It might be daunting to launch a massive endeavor like a double album, but not for country superstar Cody Johnson, an artist MusicRow predicts “just might be the future of real country music.” For him, it was quite the opposite. “I literally felt like I was just window shopping. Like I was a millionaire in a diamond shop. I was like, ‘I want that one. I want that one, I want that one,’” he says. “And then when we added all those songs up, we had 18 that we knew we had to record.”
The brand new 18-track double album Human is stacked top to bottom with songs that Johnson considers ones that were originally dubbed too country for country. When the songwriters told Johnson and his team that the tunes they’d penned were being rejected by other Nashville artists, he said, “Bring those to me.”
“It’s so hard to watch the fight to get the cowboy back on the radio. Because that’s who I am and the lifestyle I live. And I can’t sacrifice my integrity for who I am. I’m just kind of just being myself,” Johnson says, having established a following of loyal fans by doing just that. Known as CoJo Nation, they regularly sell out shows across the country and have helped him earn multiple ACM and CMA Awards nominations, a Platinum-selling, Top 10 single (“On My Way To You”), two RIAA Gold-certified tracks (“Nothin’ On You” and “With You I Am”) and more than two billion streams worldwide.
Genre-bending band Whiskey Myers have played more than 3,000 live shows to ever-increasing crowd sizes since their emergence in 2007. Their self-produced fifth studio album, WHISKEY MYERS, out now on the band’s own Wiggy Thump Records, debuted at No. 1 on both the Country and Americana/Folk sales charts, at No. 2 on the Rock chart and No. 6 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart. The self-titled project follows their previous album, Mud, which reached No. 1 on the iTunes Country chart with single “Stone” hitting Top 10 all-genre. In total, Whiskey Myers have sold more than 1.2 million albums and amassed over 1.5 billion streams while earning three RIAA Gold certifications. USA Today describes the band led by frontman Cody Cannon as “a riff-heavy blend of Southern rock and gritty country that has earned comparisons to the Allman Brothers Band and Led Zeppelin,” with Rolling Stone noting “it’s the seminal combination of twang and crunchy rock & roll guitars that hits a perfect sweet spot.”