Kane Brown sure had a lot to be thankful for last week at his Thanksgiving dinner. As a songwriter, Brown rose 17 spots this week to No. 3 on the MusicRow Top Songwriter Chart, boosted by five of his co-written songs, “Lose It,” “Homesick,” “Good As You,” “Weekend,” and “Baby Come Back To Me.” Some of these songs also helped fuel the ascent of Chase McGill to No. 4 and Will Weatherly to No. 7.

As an artist, Brown’s album Experiment debuted at the top of the Billboard Top Country Albums chart as well as the Top 200, making him the first male country artist in 24 years to do so with a sophomore release. Brown also dethroned Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line’s “Meant To Be,” the record-breaking, 50-week No. 1, with his “Lose It” on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.

SESAC’s Kevin Welch enjoys his fourth week atop the MusicRow chart with Laura Veltz still on his heels.

The weekly MusicRow Top Songwriter Chart, published every week, uses algorithms based upon song activity according to airplay, digital downloaded track sales and streams. This unique and exclusive recent addition to the MusicRow portfolio is the only songwriter chart of its kind.

Click here to view the full MusicRow Top Songwriter Chart.

Kelsea Ballerini and The Chainsmokers will join forces for a special collaboration to ring in the New Year on the upcoming Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2019 show on ABC Dec. 31. Foster the People, Dua Lipa, Ella Mai, Charlie Puth, Ciara, and Macklemore with Skylar Grey are also set to perform on the annual countdown celebration.

Ryan Seacrest will return to host from Times Square for his 13^th year, with live onsite reporting by actress Jenny McCarthy. Lucy Hale also returns to host the 3^rd annual Central Time Zone celebration from New Orleans, providing viewers with exclusive performances and interviews leading up to the midnight countdown. This year’s show marks the 47^th anniversary of America’s biggest celebration of the year and will include over five hours of performances and reports on New Year’s festivities from around the globe.

“For 47 years, New Year’s Rockin’ Eve has been America’s biggest and most watched party of the year,” said Mark Bracco, Executive Producer and Executive Vice President of Programming & Development, dick clark productions. “We’re thrilled that Ryan, Jenny, Ciara and Lucy are back to help America usher in the New Year, along with a stellar lineup of the year’s hottest musical artists.”

After writing songs about love and loss for artists including Brett Eldredge (“Lose My Mind,” “Beat of the Music”), Dierks Bentley (“I’ll Be The Moon”) and Kenny Chesney (“Sometown Somewhere”), singer-songwriter Heather Morgan recently released a collection of self-penned songs–but this time, it was Morgan behind the mic relating her own stories with unmistakable authenticity.

The recently-released project, Borrowed Heart, is the result of a three-year process of discovery and transparency–and as the saying goes, it all starts with a song.

“I write a lot by myself at night, and I’ll save those songs for later,” Morgan tells MusicRow Magazine. “They are just ideas I will get, and sometimes I’m a little bit protective of them, I guess.”

Much of the album found its genesis in The Smoakstack, producer/engineer Paul Moak’s studio in Nashville’s Berry Hill area. Morgan began collaborating with Moak in 2015.

“It feels like you are in London in the ‘70s and Beatles are about to walk in or something,” Morgan says of the studio’s heavily carpeted studio, adorned with chandeliers, shelves of drums and walls lined with guitars.

“Paul had all these amazing guitars and I think there was one that had birds on it—an old vintage guitar. I started playing the beginning of ‘A Hundred Miles’ and he was like, ‘What is that?’ I didn’t know and I just had this chorus from this line: I need you to be far away, 100 miles in every direction. So when we wrote it and he sent me the demo, it felt so raw and so special. There was just something about writing songs in the place where we would end up making the record,” she muses. “It was a bit of a foreshadowing that I didn’t even know was going to happen.”

“A Hundred Miles” would be one of 12 gems included on Borrowed Heart. Another Moak collaboration, “We Were A Fire,” convinced Morgan the timing was right to step into her own as an artist.

“It just felt like I was supposed to sing these songs,” she says. “It was like, ‘Oh, we need to do a record.’ It took me like a month to actually email him because I was intimidated—he’s so cool—but when I did email him, he was like, ‘I’ve been waiting for this email.’”

Hope And Healing In Joshua Tree

While the aforementioned songs were born of collaboration, others including “Your Hurricane” and “Highway Robbery” are solely from Morgan’s own pen. Two years ago, Morgan was still smarting from a broken romantic relationship. She booked a trip to Joshua Tree, rented an AirBNB, and spent time sifting through the emotional remnants in classic songwriter style, using her music as therapy and healing.

“I dated somebody and it just didn’t end beautifully,” she recalls. “Before I ever even had that experience, I had written in a journal that I really wanted a song to sound like my own and that was in 2015, before I ever even knew the person that would be part of the heartbreak, which is so weird looking back. I found the journal when we were making the record and this journal entry that said I’m longing for a song that feels like my story. Then I went through heartbreak and ended up in Joshua Tree having one of the most personal experiences of my life. It was such a full-circle moment.”

The morning she wrote “Your Hurricane,” she woke at 5 a.m. to watch the sunrise.

“It was perfect weather and there was no one around. It was just desolate and quiet and it felt like such a gift to be in the desert and wrestle with this song,” she recalls. “It was really beautiful because I practiced being in that feeling and being repetitive in what I was trying to write. I call it ‘unraveling,’ and I already kind of knew what I wanted the song to be, but I have to get there. I picture a ball of yarn and it’s like straightening it out.”

While some tracks were written specifically for the project, others, such as the Ross Copperman co-write “Fall Like Rain,” were previously pitched to other artists.

“That’s the song that actually never came out, but Trisha Yearwood recorded it, but then she didn’t put an album out,” Morgan recalls. “It kind of bummed me out that I never got to hear it, but it’s a song that always stayed with me and I always loved playing it.”

Emboldened by her work with Moak, and the creative outpouring in Joshua Tree, Morgan returned to Nashville. She still had a few internal hurdles to face before fully committing to her solo album.

Morgan is no stranger to the studio–she’s offered background vocals on albums from Dierks Bentley, Brett Eldredge and Jordan Davis, among others–but she gained strength and courage to put her own voice front and center from watching powerhouse vocalist Adele.

“I went by myself and saw her perform in London in March 2016. I remember thinking that was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen because there was so much emotion in her voice alone. When I got back from Joshua Tree and went into the studio, I was just like, ‘I need to get this heartbreak out of my heart. It needs to go somewhere.’ I remembered seeing that show and thinking, ‘I need to put everything into this and let this be where the feelings go.’”

 

 

As a hit songwriter, Morgan was torn about investing time in recording her own music, precious time that could be used to write potential hits for other artists. She credits her publisher Sony/ATV, and songwriting friend and mentor Lori McKenna (who co-wrote the album’s title track and the exquisite “Arms of a Lion”) with helping Morgan gain the confidence to commit to her own music.

“Thankfully Sony/ATV was very supportive and thought it was a very important part of my journey. Troy Tomlinson gave me so many examples of songwriters, like Guy Clark, who wrote for others and made their own records that he is such a fan of.

“And Lori is such a major part of why I was even able to finish the record and why I didn’t give up on it when it was tough,” Morgan says. “It’s such a balance trying to write and do this at the same time. She told me how important it is to have this time to write for myself and make this album. She was like, ‘It’s going to be so worthwhile when it is done.’ I think she said something like, ‘The world needs this record and you need to make it.’ I have known her for about six or seven years now, just through writing, but seeing how her life is, she gets to make records and write with amazing artists and then she tours and then she has the perfect balance of it all together. That has always been my goal to just follow in her footsteps and have my art represented in my own album but I love writing with other people so much. It’s like having two loves.”

Country Road Management (CRM), the company behind CountryRoadTV.com, (CRTV), and Digitally Sound (the recorded music division of Nashville’s Straight 8 Entertainment), have launched Country Road Records.

Digitally Sound will handle global distribution and retail marketing via their partnership with The Orchard. CRM will serve as the promotional arm of the label, using its CRTV network and media partnerships, including television partners “Small Town Big Deal” and Gabriel Communications (“Country’s Family Reunion” and “Larry’s Country Diner”).

Country Road Records, like its CRTV counter-part, will primarily focus on country music’s traditional realm (both vintage and new), including classic country music, bluegrass, and country gospel.  Many of label’s mastered recordings will be gleaned and compiled from Gabriel Communications’ vast 2200-song performance catalog spanning over 20 years.

Country Road Records will ‘street’ its first album, Country’s Family Reunion Presents: Home for Christmas, on Black Friday, Nov. 23. The collection features live-to-tape, one-of-a-kind performances of holiday classics and heartfelt originals as seen on the television series, Country’s Family Reunion. The album highlights legendary performances by the who’s who of country, bluegrass, and gospel, including Joey + Rory, Bill Anderson, Rhonda Vincent, The Isaacs, members of the Scott Family, Ricky Skaggs with Sharon & Cheryl White, T. Graham Brown, Mandy Barnett, Jimmy Fortune, and William Lee Golden and Duane Allen of The Oak Ridge Boys.