Chris Stapleton’s Radio #1 for “Broken Halos” is a Big Deal
The fight to save country music has never been about the complete eradication of pop country. Sure, in an ideal world, perhaps this would be possible. But taking a realistic perspective, the principle fight is for balance in the genre, where all the elements and influences that represent “country” to a diverse population of listeners are given a fair chance by the industry and the institutions that are charged to represent and promote it.
Over the last few years, dramatic inroads have been made in this fight towards a positive direction due to the successes of independent, or independently-minded artists who work well outside of Music Row’s norms, and who often carry a more traditional sound. The albums charts are now regularly crowned by independently-released titles from up-and-comers and older legends. Awards shows are now regularly seeing an encroachment by independently-minded acts, including such acts winning many of the major distinctions.
But radio has remained the outlier, and the last bastion of ultimate power and control by the Music Row oligarchy. It has seemed impossible over the last few years to break down radio’s barriers to allow a more balanced playlist of songs to be served to the public.
But now that is beginning to change as well. Chris Stapleton’s #1 for his current single “Broken Halos” is an achievement that was thought to be impossible even a couple of years ago when Stapleton was dominating everything else in the genre. This is yet another accomplishment for Stapleton, and another accomplishment in the effort to restore balance to every sector of the country music genre.
Of course there will be many traditionalists decrying the significance of this feat. Yes, we get it, Chris Stapleton isn’t right-down-the-middle country. You’re preaching to the choir, and going on like a broken record at this point. The underlying point is a #1 from Chris Stapleton—just like a win for the CMA Album of the Year or Male Vocalist of the Year—is so much more of a favorable outcome than a similar accomplishment from Florida Georgia Line or Sam Hunt. It also opens up the possibility for other artists and songs that don’t fit the conventional radio formula to be considered for the format in the future, because now there is a model of success.
It’s important to understand the flux the radio landscape in America is in at the moment. iHeartMedia (formerly ClearChannel) just declared bankruptcy. Cumulus Media declared bankruptcy a few months back. Though both companies were able to settle with creditors to avoid liquidation, both have to be taking a long look in the mirror, and taking stock of how the last 20 years of consolidating playlists into homogenized offerings has put their industry on unsure footing.
Even more alarming for them, radio is no longer the only game in town when it comes to passive listening. Streaming and satellite radio continue to see increases in market share, while radio relies on consolidation and cost cutting to boost revenues. With the overwhelming success of Chris Stapleton on the albums sales charts, the people have clearly spoken that they want to hear his voice. Finally, after over two years of insurmountable data supporting this fact, radio is finally listening.
And the #1 for Chris Stapleton’s “Broken Halos” is just one of many positive signs for radio moving forward. Aaron Watson’s recent Top 10 for “Outta Style” shattered expectations from a purely independent artist. Scotty McCreery’s #1 for “Five More Minutes” was a shock to the country radio system after they had declared his career dead. Even more quality and country-sounding offerings from Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton and others are surprising critics, yet still performing strong commercially.
It can get so easy to stay in a negative mindset about the direction of country music, especially when poor offerings from certain artists still most definitely exist. But there are also plenty of reasons to have a positive prospectus for country radio in 2018 with all the unexpected successes sprouting up all over the place. Chris Stapleton’s #1 is just the latest. One big issue—the lack of women representation on the radio—still persists as strong as ever, and must be addressed. But perhaps were finally seeing the last stronghold of mainstream country music’s monolithic approach finally turning in the right direction.
63guild
March 19, 2018 @ 6:36 pm
It’s crazy just how long this has been out for a single and finally reaching the #1 spot. I’m terrible at keeping up but does he have any singles from the latest album on the charts?
Scotty J
March 19, 2018 @ 7:04 pm
It’s in its 35th week on chart which is a lot but not an outrageous amount. There are currently four other songs in the top ten with more than that.
No, he doesn’t have a current single from Volume 2 but Stapleton’s path has been unconventional from the get go so who knows what they’ll do next.
Ray
March 19, 2018 @ 6:42 pm
It is good to see this song hit number one for reasons for mentioned. But, I would put this in the same category as “Body Like a Back Road” as too over-played. It seems radio is slow to jump on the bandwagon, but when they do, the song is played ad nauseam. I think Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean’s new singles are already entering into this territory. The reason more women artists are not played on radio is that these radio programmers put these songs in heavy rotation and play the hell out of them until they drive listeners away. If country radio is to stay relevant, the playlists have to be expanded and more singers are developed into artists.
Scotty J
March 19, 2018 @ 6:58 pm
This song is nowhere near the level of play of the Hunt song. This is just a standard level #1 and that is a great accomplishment for Stapleton. And the Bryan and Aldean songs haven’t even peaked yet and are both quite young by radio standards.
Ray
March 19, 2018 @ 7:11 pm
Scotty: I am afraid the Jason and Luke songs will be around for most of the spring and early summer. But the radio stations in my markets are already playing these songs to death. “Marry Me,” the FGL song with Bebe, “Hurricane” by Luke Combs are a few others. I must be listening at the wrong time because radio are/have playing/played all of these songs into the ground. I hope Chris releases “Millionaire” as the follow-up single.
Scotty J
March 19, 2018 @ 7:16 pm
The Bryan song will be number one next week and probably the week after then fall probably slowly. Aldean will hit the top around mid April probably after Eldredge and sadly Bebe Rexha hit number one.
Trigger
March 19, 2018 @ 7:38 pm
Radio playlists could definitely be expanded. This is an easy way to give radio more variety and consumers more exposure to choice. The Bro-Country era is when it felt like country radio’s playlists really began to tighten similar to Top 40.
Scotty J
March 19, 2018 @ 7:46 pm
And not coincidentally we have had a massive influx of programmers and label execs from the top 40 genre like that dude you wrote about a couple weeks ago. They infected the host and transformed it into what they were brought up in.
Golddust
March 19, 2018 @ 7:54 pm
I remember the days when radio stations made sure to announce they weren’t going to play the same song more than X number of times per day and were proud of that fact. Now it’s the same songs over and over again. No wonder people are bored.
I was thrilled to hear my local stations finally played “Broken Halos” but yep, it went from barely being heard to me hearing it almost every time I turn the radio on, which isn’t often! Hopefully this does open the door for some other good music to be heard mainstream again. If that happens, I’ll listen more. If it doesn’t, I’ll continue with my CDs. 🙂
JB-Chicago
March 19, 2018 @ 8:49 pm
The radio stations business model has always been “we have a new audience every ___ minutes (fill in the blank with a short amount of time…90 min give or take) so every couple of hours we have to play the same top 5-10 songs to keep the sheeple “happy with hearing the hits”. Been that way for decades.
Tbandito
March 19, 2018 @ 6:51 pm
What is radio?
Music Jedi
March 19, 2018 @ 8:04 pm
Well we still have a great station in Fort Worth, Texas – 95.9 The Ranch – The Sound of Texas! And just today they played Space Cowboy by Kacey Musgraves!! Loving’ it.
hoptowntiger94
March 19, 2018 @ 11:46 pm
It’s something people listen to when driving around looking for a payphone to order more stamps.
RD
March 20, 2018 @ 6:44 am
Pretty soon, it’ll be “what’s driving around?”
Fuzzy TwoShirts
March 20, 2018 @ 10:43 am
self driving cars are going to go on a rampage and pretty soon Christine will look like a happy alternative. they hit one pedestrian here within the last couple days I saw on tv
Barry Cheevers
March 19, 2018 @ 7:04 pm
I have no issue with this being #1…there could be and have been far worse as we know. iHeartMedia and Cumulus filing for bankruptcy makes me all tingly inside.
GrantH
March 19, 2018 @ 7:04 pm
What’s bizarre to me is the incredibly long run time of singles on the radio these days. Sure, in ’06 “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” took nearly a year to finally hit number one, but that was an anomaly. Nowadays it feels like record companies push one song for five to eight months, sometimes even longer, so that when it finally hits the top spot everyone is more annoyed/sick of the song than really enjoying it (well, that’s my perspective, at least). I understand the importance of having a number one hit, but it feels like artists could be getting MORE songs out there, rather than riding one song off an album for nearly a year. This is part of the reason why country music has now become more singles-driven than ever, with big songs getting all the attention and album cuts getting thrown aside worthlessly. George Strait and Alan Jackson used to put out three, sometimes even four #1’s a year in their prime. Nobody comes close to that now.
Scotty J
March 19, 2018 @ 7:13 pm
Part of what we are seeing is the big hits at the very top of the charts are getting way more spins than they used to and that leaves less room for songs in the say 20-40 range therefore these songs take forever to build. Once the songs crack through about 15-20 it speeds up usually. The whole thing is so stupid because of the consolidation there really are no organic regional trends anymore. For every surprise like McCreery or Stapleton making the top are countless utterly predictable events. Bryan, Eldredge, Aldean so on the next few weeks. A truly free market wouldn’t be so predictable.
GrantH
March 19, 2018 @ 7:19 pm
Well for an artist like Bryan, Aldean, or Rhett, hitting number one is all but an eventual given, and they seem to be on the very short list of current artists than can get maybe three or more hits from one album. It’s just such a waste, from a musician’s perspective, to put out an album of 10-14 songs and only get two to radio, with barely a shot in hell of one cracking the top 10 without having to put your full weight behind it.
Scotty J
March 19, 2018 @ 7:29 pm
Yep but what has also changed is the album cycle. Look back at the eighties when Strait and Alabama were at there peaks they would put out albums every 12-18 months with 2 maybe 3 singles then repeat. Now the album cycle is 2-3 years with six to nine months for a non superstar single.
One of the odder under reported things is how that stupid ‘Body Like A Back Road’ song is a song without an album. I have thought for a while that we may be headed to a system where radio artists just crank out singles. Why bother with album filler when you can just put out singles. The real artists can still make albums but fluff can crank out the radio filler.
GrantH
March 19, 2018 @ 7:37 pm
Interestingly, the exact opposite (in terms of “album cycles”) is happening in the new popular mainstream music genre: rap. Popular rap artists are putting out several projects a year (sometimes in the form of full-length releases, but also with mixtapes and sometimes just one-off singles) and often get featured on the projects of all sorts of other artists. You’d think that constantly spamming the market with new songs and projects would make people get sick of them quickly, but new popular rap/hip-hop acts of this decade such as Future, Migos, and 21 Savage have proven to have major staying power in the mainstream.
Scotty J
March 19, 2018 @ 7:52 pm
Maybe they will have staying power. I wonder if the spamming the market as you call it will be good for these acts in the long run. Will they have standards that people will want to listen to in 15-20 years?
Sometimes more is not better it’s just more.
King Honky Of Crackershire
March 19, 2018 @ 7:19 pm
Why is a song that’s not Country going to number 1 on “Country” radio a big deal? That happens literally(not figuratively) 52 weeks per year.
Ulysses McCaskill
March 19, 2018 @ 9:47 pm
Only because it’s sung by a real and honest artist, probably the only one you’ll find in the mainstream music world today.
King Honky Of Crackershire
March 20, 2018 @ 9:34 am
My beef is with music that’s not Country being played on “Country” radio.
Fuzzy TwoShirts
March 20, 2018 @ 10:54 am
for what it’s worth… I like some of Stapleton’s music. I don’t think it’s super Country but it’s better content-wise than a lot of what the others are peddling so I try not to complain about him winning awards because it’s better than the alternative.
I don’t listen to any radio anywhere for any reason.
and I like a lot more than Country Music, so for me Stapleton’s Country-ness is only a debatable point when he’s up for Country Music awards.
likewise: I love Green Day and Miles Davis and also the Clancy Brothers but they aren’t Country and shouldn’t win Country awards.
but I’d rather see the erroneous awards go to them than to Luke Bryan.
because I like the Clancy Brothers and dislike Luke Bryan.
it’s all on a spectrum. on one end: good Country Music wins awards. on the other end, bad pop music wins country awards, and good pop music winning Country awards is somewhere in the midde. not as good as one extreme but also not as bad as the other.
which usually isn’t enough for me and my big collection of records. the newest addition is Miles Davis live on vinyl.
I won’t listen to someone because they win awards. if I like their music I want them to win awards. etc etc etc.
heck I’d rather see Kenny Price winning pop music awards than see Beyonce win them for the same reasons.
Scotty J
March 19, 2018 @ 7:21 pm
Yeah this really is a good thing. Too many people forget the pop country stuff that has always been in mainstream country music and always will be but what we have lost is the countrier stuff the last several years. The window of acceptability has shifted way to the pop side.
Robert's Country Blog
March 19, 2018 @ 7:50 pm
Great news ! When some fan goes to any of three dozen Chris Stapleton concerts this year, they’ll also get to see Marty Stuart (who is arguably doing the most of anyone to preserve and promote country music history) and Brent Cobb (whose lead-in to a new album is a tribute to Wayne Mills), or for one day in Las Vegas, there’s Ameripolitan winner Nikki Lane… Or maybe some newbie fan looks up Chris and finds his SNL duets with Sturgill Simpson, or hears some American Idol contestant covering a Steeldrivers song. .
Healthy branches support healthy roots.
Lobo
March 19, 2018 @ 10:03 pm
Interesting. But it still sucks that the main argument we are left with here is “well hey, it could have been worse if Rhett, Luke Bryan, Sam Hunt, etc. were #1.”. Stapleton is pretty damn boring, this song especially. I don’t get the hype, especially when he is lauded as a world class songwriter. The guy has some decent blues pipes, but that’s about the extent of it.
James O
March 19, 2018 @ 11:24 pm
Chew tobacca chew tobacca chew tabacca speeeit!!!
Gina
March 19, 2018 @ 11:53 pm
Good for him. It’s a beautiful song and I’m glad it’s Chris. Also really looking to the show with Marty and Brent this summer. Broken Halos might is played a lot, but not as much as frigging Body Like a Backroad, which I have to hear everywhere, including my dentist’s office.
Dobe Daddy
March 20, 2018 @ 9:10 am
iHeart Radio goes bankrupt and Chris Stapleton hits number one within the same week. Fairy tales can come true.
Woogeroo
March 20, 2018 @ 12:35 pm
I get that Stapleton isn’t straight down the line country… but he’s a heck of a lot more country than the other poopheads on the country radio. He vocals are obviously influenced by blues, old r&b and what not… but so was Hank Jr. and Travis Tritt and they could go really country or really rock at any moment. Even Charlie Daniels could turn it up sometimes, like Legend of Woolly Swamp… I’ve listened to his 3 albums that are out, I really enjoy them… and yeah, there are little moments here and there that are really not country, but for the most part, it is. IMHO.
Hopefully this means some more true country artists will be able to get back on the radio…
eckiezZ
March 20, 2018 @ 1:53 pm
Loved Broken Halos the first time i heard it.
Still love it now.
Had no idea that it’s been battling it’s way to the top spot this whole time as I don’t listen to Mainstream Country but good for him.
Talk about playing the long game.
ShadeGrown
March 20, 2018 @ 5:28 pm
The only song on country radio in North Idaho that isn’t so bad it’s humorous
Rock of boston
March 21, 2018 @ 2:47 pm
Chris is the next willie nelson every song on his 3 albums could be top 10 if they dam radio would just play them