It takes two to tango, according to an old adage, and country artists are seemingly dancing vocally with each other in larger numbers than ever before.
Jordan Davis’ “Buy Dirt,” featuring a guest appearance by Luke Bryan, tops the Country Airplay chart dated Jan. 29 in the midst of a collaborative boom. Five of the top 10 songs are duets, and nine of the top 20 blend two or three solo acts. In all, one full quarter of the chart — 15 of the 60 titles — consists of musical events, even if that volume of collaboration makes those releases feel a little less eventful than in previous eras.
“It was a little bit more of a special thing,” says Universal Music Group Nashville senior vp of A&R Stephanie Wright, recalling a time when features were less prominent. “It sort of seems to be part of the process these days.”
The current round of collaborative singles includes several kinds of matches: superstar partnerships (Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood), developing acts working with established artists (Lainey Wilson with Cole Swindell, MacKenzie Porter with Dustin Lynch), all-female collabs (Elle King and Miranda Lambert, Carly Pearce and Ashley McBryde) and pop/country blends (Adele with Chris Stapleton).
There’s no easy way to determine whether this volume represents a record, but it certainly feels like it to many in the industry, particularly those charged with coordinating schedules between artists and facilitating legal paperwork.
“I think in the last 18 months we have cleared over 40 collaborations with our label group,” BBR Music Group vp of A&R Sara Knabe says.
A large portion of that involves Jimmie Allen, who appeared on an Elton John album and cut his own collaborative project, Bettie James Gold Edition, with appearances by country figures Brad Paisley, Mickey Guyton and Keith Urban, plus non-country contributors Pitbull, Monica and Noah Cyrus.
The trend toward collaborations is “country music kind of catching up to what’s been happening in the pop space for a long time,” notes Knabe.
It’s not the first time country has experienced a wave of duets. In 1978, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson bucked established protocols to cut a duet album, Waylon & Willie, even though they recorded for separate labels. Corporate attorneys were left to sort out the details, but it set off a wave of early-1980s pairings that would include George Jones and Merle Haggard, Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton, Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gayle, and a whole Ray Charles album, Friendship, with the likes of Ricky Skaggs, Mickey Gilley and The Oak Ridge Boys.
But that wave lasted a few short years. This one seems to have deeper roots. One could argue that it started when Florida Georgia Line earned successes with Nelly, Luke Bryan, Backstreet Boys and Bebe Rexha. With numerous modern artists counting hip-hop among the genres they consume in addition to country, the idea of collaborations seemed routine. And the audience shares that view.
“They don’t really think about format or genre,” Wright says. “They just think about what’s great music and what artists they love. Their playlists are hip-hop and country and pop, and all of it kind of runs in together.”
That’s attractive to streaming partners, whose playlists can be genre-fluid. But it has gotten a mixed reaction at country radio. Superstar pairings, in particular, are highly promotable, though programmers remain leery of pop partners: Consultant Joel Raab says that broadcasters expected pushback for Justin Bieber’s emergence on a Dan + Shay single, though listeners ultimately approved.
Providing separation between spins of a particular artist creates an additional issue — particularly if the single features two country artists with a bundle of gold titles in the station’s library — though programming software often solves that problem by replacing the artist’s older song with another act.
“Some radio folks find it’s harder to schedule their logs because they keep running into everybody with Luke Combs, plus Luke Combs’ solo efforts,” says Raab. “I say, ‘That’s OK. That’s what they’re paying us to figure out.’”
Meanwhile, an artist with two current hits — such as HARDY, who has both a solo single and a collaboration with Dierks Bentley and BRELAND in the top 20 — isn’t necessarily penalized in spins because the programming software can separate those two fairly easily.
Yet the actual single may face more antipathy in the longer term. Raab estimates that “80% to 90% of the time after a duet leaves the charts, it rarely makes it to the gold library. They come and go, and that’s not a bad thing. They’re more ‘of the moment’ than they are of lasting importance.”
Ultimately, there are seven primary reasons that artists record collaborations:
They bring some variation to an established artist’s sound.
They allow artists to cut a song they might like but could not do on their own.
They represent a buzz-worthy event for two major artists.
They raise the profile of a new or developing act.
They can give two artists who were already planning to tour together an extra concert boost.
They grow out of a preexisting relationship, such as a co-writing arrangement or a marriage.
They help create exposure for an artist who is in between projects.
The artist’s marketing plan is a whole other issue — Porter replaced Lauren Alaina on Lynch’s “Thinking ’Bout You” because a single would have conflicted with her Jon Pardi duet — but labels, like radio programmers, will probably have to continue solving the collaboration puzzle because, this time around, the duet phenomenon is probably a permanent wave.
“The trend of releasing collab singles may ebb and flow,” Knabe observes. “But as a digital streaming/album-release thing, I don’t think that it’s going to go away.”
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