It’s another No. 1 for Dierks Bentley!
The country music superstar, along with the genre’s fastest rising acts HARDY and BRELAND, have something to celebrate as their chart-topping song “Beers On Me” has reached the top spot on the Mediabase/Country Aircheck Singles chart and Billboard’s Country’s Airplay chart the week of April 18.
“It was just a lot of fun all the way around,” Dierks told Celeb Secrets Country reporter Blakely McHugh about the creative process. “I also remember looking back on that year and thinking about these two guys… that they’re just sitting on the launching pad.”
Co-written by Bentley, HARDY and BRELAND, along with Luke Dick, Ross Copperman and Ashley Gorley, the crew went to Colorado to collaborate where Bentley says they wrote more than a dozen songs in three days.
“I just remember how fun that trip out to Colorado was and how beautiful it was and everything about it,” HARDY recalls, with his most memorable moment of the trip being a drinking break from writing the song.
“We had the fridge full of non alcoholic beer which I drank a lot of,” HARDY said, with Bentley, BRELAND, Gorley, Copperman and Dick all laughing after his response. “I was really trying to feel that placebo effect.”
The beer-drinking, songwriting trip couldn’t have been complete without watching sports, so naturally, Dierks wanted to take a quick break to catch the College National Football Championship game between Georgia and Alabama. Gorley, however, had different plans.
“[Ashley] wanted to keep writing songs and was like, ‘yeah put it on mute, i think we could write one more song,’” Dierks laughed. “You wonder why he’s so successful.”
A fact that fans might be surprised to know is that BRELAND did not make the trek to the Mile High State. When Dierks moved to Colorado during the pandemic, his manager kept him “in the know” with who’s new in Nashville, ultimately introducing him to the “Praise The Lord” singer who was then brought on the track for a feature.
“I didn’t even know who BRELAND [was],” Dierks recalls. “[I thought] is that a band?”
The name wound up sticking with him while he was writing “Beers On Me,” and he felt a “calling” to reach out to the rising star to get him on the track even though it was already complete.
After talking, the two went to the studio where BRELAND wrote and recorded his own verse on the record.
“It’s cool to see where a song can literally take you,” BRELAND said. “I didn’t get a chance to play any shows before the pandemic hit. Literally the third show that I ever played as an artist was in New York with Dierks in front of a thousand people.”
Included in his three live shows was his high school in New Jersey. He says because of the song, he’s gotten more opportunities to play more live shows, including the 2021 CMA Awards, 2022 ACM Awards and 2022 CMT Music Awards last month.
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While the three artists celebrate this huge milestone, BRELAND is recognizing the greater importance behind his first No. 1 hit.
According to a 2021 report by SongData, Black artists represent less than four percent of the commercial country music industry. Over 19 years, the study examined three components: the number of songs on the playlist, the amount of airplay the songs received and the number of songs that charted.
It found between 2002 – 2007, BIPOC artists are virtually nonexistent from country format radio with an average of just 0.5% of the songs played were by BIPOC artists. Between 2008-2013, that number went up to 1.5% and between 2014-2020, it went up slightly to 3.7%.
BRELAND says he believes country music is becoming more and more diverse but he says a lot of times, people are a lot of talk, saying they’ll bring someone on the road but never do. Bentley, however, put his words into action.
“He didn’t do that simply because I’m a Black person,” BRELAND said. “He did that because he saw the talent, but I think sometimes the problem is that the talent will get overlooked for that reason.”
The 26-year-old went on to say they didn’t have to bring him onto the track, considering it was already finished, but they did, and it, “speaks to the changing tides of country music and hopefully [we’ll] see some more diverse spaces at the number one spot in the future.”
“Beers On Me” marks Dierks’ 20th No. 1, while it is the first for both HARDY and BRELAND.
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Have you listened to “Beers On Me” yet? Let us know what you think of the song by either leaving a reaction at the bottom of the post or by sending us a tweet at @CS_Country.
For more Country news, visit CelebSecretsCountry.com.
