Country Music

Country Music Hits

Uncategorized

AT 17 SHE SANG PATSY CLINE ON A POP TALENT SHOW AND REFUSED TO SING ANYTHING ELSE. EIGHT YEARS LATER, NASHVILLE CAME TO HER. Emily Ann Roberts was a high school kid from Knoxville when she walked onto The Voice. Everybody else was chasing the big modern moment. She picked Patsy Cline. She picked Lee Ann Womack. She picked the Chicks. Blake Shelton turned around, and in December 2015 she finished the season in second place before she’d even graduated. Three of the songs she sang on that show landed on the country chart. Her take on “Burning House” went to number four. Then came the part that actually tells you who she is. No label came running. So she went home, finished school, and got to work — writing, playing, learning the road. She put out an EP in 2019. She stood on the Grand Ole Opry stage sixteen times before her first album even existed. That album, Can’t Hide Country, came in September 2023. Thirteen songs. She wrote or co-wrote twelve of them. She released it independently, and it worked — Billboard, People, MusicRow, a spot on Rolling Stone’s best of CMA Fest. Sony Nashville signed her in 2025. Eight years after the show. On her terms, with her own songs, in her own accent. She’s 27, and she never once pretended to be something she wasn’t.

At 17, Emily Ann Roberts Chose Patsy Cline—and Never Looked Back

When Emily Ann Roberts walked onto The Voice as a Knoxville high school student, she did not arrive with a trend-chasing set list or a polished pop persona. She came in with old-soul country choices: Patsy Cline, Lee Ann Womack, and the Chicks. That decision mattered, because it immediately told viewers what kind of artist Emily Ann Roberts wanted to be. Blake Shelton turned his chair, and Emily Ann Roberts made it all the way to second place in season 9 in December 2015, before she had even graduated high school.

For many young singers, that kind of moment becomes the finish line. For Emily Ann Roberts, it was only the beginning. She left the show with attention, but not an instant shortcut. The bigger test came after the cameras stopped rolling. Emily Ann Roberts went home, finished school, and started doing the slower work that shapes a real career: writing songs, learning the road, and building a voice that sounded like herself instead of a copy of whatever was on the radio.

That patience eventually paid off in public view. Emily Ann Roberts released an EP in 2019 and kept showing up where country music still measures commitment: live stages, songwriter rooms, and long nights on the road. Before Emily Ann Roberts had even released a full album, she had already performed on the Grand Ole Opry stage many times, proving that Nashville was paying attention even when no major label was rushing in to claim her.

A Debut Built on Her Own Words

When Emily Ann Roberts finally released Can’t Hide Country in September 2023, the project reflected years of steady work rather than a sudden reinvention. The album included 13 songs, and Emily Ann Roberts wrote or co-wrote 12 of them. That detail says almost everything about her approach. Emily Ann Roberts was not trying to hide her roots, smooth out her accent, or stretch herself into a more commercial shape. She leaned into the sound that had been with her from the start.

The response was encouraging. Emily Ann Roberts earned notice from major outlets, and the album helped raise her profile in the country world. It was the kind of independent release that does more than fill a catalog; it confirms an identity. By then, Emily Ann Roberts had already become a familiar name to fans who appreciated traditional country instincts and a young artist with enough discipline to let her career grow at its own pace.

Eight Years Later, Nashville Came to Her

In 2025, Emily Ann Roberts signed with RECORDS/Sony Music Nashville, closing the loop on a journey that began in 2015. That span of time matters. It means Emily Ann Roberts did not get signed because of a single TV appearance. She got signed after years of proving she could write, perform, and connect on her own terms. In a business that often rewards speed, Emily Ann Roberts built something steadier.

Emily Ann Roberts never seemed interested in becoming someone else. She kept the country in her voice, the honesty in her writing, and the patience in her pace.

Now, at 27, Emily Ann Roberts stands as a reminder that some careers are not launched all at once. Some are earned slowly, one song, one stage, and one year at a time. Emily Ann Roberts chose Patsy Cline at 17, and eight years later Nashville chose Emily Ann Roberts back.

 

Related Post

Uncategorized

NEARLY TWO YEARS AFTER KRIS KRISTOFFERSON PASSED AWAY, HIS GREATEST INHERITANCE WASN’T WRITTEN IN A WILL — IT WAS HIDDEN IN CASEY’S PEN. September 28, 2024. At home on Maui, surrounded by family. Kris Kristofferson was 88. He left behind three Grammys. A Hall of Fame plaque. A Golden Globe. Twenty-nine albums and a seat beside Cash, Waylon and Willie. But none of that is what Casey inherited. His daughter with Rita Coolidge went on her first tour at seven weeks old. She spent the next four decades running from it. Punk rock. Classical ballet. She danced with the Asheville Ballet, then built a dance school in North Carolina and raised three daughters — a whole life engineered so nobody would ask whose kid she was. “Almost anything to not be recognized just for my name.” Then 2019. At 45, she walked into a studio in Asheville with her own band and made Dirty Feet — nine songs, most of them written or co-written by her. And one cover: “Me and Bobby McGee.” Her father’s song. The one she’d spent a lifetime not singing. Five years later he was gone, and the country went looking for him. His catalog jumped 2,292% in a single day — from 79,000 streams to nearly 1.9 million. The Grammys sit still. The plaque hangs quiet. But that pen? Still moving — in Casey’s hand. Some fathers leave royalties. Kris left the ache that makes you write.

Uncategorized

They held his funeral behind closed doors. Family, band, and crew only. No cameras, no arena, no public goodbye — the Covel family asked for that, and country music honored it. Thirty-two years. Twenty No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. Back-to-back ACM Entertainer of the Year in 2002 and 2003. A man who ran his own label because Nashville wouldn’t do it his way. He died on February 5, 2024 — one day before the final Country Music Hall of Fame ballots were delivered. CMA chief Sarah Trahern later said her heart sank knowing they’d missed the chance to tell him while he was still here. So Nashville told him anyway. In October, at the Medallion Ceremony, his widow Tricia took the stage: “He didn’t just sing those songs. He was those songs.” Then Eric Church walked out in all black and sang Don’t Let the Old Man In — the song Toby wrote about outrunning mortality, performed by a man who knew he hadn’t. The funeral had no audience. The goodbye took a year, an arena, and half of Nashville standing in for the fans who never got to say it.

Uncategorized

SHE COULDN’T BUY THE HOUSE — SO SHE BOUGHT THE WHOLE TOWN. 1,450 ACRES. $220,000. “She wasn’t buying land. She was buying back a childhood.” Loretta Webb was born in 1932 in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky — a coal-mining holler with no running water. She married at 15. She had four children before she turned 20. In 1966, she and Doolittle took a wrong turn while house-hunting and found an abandoned plantation home in Tennessee. Nobody had lived in it for twenty years. She wanted it immediately. But the man who owned the house also owned Hurricane Mills. The only way to get the house was to buy the entire town. They bought the town. Then she built something on that land nobody expected: a replica of the Kentucky cabin she’d grown up in. A poor girl’s shack, rebuilt on property she owned outright. On October 4, 2022, she died in her sleep in that house, with the cabin still standing outside. She was 90. The circle took ninety years to close.

You Missed

Uncategorized

NEARLY TWO YEARS AFTER KRIS KRISTOFFERSON PASSED AWAY, HIS GREATEST INHERITANCE WASN’T WRITTEN IN A WILL — IT WAS HIDDEN IN CASEY’S PEN. September 28, 2024. At home on Maui, surrounded by family. Kris Kristofferson was 88. He left behind three Grammys. A Hall of Fame plaque. A Golden Globe. Twenty-nine albums and a seat beside Cash, Waylon and Willie. But none of that is what Casey inherited. His daughter with Rita Coolidge went on her first tour at seven weeks old. She spent the next four decades running from it. Punk rock. Classical ballet. She danced with the Asheville Ballet, then built a dance school in North Carolina and raised three daughters — a whole life engineered so nobody would ask whose kid she was. “Almost anything to not be recognized just for my name.” Then 2019. At 45, she walked into a studio in Asheville with her own band and made Dirty Feet — nine songs, most of them written or co-written by her. And one cover: “Me and Bobby McGee.” Her father’s song. The one she’d spent a lifetime not singing. Five years later he was gone, and the country went looking for him. His catalog jumped 2,292% in a single day — from 79,000 streams to nearly 1.9 million. The Grammys sit still. The plaque hangs quiet. But that pen? Still moving — in Casey’s hand. Some fathers leave royalties. Kris left the ache that makes you write.

Uncategorized

They held his funeral behind closed doors. Family, band, and crew only. No cameras, no arena, no public goodbye — the Covel family asked for that, and country music honored it. Thirty-two years. Twenty No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. Back-to-back ACM Entertainer of the Year in 2002 and 2003. A man who ran his own label because Nashville wouldn’t do it his way. He died on February 5, 2024 — one day before the final Country Music Hall of Fame ballots were delivered. CMA chief Sarah Trahern later said her heart sank knowing they’d missed the chance to tell him while he was still here. So Nashville told him anyway. In October, at the Medallion Ceremony, his widow Tricia took the stage: “He didn’t just sing those songs. He was those songs.” Then Eric Church walked out in all black and sang Don’t Let the Old Man In — the song Toby wrote about outrunning mortality, performed by a man who knew he hadn’t. The funeral had no audience. The goodbye took a year, an arena, and half of Nashville standing in for the fans who never got to say it.

Uncategorized

SHE COULDN’T BUY THE HOUSE — SO SHE BOUGHT THE WHOLE TOWN. 1,450 ACRES. $220,000. “She wasn’t buying land. She was buying back a childhood.” Loretta Webb was born in 1932 in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky — a coal-mining holler with no running water. She married at 15. She had four children before she turned 20. In 1966, she and Doolittle took a wrong turn while house-hunting and found an abandoned plantation home in Tennessee. Nobody had lived in it for twenty years. She wanted it immediately. But the man who owned the house also owned Hurricane Mills. The only way to get the house was to buy the entire town. They bought the town. Then she built something on that land nobody expected: a replica of the Kentucky cabin she’d grown up in. A poor girl’s shack, rebuilt on property she owned outright. On October 4, 2022, she died in her sleep in that house, with the cabin still standing outside. She was 90. The circle took ninety years to close.

Uncategorized

GRETCHEN WILSON HAD BEEN SINGING THAT LINE ABOUT TANYA TUCKER FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS. WITH LAINEY WILSON BESIDE HER, SHE CHANGED THE NAME. On August 11 at the Full Throttle Saloon in Sturgis, Miranda Lambert brought Gretchen Wilson and Lainey Wilson onstage for “Redneck Woman.” Gretchen took the lead. Miranda and Lainey sang beside her. Then came the line everybody knew. Instead of singing that she knew every word to every Tanya Tucker song, Gretchen changed it: “I know all the words to every Lainey Wilson song.” Lainey immediately smiled. The crowd erupted. Later, Lainey joined Miranda again for “Good Horses,” but that tiny change in “Redneck Woman” said something bigger. Gretchen had spent more than two decades singing the name of a woman who came before her. That night, she turned toward the woman standing beside her and sang the next name. It lasted only seconds. It felt like country music passing the torch.