Get to know McKinley James, the face of Eric Church‘s new album, Mr. Misunderstood. Check out the video below.

Luke Bryan, the CMA Entertainer of the Year, has been selected as one of the five finalists for Artist of the Year at this year’s American Music Awards. He’ll be vying for the fan-voted award against Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj, One Direction and Taylor Swift. Luke is also nominated for Favorite Country Male Artist.

Luke, alongside Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild, is slated to perform at the show, in addition to host and performer Jennifer Lopez, One Direction, 5 Seconds of Summer, Coldplay, Selena Gomez, Nick Jonas, Demi Lovato, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Gwen Stefani, Carrie Underwood, WALK THE MOON, a duet from Meghan Trainor and Charlie Puth and the legendary Star Wars score to be performed by pop super group Pentatonix and a full symphony orchestra.

The 2015 American Music Awards will broadcast live on Sunday, November 22nd at 8pm ET on ABC.

The American Music Awards winners are voted entirely by fans. Voting for all categories except New Artist of the Year Presented by Kohl’s, Artist of the Year and Collaboration of the Year Unleashed by T-Mobile is now closed.

Chris Stapleton has been receiving a lot of recognition ever since last week’s CMA Awards, where he picked up trophies for Male Vocalist, Album and New Artist of the Year. It sounds like he was born to be a vehicle for music, a conveyor of song…a singer…and that’s exactly what he’s always been, even as a small boy growing up in Kentucky.

“I don’t remember ever not singing. I always sang. I sang with my brother. We would sing at home and sing at church and different things. I don’t ever remember not singing. I don’t have any memory of where I didn’t sing,” says Chris. “I found it out because I didn’t like anything else, and I found out a bunch of things that I was not.”

He drove an ice truck, sold cars, went to college and had a handful of other jobs, but he always turned to music. “The thought of doing anything else just made me so miserable, I think that really [laughs] steered my path and for better or worse.”

Chris is currently on the West Coast with sold-out shows, including Thursday night in Portland, Oregon, Friday in Chico, California, Sunday in San Francisco and Monday in Los Angeles. He’s also set to perform during Music City’s New Year’s Bash on Broadway, along with Kings of Leon, The Whigs and Kelsea Ballerini, among others.

As part of ESPN’s season-long relationship with Interscope/Universal Music Group Nashville’s artists, this weekend’s ABC Saturday Night Football featuring No. 12 Oklahoma at No. 6 Baylor (8 p.m. ET) will air the exclusive broadcast debut of the live video for GRAMMY®-nominated David Nail‘s current single “Night’s on Fire.” The song, written by Jonathan Singleton and Deric Ruttan, is from the platinum-selling artist’s  forthcoming new album Fighter. Already, Nail’s “Good at Tonight” has been used in ESPN’s college football coverage throughout the 2015 season.

Clips from the video will accompany bumps at the end of the game’s first and third quarters with an extended clip played during halftime. The song will also be featured during Sunday’s “Plays of the Week” segment on SportsCenter and be used the rest of the college football season on ABC/ESPN games.

About David Nail:
GRAMMY®-nominated MCA Nashville recording artist David Nail, considered to have one of the most distinct and powerful voices in country music today, released his third album, I’m A Fire, to massive acclaim. I’m A Fire landed on many 2014 BEST OF lists including Rolling Stone Country, NPR, iTunesand Billboard. And the album’s first single, “Whatever She’s Got,” was a No. 1 certified PLATINUM hit and was named one of the Top 3 country songs of 2014 by Billboard. Nail is currently on the road with Darius Rucker’s Southern Style Tour.

Originally slated as a ten-week run with My Country Nation, Lauren Alaina’s “SWAK” weekly web series took off with fans, accumulating over 1.6 million views. Lauren and My Country Nation have extended the lighthearted series another ten installments. The latest webisode, “21 Things You Don’t Know About Me,” in honor of Lauren turning 21 this month, posted yesterday HERE.

Lauren is currently touring in support of her new single, “Next Boyfriend,” off her self-titled EP, recently released on Mercury Nashville / 19 / Interscope Records. Also featured on the five-song EP is “History,” a song Lauren wrote and recorded at ESPN’s request for an exclusive promo track to run throughout the network’s extensive football coverage this season. To preview and purchase the Lauren Alaina EP, click HERE.

For more information, images, tour dates and more, please visit www.LaurenAlainaOfficial.com.

Sunday was Lauren Alaina‘s 21st birthday, and so in her latest SWAK video are 21 things you don’t know about her.

💋 #SWAK My Country Nation

Eric Paslay was among the many fans in the audience at last week’s CMA Awards talking about the incredible performance by Chris Stapleton and Justin Timberlake. He describes the entire night as “mind-blowingly awesome!”

“I’ve been a fan of Chris Stapleton for years and years, as well as everyone in the country music community in Nashville – just the songs he writes and how many songs he’s on and the songs he sings on in the background of other artists – just all over the radio,” says Eric. “For him to win New Artist, Album and Male Vocalist, it just seemed right with his album, Traveller, that came out this year…I was somehow on the third row in front of Chris Stapleton and Justin Timberlake, and I was like at church. I think the whole room just felt the magic of something changing in country music.”

He also says the performance was not only exciting for the fans, but as musicians, because it raises the level of music being made in town. “It’s exciting for us to go, ‘Let’s raise the bar, let’s raise the bar, let’s raise the bar,’ and just have a fun, an amazing time, because we’re doing this because we love music, and I’m glad it happened with my buddy, Chris Stapleton,” says Eric. “I get a little emotional when someone you’re a huge fan of gets a shout-out like that, because he’s been writing songs and singing songs for empty rooms and half-filled rooms. And he’s never even had a Top 20 as a singer on the radio, yet, he won Male Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year and New Artist of the Year. That’s awesome. That’s great music, and I’m glad that people are speaking up about it.”

Eric – another great musician – is going “High Class” with his latest single, the first release from his forthcoming album due out next year.

Canaan Smith kicked off his own Stompin’ Grounds Tour on Friday (November 6th) in Charlotte, North Carolina. The trek, which features newcomer Russell Dickerson, will hit 11 cities through December 11th.

The title of Canaan’s tour comes from a song on his debut album, Bronco, which was released earlier this year. “‘Stompin’ Grounds’ is a track on the album, and it’s just a song that pays tribute to hometowns across America where your roots are at, being proud of that and the stories that you have from the towns you grew up in,” says the Virginia native. “So, each night I’m going to take those ideals to whatever city I’m in and give people a chance to kind of immerse themselves and recollect and sort of conjure up feelings from their hometowns and make it feel like we came to celebrate their town.”

Canaan, who is making his way up the country charts with “Hole in a Bottle,” will make stops in Nashville on Thursday (November 12th), Greenville, South Carolina Friday (November 13th) and Winston-Salem, North Carolina Saturday (November 14th).

Capitol Records Nashville’s Mickey Guyton releases her version of “Do You Want To Build A Snowman?” from Disney’s Frozen with two national TV performances. Mickey will perform the holiday single on ABC’s CMA Country Christmas airing December 3rd at 9pm ET and the Disney Channel’s Fa-la-la-lidays Celebrates a Radio Family Holiday airing December 4 at 9pm ET. A video for “Do You Want To Build A Snowman?” can be viewed HERE. The holiday single is currently available at all digital retailers.

Mickey Guyton released her self-titled EP in May. She co-wrote two of the four tracks featured on the EP and collaborated with award-winning producers Nathan Chapman (Taylor Swift), Dann Huff (Keith Urban) and Luke Laird (Kacey Musgraves).

The Texas native has been featured in Essence magazine, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.  She made her television debut in March on ABC’s Good Morning America where she performed the powerful ballad “Better Than You Left Me” and she was most recently profiled for an in-depth interview with Gayle King on CBS This Morning.  NPR, Billboard, Rolling Stone and Time Out NY have touted Mickey on their 2015 Best Of and Who To Watch lists and last month Mickey wrapped up her first tour on Brad Paisley’s Crushin’ It World Tour.

Mercury Nashville’s Chris Stapleton released his debut album, Traveller, to overwhelming critical acclaim in May and it is the best-selling first week album by a debut country artist in 2015. Last week 13.6 million viewers tuned in to the 49^th Annual CMA Awards and saw the soulful singer in a remarkable on-stage collaboration with superstar and good friend Justin Timberlake. In addition to the performance that Entertainment Weekly called “an unapologetic display of abnormal levels of talent,” Stapleton took home awards for New Artist of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year. This marks the first time in CMA Awards history for a New Artist of the Year winner to also collect Male Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year. Almost instantaneously, Traveller rocketed to the top of the album sales charts where it currently remains on both the Billboard 200 and country albums chart with 153,428 units sold and 177,199 equivalent album sales this week making it the fourth biggest sales week for any country album in 2015 and the first debut country album to hit the top of the Billboard 200 in four years. “Tennessee Whiskey” is the best-selling digital country song of the week with 131,206 downloads sold. Fans can purchase Traveller HERE.

Within hours of Stapleton’s impressive showing, all of his remaining tour dates sold out. As the  New York Times points out, “His victories at the awards … were a collective acknowledgement by the industry of the superlative talent of one of its own. With that voice, he does a thing many of his colleagues simply cannot.”

Since his May album debut, Stapleton has performed on The View, Late Show with David Letterman, Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Late Night with Seth Meyers and CBS This Morning Saturday Sessions.

Recorded at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A by Vance Powell and co-produced by Dave Cobb and Stapleton, Traveller had already been named “Best of 2015” by Rolling Stone, NPR Music, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Stereogum and more.