Of course Justin Timberlake is not a country artist. Shortly thereafter, we saw explosions of interest in artists such as Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, Cody Jinks, and many others, while hip-hop-inspired Bro-Country acts such as Sam Hunt and Florida Georgia Line were diminished. That moment imparted millions of listeners with the knowledge that there was an entire world of music out there they weren’t being served on country radio. With his star power and name recognition, Justin Timberlake imparted an incredible amount of attention on Chris Stapleton, who at the time was a non radio-supported artist that very few people outside of independent and Americana circles had ever heard of. In that moment, those two men helped save country music, even if it took a little R&B flavor to do it. But it’s something that has most certainly affected everything else in country music, and in ways that are still resonating, and that may not stop anytime soon. But even here seven years later, it’s hard to not assess that what we saw that night was magic, and something that helped reshape the direction of country music more than any other moment we’ve experienced in recent memory, and that we may experience ever.Ĭhris Stapleton, Justin Timberlake, and their particular version of “Tennessee Whiskey” may not be for everyone in country music. The purists and Americana types will cast it off as superfluous. With everything else going on in the world-including in country music-it’s easy to forget just how important that moment was. It brought the house down, and reminded many of that moment back in 2015. On Friday night, June 10th, Chris Stapleton was in Los Angeles, playing at the legendary Forum in Inglewood when Justin Timberlake stepped on the stage with him to re-create that moment, turning in an epic, 12-minute version of the song to close out the show. Bro-Country wouldn’t die right there, but it’s been slowly bleeding out ever since. But piggy backing off the star power of Justin Timberlake, that one performance was like a dagger in the heart of the Bro-Country era, which reigned supreme at that time. Traveller was barely raising a blip on the charts, and “Tennessee Whiskey” was an afterthought. Few mainstream country listeners even knew who he was. When Chris Stapleton took the stage of the CMA Awards on November 4th, 2015, he was in no way a household name. In fact, it was Dave Cobb who suggested Stapleton cut the song. It was Chris Stapleton listening to Sturgill Simpson’s magum opus Metamodern Sounds in Country Music that motivated him to shelve all the other stuff he’d been recording, look up producer Dave Cobb, and record Traveller and “Tennessee Whiskey” live in studio. Let’s also remember that the song’s approach can also be tied right back to the modern country music insurgency. It is a 40-year-old classic American country song that is still as relevant today as it was during the Reagan Administration, if not more. Yes, Chris Stapleton’s version brings a distinctly R&B/classic soul flavor to the classic country track, but appreciate that this is a song that was written by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove in the early 80s, was recorded by David Allan Coe in 1981, and was re-recorded and became a hit for George Jones in 1983. Appreciate, that the moment happened seven years ago this November, and still, just this week, “Tennessee Whiskey” was the 5th most streamed song in all of country music, and its parent album Traveller also remains one of the most popular titles in all of country, in part due to the strength of “Tennessee Whiskey.” So many different threads and narratives can be drawn from that specific moment, and the reverberations were so earth shaking, they still can be felt today. If you asked me point blank what the single most important moment in country music over the last ten years has been, without any hesitation, I would answer conclusively that it was Chris Stapleton and Justin Timberlake performing “Tennessee Whiskey” at the CMA Awards in November of 2015.
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