'

Bolstered by acts like Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan and Luke Combs, country music in 2023 experienced its biggest growth spurt in more than 30 years — way back when Garth Brooks soared to superstardom. Already, this year seems on track to continue that explosion, as country stars and pop icons alike are capitalizing on the genre’s recent boom, Billboard reports.

In February, Beyoncé became the first Black woman to top Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart with her galloping hit, “Texas Hold ’Em,” from her upcoming Act II, expected to be a full-on country album, out March 29. Post Malone has teased a duet with Combs on social media and written with other genre stars including Wallen and HARDY for his upcoming country album. And Lana Del Rey — who declared that her fall album, Lasso, will be a country set — recently posted a snippet of a song that she worked on with noted Nashville songwriter-producer Luke Laird.

CMT senior vp of music strategy and talent Leslie Fram views the influx as a sign of “overwhelming respect for the storytelling and the songwriting in Nashville,” but predicts that noncountry artists taking up slots at terrestrial country radio “is going to be a major topic of conversation … If [a core country artist] has spent 30 to 50 weeks trying to climb up a chart and, all of a sudden, they’re replaced by someone who is not in the genre, I do believe there will be concerns.”

And unlike in the past, when artists might explore country only as their pop career dwindled, today’s infiltration and interest are coming from names at the peak of their pop prowess. “It isn’t like the heritage artists before that wanted to do a country record. These are artists at the top of their game,” Fram says. Olivia Rodrigo attended Megan Moroney’s Los Angeles show last year and posted photos backstage together. And in November, Post Malone made his debut performance at the Country Music Association Awards.

Plus, fandom aside, it’s smart business. “The pop labels are seeing the success of a Morgan Wallen,” Sony Nashville chairman/CEO Randy Goodman says of the country superstar, whose smash “Last Night” and album One Thing at a Time logged the most weeks of any song or album on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200 last year, respectively. He adds: “The biggest female artist in the world is Taylor [Swift], who started in country. I don’t think that’s lost on any of the labels.”