MusicRow Magazine has released its 2022 Country Radio & Streaming Issue, with Broken Bow Records’ Dustin Lynch gracing the cover.

Lynch recently released his fifth studio album, Blue In The Sky, which includes his hit single “Thinking ‘Bout You,” featuring MacKenzie Porter. The track marks the label’s longest reigning single at country radio with an impressive six weeks in the top spot. Within the album’s 12 tracks—five of which were penned by the Grand Ole Opry member—the Tennessee native displays a heavy helping of optimism while also delivering a fair share of drinking songs, neon-soaked ballads, and more with help from Riley Green and Chris Lane.

Since first coming onto the scene in 2012 with his breakout self-titled album and stand-out singles, such as “Cowboys and Angels” and “She Cranks My Tractor,” the decorated singer-songwriter has achieved eight No. 1s, four top 5 albums, and over three billion on-demand streams. Over the last decade, he has also earned 8 Gold and Platinum-certified singles from the RIAA, including for “Ridin’ Roads,” “Good Girl,” “Small Town Boy,” “Seein’ Red,” “Where It’s At,” and more.

The Country Radio & Streaming Issue includes the winners of MusicRow’s 20th Annual CountryBreakout Awards, which honors the artists who earned the most spins on the MusicRow CountryBreakout Radio Chart in 2021. The 2022 winners include Male Artist of the Year Luke Combs, Female Artist of the Year Miranda Lambert, Group/Duo of the Year Dan + Shay, Breakout Artist of the Year Priscilla Block, and Independent Artist of the Year James Robert Webb. Capitol Records Nashville was honored with Label of the Year for the 18th time, while SMACK Songs/Sony Music Publishing’s Josh Osborne was named Songwriter of the Year for the third time. This year’s Reporter of the Year is WDHR’s Jeff Meek.

Within this issue’s pages, you’ll also find an engaging crop of editorial content. This issue includes a revealing profile on Warner Music Nashville’s CEO John Esposito, highlighting his entry into the music business and his meteoric rise to the top of one of country music’s most successful record labels. Also featured is a look inside Amazon Music’s busy year with its new Head of Country Music, Michelle Tigard Kammerer, and Principal Programmer Emily Cohen.

This issue also spotlights UMG Nashville’s outlook on radio and streaming throughout the pandemic, a conversation on the dramatic increase in country collaborations, and the minds behind PickleJar, “the world’s biggest tip jar.” This year’s Country Radio & Streaming Issue also takes a look at secondary market radio with KZPK and KYCK’s Brook Stephens, and celebrates the 20th anniversary of the MusicRow CountryBreakout Radio Chart.

Single copies of MusicRow’s 2022 Country Radio & Streaming Issue are available for purchase at musicrow.com for $20, and are included with yearly MusicRow memberships.

J.T. Harding. Photo: Fred Hayes

Hit country songwriter J.T. Harding has celebrated his fair share of successes, with seven No. 1s under his belt, including “Somewhere In My Car” (Keith Urban), “Somewhere With You” (Kenny Chesney), “Sangria” (Blake Shelton), “Alone With You” (Jake Owen), “Beers and Sunshine” (Darius Rucker), “Smile” (Uncle Kracker), and “Different For Girls” (Dierks Bentley).

With quite the wild story to tell and plenty of experience as a songwriter in the country music industry, the accomplished tunesmith has put it all to paper in his new book, Party Like A Rockstar: The Crazy, Coincidental, Hard-Luck, and Harmonious Life of a Songwriter. The engaging page-turner is available everywhere books are sold today (Feb. 22).

Described as a memoir, a self-help book, and a how-to guide for aspiring songwriters, Party Like A Rockstar chronicles Harding’s life from being adopted at a young age, growing up in southern Detroit in a family of sports fanatics, and discovering his love for music.

“Like most kids, I was jumping around to the radio and putting KISS makeup on while listening to my KISS and Journey records,” Harding shares with MusicRow. “One day, like an alien landing, MTV came blasting into my living room and I felt like Dorothy going from black and white Kansas to technicolor Oz. I could not believe MTV. I wanted to crawl inside the TV and get into that world.”

J.T. and his band. Photo: Courtesy of J.T. Harding

Soon after in middle school, Harding put a band together with some of his friends. Together they entered into Battle of the Bands competitions, but Harding had a hunch that the only way to truly succeed was for them to write their own songs.

“I’ve always tried to write my own songs. I didn’t want to end up playing cover songs in a Holiday Inn with the smell of stale beer and full ashtrays. Which is funny because that’s where I met Uncle Kracker, at a Holiday Inn lobby,” he quips. “Regardless, I just knew that I wanted to [write songs]. I looked on the back of all my CDs, and they all said Sunset Boulevard. That’s where all the record companies were, so I went out to LA and lived in the most unglamorous corner of Sunset Boulevard for years. It was awful, but I made it through.”

Throughout its pages, Party Like A Rockstar shares some of the many playful stories of Harding’s life, including how he cleverly distributed his first demo. “I was living in LA and I didn’t know where to take my demo. I couldn’t get meetings with anybody, so I borrowed a FedEx jacket from someone I knew. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi just walking into the Death Star, I walked past every security gate, every A&R guy, and I put my demo in every single mailbox.”

The book also shares the stories behind Harding’s many country hits, including how he and his co-writers came up with titles, lyrics, and the thoughts that went into them. Party Like A Rockstar also takes readers through Harding’s worldwide travels with modern day rockstars like Linkin Park, and how he made his way to Music City to write for some of today’s biggest country acts.

“This is the book I wish I had when I tried to get into the music business because I didn’t know how to. I just wanted to write songs and be on the radio, but all I had were interviews with rockstars, which is like deciphering hieroglyphics in a dark room,” Harding jokes. “There’s not a magic button to songwriting. I’d have more hits if there was a magic button, but I poured my heart into this book in a very simple way. This is how I feel you can make songs stand out.

“I hope people will be inspired that [even though] you do get turned down over and over again, along the way you’ll find people that encourage you. You have to write a lot of bad songs before you get to some of those good ones, so just keep writing.”

Within the book, Harding also shares some of his hard-learned lessons and advice for budding songwriters.

“If you’re looking to do country music, to be a songwriter in the country genre, or to be discovered in the country world, I truly believe you have to get to Nashville. It’s a full contact sport here,” Harding sums. “Even though we have the internet and there’s people getting discovered on TikTok, I can’t think of any country star or hit country songwriter that isn’t [in Nashville] pretty much all the time.

“The second piece of advice is something that I did and something everyone here does,” he continues. “We first come to town and we all think, ‘If I can just write a song with someone that’s already having hits, then I’ll be good to go.’ I wanted to write with Hillary Lindsey, who wrote ‘Jesus, Take The Wheel’ and Craig Wiseman, who had 20 No. 1 hits [at the time], but that’s not how it happens. You meet your own tribe—people that are at your same level—and you rise together.”

Harding adds, “There’s so much value in the way that a new writer sees the world and the music that they’re influenced by. Find your tribe and come up together. Make a noise so loud that I’m begging to write with you.”

J.T. Harding dons a special version of his book, Party Like A ROWstar, with MusicRow‘s Lydia Farthing.

Aiming to serve up plenty of entertainment and laughs along the way, Harding also hopes that people find relatability and inspiration through Party Like A Rockstar, and that readers walk away with the confidence that they can find their way through the music industry, too.

“People should buy this book because I truly think it’s better than a backstage pass,” he explains simply. “More so than ever, people are interested in how songs get written. Songland was gigantic on NBC, and now everyone’s talking about the Beatles documentary on Disney+. They see these guys sitting around writing songs. That’s how it happens, and now you could have it in your hands!”

To celebrate the release of Party Like A Rockstar, Harding will host a book release show at The Listening Room at 1 p.m. on Feb. 26. With every ticket, attendees will receive a copy of the book.

Party Like A Rockstar: The Crazy, Coincidental, Hard-Luck, and Harmonious Life of a Songwriter is available everywhere now.

Adam Weiser

Nashville-based executive Adam Weiser has been promoted to Sr. VP, Global Touring & Talent at AEG Presents.

A member of the AEG Presents team for 15 years, Weiser currently books and promotes tours for a wide range of artists, including Lauren Daigle, Kane Brown, Luke Combs, Kelsea Ballerini, Dan + Shay, Jordan Davis, My Chemical Romance, The Band Camino, and more.

Before his move to Tennessee, Adam served as a Senior Talent Buyer for AEG Presents in the Northeast region. In that role, he oversaw the company’s venue bookings at Starland Ballroom, Count Basie Center for the Arts, The OceanFirst Bank Center, Foxwoods Resort Casino, Mount Airy Casino Resort, and a number of other prominent regional venues.

In his new role, Weiser will work with agents, managers and label partners to identify new talent and artist development opportunities, while continuing to oversee the company’s Nashville office and produce and promote tours.

“Adam has an incredible track record of giving artists the support and opportunities they need to take their careers to the next level, and that’s become even clearer since he joined our Nashville team,” says AEG Presents President of Global Touring and Talent Gary Gersh. “His passion is infectious, and his vision and determination inspire everyone around him. I have no doubt he will make even greater contributions in his new role.”

Over the years, the ways in which artists are discovered has been an endless evolution. This process has been further expedited through the internet and various social media platforms. From YouTube and MySpace, to Facebook and Vine, the digital pipeline for artists has become increasingly prevalent over the last decade.

However, due in part to the pandemic, TikTok is king when it comes to going viral with original music in 2022. Of the countless success stories of TikTok artists, one that has deep roots in Nashville is that of Gayle‘s “abcdefu.”

The track, which includes the clever use of the alphabet song coupled with a strong outpouring of rage, quickly caught the attention of TikTok users due its catchy hook: “A-B-C-D-E, F-U / And your mom and your sister and your job / And your broke-a** car and that s*** you call art / F*** you and your friends that I’ll never see again / Everybody but your dog, you can all f*** off.”

Sara Davis. Photo: Courtesy Big Machine Music

Written by three of Nashville’s rising songwriters—Taylor Gayle Rutherford (known professionally as Gayle), Sara Davis, and Dave Pittenger—the track was originally released in August of 2021 as the 17-year-old’s major label debut single through Atlantic and Arthouse Records. The track took on its own meteoric life on TikTok, and has since been used in over 1.7 million user-generated videos on the platform and earned more than 100 million streams by December of 2021.

However, as is the story goes for most songs, the story of “abcdefu” began long before then.

Davis, who signed with Big Machine Music in May of 2021, first moved to Nashville from Phoenix in 2015 before starting high school. Growing up writing songs and with dreams of playing at Nashville’s historic Bluebird Cafe, she spent the next four years co-writing songs and attending networking events at night and on weekends. In 2016, she met Gayle and the two bonded over their love of pop music.

“We would have weekend sleepovers writing songs until she met her publisher, Kara DioGuardi, who introduced us to producers and started setting us up in sessions,” Davis shares with MusicRow. “So much of the trust we have in each other as friends and co-writers comes from the years of writing hundreds of songs together, dreaming of someday when people might get to hear them.”

David Pittenger. Photo: Jason Myers

While the two young songwriters began building their friendship, Pittenger was finding his own patch of success in Nashville’s writing scene. After relocating from New York City, he landed a publishing deal with Big Yellow Dog and earned cuts with major label artists, including AJ Mitchell and Jessie James Decker, among others.

“Things went well for me very early on which eventually led to signing a publishing deal with Big Yellow Dog,” Pittenger explains. “Steve Robertson at Atlantic mentioned Gayle to my day-to-day, Jacee Badeaux. From there, Jacee and [Gayle’s day-to-day] Kristina Russo set up some sessions. I’ll forever be grateful for that, not just because of the success of [“abcdefu”], but also because Gayle and Sara are two of the best freaking writers I’ve ever been in the room with and amazing friends as well!”

Over a year before the the track’s August 2021 release, the three met up in a room to comb through song ideas when Pittenger offered the first one: “ABCDEF*** off.”

“Gayle and I loved it immediately and were like, ‘We have to write that! There is no better idea you could throw out!’ Gayle was going through a breakup, so this was one of the first songs we got to write about the type of anger where no one is off limits—except the dog,” Davis offers cheekily. “We knew that we wanted it to be anthemic so we just started singing what would end up being the chorus, naming anyone and everyone we could. From there, it was just about telling the story [of the breakup and] how it happened.”

Throughout the production process and leading up to the song’s official release, Gayle posted an array of teasers of “abcdefu” on TikTok, which gained the attention of users across the platform. Upon its release, the song went viral on TikTok with users eventually starting a trend where people would take a sharpie, write onto plates everything they were angry about or wanted to emotionally let go of, and then smash them on the ground.

“We knew when we wrote ‘abcdefu’ that we loved it and thought it was really special. For almost a year, I would sing along to the demo and I knew that it helped me, so all I could do is hope that it would help other people through their own breakups or hard times,” Davis admits. “It’s been surreal seeing so many people react and relate to a song we wrote on a guitar in a room on Music Row. I’ve been able to see so many people respond to it, from the TikTok videos people have posted to the messages they’ve sent with their own stories of how they relate to it. That has, without a doubt, been the best part of all of this.”

“It was so cool and rewarding to see our song help people take back their power!” Pittenger gushes. “Honestly, I still don’t think I understand the scope of how huge this song has become. We have a group chat with Sara, Gayle and Kristina that has ended up serving as a chronicle of all of the song’s achievements as they’ve happened. It’s fun to go back and see our excitement from release day, to the first million streams, to radio add day, all the way to being a multi-week global No. 1. I am just so thankful for every moment!”

So far in 2022, the song has spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 chart, and has broken into the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with no sign of stopping soon. The feisty track has also made waves overseas, topping the charts in Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Malaysia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, among others.

Gayle released her follow up single, “ur just horny,” on Jan. 19, which Davis also had a hand in writing.