Spanish cattle landed in Florida in 1521, three centuries before the Chisholm Trail. Why Central Florida’s country audience is native, not imported, and what that changes.
Ella Langley took nine nominations. A producer took five. Taylor Swift returned through a Pixar film. What the 60th CMA ballot says about who decides country now.
So Much For Goodbyes is seventy four minutes about losing a mother, produced by T Bone Burnett. Why the right room for it is an open field, not a theater.
In October 2025, Republic Records signed a country artist who had already done the hard part without them. Kaitlin Butts had released Roadrunner! independently in 2024. A track from it, "You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead To Me)," found a second life on TikTok and then a third when it turned up in an…
There is a version of Central Florida that country music has quietly built over the last fifteen years, and most of the people who live inside it have never actually mapped it. It runs from a wooden dance floor in Sanford to a purpose-built stage on International Drive to an open-air amphitheater at the fairgrounds…
Most country music festivals begin with a booking call. Ours began with a drive. A Sunday afternoon drive through Apopka, Florida, past the orange groves and the lakefronts and the quiet neighborhoods that look exactly like the people country music has always been made for. We kept coming back to the same thought: these fans…
Thirteen tracks. Forty-nine minutes. And a title that doubles as a manifesto for every person who has ever written a song by hand, for a reason. We have spent the past week living inside Little Big Town's twelfth studio album, It's A Dying Art, released August 28 via MCA Nashville, and we keep arriving at…
April 3, 2027 is circled on our calendar in permanent marker, and we have already started fielding questions from fans across Central Florida and beyond who want to know what the experience will look like. We put together this guide because planning a festival trip the right way is the difference between a good day…
Twelve songs. That is what Luke Bryan is bringing country fans when Signs drops on September 18, 2026, and after months of following every interview, radio session, and single release, we finally have the clearest possible picture of what his ninth studio album has in store. We have been paying close attention since he teased…
Picture it: the windows are down, the Florida heat is finally softening into something you can actually breathe through, and the playlist has to match the shift. That is exactly where the Sunset Country Fest editorial team found itself this week, building out what we have been calling our fall 2026 country rotation. We pulled…
Not every country music festival deserves your time, your money, or your weekend. We have been thinking hard about this as we plan Sunset Country Fest 2027, and the more we discuss what we want to create in Apopka, Florida on April 3, 2027, the clearer the list becomes. There are specific elements that separate…
Four Billboard charts. One guitar legend away from country radio for fifteen years. We pulled up the weekly Billboard Country Airplay rankings this week and found something we had not seen in a long time: John Mayer's name on a country chart. "Phone, Keys, Wallet," the new single from Lainey Wilson featuring Mayer on guitar,…