WEEKLY
August 21, 2017, Issue 564
YTD Charts: Down The Stretch
As we make the turn for home in this year’s chart races, here’s how Country radio airplay stacks up as measured by the top songs, top artists and top labels at the three-quarter pole of the chart year. Tim McGraw leads the Top 10 artists, garnering the most airplay points for the first three-quarters of the 2017 chart year. He leads Blake Shelton by a nose. Trailing Blake, the rest of the field has Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean, Brett Young, Keith Urban, Luke Bryan, Thomas Rhett, Jon Pardi and Dustin Lynch. While the Top 10 is led by an artist who had his first hit some 23 years ago, four of those 10 – Lynch, Pardi, Rhett, and Young – have been on the national scene five or fewer years. The second-place non-solo male act is Old Dominion, at No. 12. Women aren’t Tim McGraw faring too well thus far, with Lauren Alaina coming in at 20 and Kelsea Ballerini at 22. The Hits: Jon Pardi’s “Dirt On My Boots” has posted more airplay points than any other song at this point in the chart year and has a narrow lead on Blake Shelton’s “A Guy With A Girl.” Rounding out the Top 10 are Sam Hunt’s “Body Like A Back Road,” Florida Georgia Line and Tim McGraw’s “May We All,” Michael Ray’s “Think A Little Less,” Brett Jon Pardi Eldredge’s “Wanna Be That Song,” Little Big Town’s “Better Man,” Luke Combs’ “Hurricane,” Lauren Alaina’s “Road Less Traveled,” and Dustin Lynch’s “Seein’ Red.” Here again, the preponderance of the Top 10 come from artists who have been on the national scene a relatively few number of years. Chart Share: As for the label chart share race, the leader by more than six lengths is the eight-time Country Aircheck Label of the Year Capitol, boasting a whopping 16.9 share. The top 10 are: 1. Capitol 2. WMN 3. BMLGR 4. Valory
16.9 10.2 7.5 6.8
5. Broken Bow 6.1 6. RCA 5.9 7. Big Machine 5.5
8. Columbia 9. Arista 9. MCA
5.1 4.9 4.9
Scored Rangers: Big Label’s Aaron Watson pulls in a Texassized crowd for a performance at Globe Life Park in Arlington, TX Saturday (8/19). Pictured (l-r) are KSCS’ Trapper John Morris, Cumulus/Dallas’ Rebecca Kaplan, Country Aircheck’s Paul Williams, KSCS & KPLX’s Mac Daniels, Watson, KSCS’ Mark “Hawkeye” Louis, the label’s Gwen Foster and CDA Entertainment’s Gino Genaro.
Radio Names OD’s “Happy Endings”
“Forty radio programmers, a handful of Sony staffers and Old Dominion convene on the back of a boat …” is not the beginning of a bad joke. It is, however, how the band came to call their second album for RCA (out this Friday, Aug. 25) Happy Endings. It all began with OD’s Matt Ramsey, Trevor Rosen, Brad Tursi, Geoff Sprung and Whit Sellers chatting about their forthcoming new music with me on the aft of a Catamaran in the waters off Key West. It was established early on that they had yet to come up with a name for the album. Key Men: Old Dominion with Helton (c). Halfway through the
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