With the release of Luke Combs’ third career studio album, it got me thinking about this conversation from 2019…
In an interview with HITS Daily Double, Scott Borchetta opened up on the state of country music, particularly the genre’s young stars, arguing that country music doesn’t have any true headliners under the age of 30, except of course for his own Big Machine artist, Thomas Rhett.
“Thomas Rhett is arguably the only headliner in his 20s. Luke Combs will be 28, and he has a fighting chance of being a true headliner. Turning 26 this year will be Kane Brown and Kelsea Ballerini.
We don’t have one artist under 25 making headlining impact. Huge opportunity. No one’s in their early 20s, not since Taylor. Look what she did for the format.
And I think there can be another Dixie Chicks/ShaniaTwain/Taylor moment.”
Excuse me for one second…
And I know Scott was just trying to pump up his boy Thomas Rhett, but at the time, Luke was literally headlining an arena tour, performing at some of the SAME EXACT ARENAS that Thomas Rhett was playing.
Fighting chance? What’s the definition of fighting chance? “A small possibility to succeed or overcome a situation.” Small possibility? LOL…
Throw in the streaming numbers, album sales, and all the chart records that Luke was crushing at the time and you have Luke wiping the floor with Thomas Rhett… and just about everybody else in the business.
Now fast forward to today…
Luke Combs won an Entertainer of the Year award 2021, not to mention he’s packing some NFL stadiums this summer… him and Morgan Wallen are the two biggest things in country music at the moment, and Morgan still has another year before turning 30.
Needless to say, Scott’s assessment of country music and it’s young headliners did NOT age well…