Country Update BILLBOARD.COM/NEWSLETTERS SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 | PAGE 1 OF 18 INSIDE BILLBOARD COUNTRY UPDATE
[email protected] Thomas Rhett’s Hometown Heroes: Country Ties ‘Light’ Chart Touch >page 4 Emotional Messages To Physical Roots CMA Streaks: When Big Loud singer-songwriter HARDY drove back to Nash- around the acts’ original residences. Luke Bryan, who hailed Lambert, Underwood ville after a visit with his dad in Philadelphia, Miss., sometime the peanut dust and pine trees of his native Leesburg, Ga., in >page 10 in the last two years, his father told him to hit Play on the CD the title track from his 2017 album What Makes You Country, in the dash at a specific point in the journey. returns to the theme in the title song from his new Born Here His father had queued up Travis Meadows’ reflective “Mis- Live Here Die Here (released Aug. 7). Kelsea Ballerini docu- sissippi,” and as the track’s storyline unfolded with every-day, ments those who choose to stay, and those who leave, in the Scotty McCreery familial images kelsea album cut “Half Makes ‘Time’ about “the home of My Hometown.” >page 11 I couldn’t wait to High Valley’s “Grew leave behind,” the Up on That,” released journey away from to country radio via his hometown PlayMPE on Aug. 25, Luke Comb’s weighed heavily keys in on tractor Labor Day Triple on HARDY. seats and high school >page 11 “I just lost it,” he sports in La Crete, says. “I completely Alberta, the group’s started crying, and remote Northern I started thinking Canadian homeland.