Sixty seconds into Kameron Marlowe's new single "Running," we already knew he had something different on his hands. Released in 2026 as part of a steady stream of new music following his 2025 album Sad Songs For the Soul, the track lands in a place that feels increasingly rare in modern country: emotionally direct, melodically…
August 21, 2026 is the final night of HARDY's Country! Country! Tour, and we have been paying close attention to this run since it kicked off in Oshawa, Ontario back in February. What started as a triumphant headline tour for one of country music's most versatile voices grew into something we did not fully see…
Walk into any country music festival at 6 PM, then walk into almost any other type of concert at the same hour. The difference is not the music. It is the people, and how they treat each other. We have spent time at festivals and shows across the country, from stadium spectacles to small outdoor…
2.2 million streams. That number appeared on our screen when we pulled up the data for Ashley Wineland's single Only A Minute, and it stopped us from everything else we were doing. Here is an artist with a brand new full-length album out, a national headlining tour crossing more than 60 cities, and a production…
August 21 is circled on our calendar, and it has been since the moment Zach Top stepped onto the stage at Under the Big Sky Festival in Montana on July 18 and performed a song nobody in the crowd had ever heard before. That song was Good Girls & Cowgirls, and it has been living…
Two questions come to us constantly from country fans across the Greater Orlando area: Where is the festival, and how do we get there? If you have been following Sunset Country Fest, you already know the answer to the first one. Sunset Country Fest 2027 is a country music festival taking place in Apopka, Florida,…
We have been watching Corey Kent build toward this moment for years. Every packed honky-tonk night, every hard-charging show at Billy Bob's Texas, every single that blurred the line between country soul and Southern rock pointed toward something bigger. Now it is officially here: Heartland Rock and Roll, his 16-track album arriving September 25 via…
August 28 is already circled on our editorial calendar at Sunset Country Fest, and it has been since Carly Pearce officially announced Honest Woman, her fifth studio album on BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville. We dug into every detail we could find: 16 tracks, Appalachian and bluegrass influences woven into every melody, collaborations with Riley Green,…
Twelve months ago, the debate was still alive: was country music's mainstream breakthrough a genuine cultural shift or a temporary cycle? After seven months of tracking chart data, streaming records, new voices, festival attendance, and the cultural conversation at Sunset Country Fest, we are ready to make the call. This is country music's greatest year…
Five hundred million. That number stopped us when we pulled up Julia Cole's career streaming stats while preparing this edition of the Sunset Stage Series. Five hundred million streams accumulated without a record deal, without a major label machine, without any of the traditional infrastructure Nashville has long told artists they cannot succeed without. For…
Eight o'clock Thursday morning, and we were doing our regular Billboard Hot 100 check when the chart stopped us cold. Five songs. Five country songs. The entire top five slots of America's most-watched pop chart, occupied by country music and nothing else. In 67 years of Hot 100 history, from the British Invasion to Michael…
The calendar flipped to August and we started building our Florida fall country music guide in earnest, and the list of events got longer faster than we expected. Between now and the end of 2026, the Sunshine State has an extraordinary concentration of live country music, from stadium finales and multi-day festivals to the biggest…