How Crazy Is This?

Luke Combs is a phenomenon. I mean, OMG. Three straight #1 singles, accolades, and sales up the wazoo for his “This One’s For You” album AND the deluxe edition released this Summer. Have you been to his live show? These aren’t merely concerts, people, they’re arena-sized group karaoke nights. Every word. Every song. All night. At some point, you start thinking to yourself, “I wish all of these 15,000 or so people would quit singing Luke Combs’ part, so I can actually hear Luke Combs singing the Luke Combs part.” The vibe is more like an impassioned, zealous, religious revival.

I witnessed this again last week during his Nashville stop, where Combs was supporting the Jason Aldean tour. In terms of volume and vigor, three songs stuck out that night when it came to unanimous – and raucous – audience participation: “Hurricane,” his first #1; its follow-up, “When It Rains It Pours;” and his latest mega-smash, which is blowing up Shazam and lighting up the tilt button when it comes to streaming metrics – #1 this week, with 5.8 million.

Of course, I’m talking about “Beautiful Crazy,” the song most of Country radio isn’t playing. That said, let's be clear: the one radio IS playing – the official radio single, “She Got The Best Of Me” – is also ginormous, sitting at #13 on the Mediabase Country singles chart after just nine weeks. It’s testing big everywhere – #1 across the board on Rate the Music – and pacing at a 4.4 million streams-per-week clip. It’s not IF “She Got The Best Of Me” becomes Combs’ fourth straight #1 single, it’s when. And, then, for how many weeks? It’ll surely be one the biggest recurrents of the year, too, joining his previous three #1s, which – by the way – all currently reside in the most recent week’s Top 23 most-played recurrents, according to Mediabase. By every measurable metric, this thing is an absolute beast of a song. It’s just that “Beautiful Crazy” is a bigger beast.

This, my friends, is what’s commonly referred to as “a world class problem.”

It should be noted that SiriusXM’s “The Highway” has been pounding “Beautiful Crazy” at the rate of close to 80 spins a week for a while now, with Dir./Country Programming JR Schumann calling it “A massive hit record; my best-testing song, currently.” “The Highway” already played through its life cycle of “She Got The Best Of Me” and moved on to “Beautiful,” as it isn’t beholden to the usual lock-step cooperation between labels and Country radio, landing all the planes on time and in the correct order.

That lock-step system is likely why Country radio play won’t play both behemoth songs at the same time, although a few have. Mediabase shows 24 of the 159 reporting stations are on “Beautiful Crazy.” KEBQ/Kansas City and WWQM/Madison, WI are spin leaders, both at triple digits; eight others have racked up double digit plays; the rest have featured it once.

“I just loved the song, knew it was monster, and didn’t want to wait,” said KBEQ PD Todd Nixon. “Country fans obviously sought out this song. Why wouldn’t we tap into that now versus waiting for it to be a single?” As a sidebar, Nixon wondered what I’ve also scratched my head about sometimes: “Not sure why we let Spotify, SiriusXM, etc. be the leaders on new, buzzy songs, but that’s a sidebar convo.” Indeed, and a terrific tease to make you read this to the very end…but back to the point. Nixon told me he saw immediate, positive metrics on “Beautiful Crazy” from local sales, Radiotraks, and a #1 rank with Shazams after just the first 100 spins. Historically, and dating back to former KBEQ PD Mike Kennedy – the station’s original architect – KBEQ has played cuts that weren’t officially singles.

Fletcher Keyes, WWQM’s PD, saw firsthand the viral nature of “Beautiful Crazy” following an acoustic show Combs played for the station with other new artists earlier this year – and before the Deluxe edition of Combs’ “This One’s For You” came out. Combs played the song, which WWQM recorded on video and posted on its website. Combs then re-posted the clip, which quickly amassed more than 800,000 views. WWQM played “Beautiful Crazy” a bit during the peak of “One Number Away,” with Keyes hoping “Beautiful” would be the next single. “Local streaming showed the song at top 10 levels,” recalls Keyes. When “She Got The Best of Me” was the designated single, Keyes packeted it and “Beautiful” to feature both, with each showing strong test results.

Both KBEQ and WWQM have “Beautiful” in rest – for now – focusing on the radio single. Keyes calls this a “rare situation,” in terms of two songs by the same artist, at the same time, both working so well. Country radio hasn’t ever seen an artist with more than one solid, solo, bonified hit climb the charts simultaneously. I double-checked that with Country music historian and chart savant Chris Huff, whose day job is APD/MD for Entercom Country KILT/Houston. “Even at the height of Garth-mania in the early 90s, any of his album cuts that started to gain enough organic traction to chart usually turned into singles by the time they climbed to the upper reaches of the chart, essentially forcing their predecessor down and out of the way,” said Huff. “Album cuts that weren’t singled didn’t gather enough consensus to become chart forces,” Huff added, while pointing out that Brooks’ powerful song “Red Strokes,” fueled by a famously artful video, peaked at #49 after not having been worked as a single.

Twin hits by a Country artist have included at least one duet. Kenny Chesney’s recent top-five with “Get Along” and the David Lee Murphy duet, “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” – was a rare exception, as was Florida Georgia Line's double-double. FGL's "Up Down" duet with Morgan Wallen was at No. 13 (and eventually No. 1) at the same time its "Meant To Be" duet with Bebe Rexha was at No. 2 (and also eventually No. 1).

As is his custom, Huff dug back more than 35 years to find another example. “The last prior analog I could find was in May 1982, when Willie Nelson hit #1 with Waylon Jennings on ‘Just To Satisfy You.’ That song knocked Willie’s ‘Always On My Mind’ out of the top spot.” As an aside, Huff points out that Combs actually has a third record getting spins at radio – albeit just Houston radio – as KILT has been spinning “Houston, We Got A Problem” since July.

It is being speculated that “Beautiful Crazy” will be the next single for Combs, once “She Got The Best Of Me” peaks, but that may be a while, with possibly nine legit #1 songs ahead of it; Luke Bryan’s “Sunrise, Sunburn, Sunset” is a likely two-week #1, and as I mentioned earlier, this Combs single could possibly earn more than one week at the top.

So, that begs a few questions for me.

Question #1: If “Beautiful” becomes the next single, is it so well vetted, with all its previous digital success we’ve discussed here, that it gets fast-passed into medium, power, or crush rotations faster than usual, tests right away, and tops the Country singles chart quickly?

Question#2: Or, is it played out by then? The numbers can arguably be described as astronomical. With everybody listening to everything these days, is it safe to assume all those people who have sought out the song via DSPs – and played the piss out of it – don’t also listen to radio? (Uh, not likely!) What if radio does add the song to actual dayparts where people listen, forgoing evenings and overnights? In theory familiarity should be instant, but might fatigue also be high, because it’s been available for so long?

Columbia Nashville VP/Promotion Shane Allen says that in the brave new world we’re living in, “metrics can point us to the next single,” which addresses question #1. “Fans want to consume everything Luke is doing right now, and radio remains so powerful in helping them do that.” As for question #2, Allen doesn’t feel the song will be played out at radio if and when “Beautiful” becomes a single, because not enough radio airplay has been accumulated to hit critical mass.

Question#3: What the hell is radio waiting for? Why NOT play two songs by possibly the hottest new act in our format, when both songs are incredibly active? This is not unusual at Pop radio. Ariana Grande has the #9 and #10 songs this week with “No Tears Left To Cry” at #10 after recently peaking at #1. Another Grande song, “Breathin,” is #44. With Country’s consistent and strong 18-34 appeal, and this format trailing only Top 40 in radio usage, would it be so horrible for radio to play multiple songs from its biggest or hottest artists simultaneously?

The Stone Door Media Lab’s Jeff Green, who has presented Matrix of the Metrics findings at Country Radio Seminar the past two years and tracks consumption data points, says it’s worth examining this Luke Combs scenario at a time when Country listeners are increasingly drawn to alternative media choices. He notes, “Labels and radio no longer have the advantage or luxury of being able to fully manage what the public gets to hear or when. With up to 70% of streaming being on-demand, those 5.8 million streams (for “Beautiful”) represent as much as 200,000 hours of ‘intentional listening’ each week to a song Country radio could be delivering. It looks like a golden opportunity to break tradition at a time when Country radio needs all the occasions and TSL it can get.”

Strong Shazam activity is a data point that Green has demonstrated to be positively correlated to airplay success. So far, “Beautiful Crazy” has already accumulated more than 103,000 Shazam tags. That’s a remarkably high figure for a non-single Country song that’s been given only a few dozen terrestrial spins per week until finally reaching 100 nationally this past week. This huge Shazam count is almost as many as the 107,000 generated so far after 4,000 total terrestrial spins on “Speechless” by Dan+ Shay, who are famous for racking up streams and Shazams. That tells us how big “Beautiful Crazy” really is.

Also, to Green’s point about radio possibly missing occasion and TSL opportunities, Nielsen VP/Audience Insights Jon Miller shared with me earlier this summer, “The radio landscape is changing so quickly ... Nielsen has shown how time spent with music is going up and up and up, but that's happening digitally. Radio still carries a big stick, but there is so much listening going to places other than radio.”

Maybe there’s a Question #4 here, too: Down the road, what is Country radio’s role in the wider world of time spent with music? Honestly, I don’t think we own the music discovery lane anymore, but nobody is better at helping hit music achieve critical mass and curating a finite number of songs so that when listeners give us an occasion, then stick around for a while, we’re providing them with a solid, enjoyable music experience in addition to serving the community and providing additional, non-music entertainment.

I’d like to believe that if I was still in radio, I’d play both of these songs, and I’d try hard as hell to cash in on an artist who has unstoppable momentum and is greatly impacting the format right now, because 103,000 Shazams and 5.6 million streams can’t be wrong. But that doesn’t mean “She Got The Best Of Me” would have to be compromised. Extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures. Play both, and – for now – lighten up on artist separation restrictions for Combs. It might not always be this way, but fans just can’t get enough of this guy. We’ve already discussed data for both songs; we know “She Got The Best Of Me” is a callout champion; arena-sized crowds are singing every word to both songs; and, in general, Combs appears to have widespread, everyman appeal. That doesn’t seem like a problem to me; it feels like a giant opportunity. Remember when radio seized opportunity? Playing both songs wouldn’t spoil the label’s ambitions for future radio success on “Beautiful Crazy,” it will only enhance it. Have you listened to the deluxe edition of “This One’s For You?” It’s loaded with hits. And, we hear Combs is a prolific writer/collaborator, so, more massive hits are sure to come.

At the open of his ‘Beautiful Crazy’ video, Combs says, "Let’s give the people what they want. This is the song they want.” As a cue to radio, the data suggest that Luke is right.