Nashville, TN – Canaan Smith began celebrating his first-ever No. 1 single in Bristow, VA on Friday when Dierks Bentley, Kip Moore and Maddie & Tae stormed the stage during Canaan’s “Love You Like That” performance. His Sounds of Summer tourmates dressed in all-white coveralls decorated to deliver the news that Canaan’s hit song, which has already sold over 600,000 tracks, had topped the charts. Bentley later posted video of the prank here: https://goo.gl/tL1unC

“I was so shocked when I saw Dierks, Kip, Maddie, Tae and some of the crew guys come on stage” says Canaan. “This is just so surreal and I’m so excited. I’ll never forget it.”

“Love You Like That” is the lead single off Canaan’s recently released debut album, Bronco, on Mercury Nashville. The Virginia-native co-wrote eight of the 11 tracks featured on Bronco including “Love You Like That” (written with Brett Beavers and Jim Beavers).

Canaan is currently featured in USA Today’s “On The Verge” artist spotlight. In the article, Canaan describes the inspiration behind the Bronco album title, his muse for “Love You Like That” and his familial musical upbringing: http://goo.gl/wgdDnt

Canaan will continue on the Sounds of Summer Tour through September with upcoming dates in Charlotte, NC and Birmingham, AL.

Bronco is available now: http://umgn.us/BRONCO

Additional information can be found at: www.CanaanSmith.com

Alan Jackson appeared on CBS Sunday Morning this past weekend, prior to releasing his album, Angels and Alcohol, this Friday (July 17th).

Alan Jackson is set to release his new album, Angels and Alcohol, his first studio album of all new music in three years. The album is titled after one of the songs on the album, which was the perfect heading describing the entire collection.

“It sounded like a good title to me,” says Alan. “This song is about such a wide expanse of your life. It’s about life and love and crying and dying and heartache and drinking and having a good time and Friday nights – all things, to me, that have always been a part of country music…Country music is always about so many things. I felt like this title – Angels and Alcohol – kind of is [from] one end to the other.”

Angels and Alcohol, which includes the lead track “Jim and Jack and Hank,” is available Friday (July 17th).

Catch Alan on NBC’s Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday (July 15th) and Today show on Friday.

NASHVILLE, TN (Thursday, July 9, 2015) – GRAMMY award-winning country group, Little Big Town, makes Billboard history as their reign continues atop Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart for the 11th consecutive week with their smash hit, “Girl Crush.”

Little Big Town’s 11th week in the #1 spot sets a new record as the longest run by a group (of at least three members) in the chart’s history ousting the previous record set by The Browns with “The Three Bells” in 1959.

“Crush” additionally logs its third consecutive week and 11th week overall as the #1 country download on the Nielsen SoundScan Digital Country Songs Chart; making it the most downloaded song in country music for 2015 with sales totaling nearly 1.4 million.  The hit single is also currently sitting in the #5 position on the country radio charts and is heading towards a #1 record in the coming weeks.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (July 9, 2015) – Country superstar Alan Jackson will launch Angels and Alcohol, his first studio album of all new music in three years, with a major media blitz that kicks off today, Thursday, July 9 at NPR and on NPR mobile applications for an NPR FIRST LISTEN where fans have the opportunity to stream the album in its entirety before it is available on July 17. On Sunday, July 12, Jackson will be featured on CBS SUNDAY MORNING. The multi-platinum selling Grammy winner will perform on the TONIGHT SHOW starring Jimmy Fallon Wednesday, July 15, and will celebrate album release day with a performance on the Toyota Summer Concert Series on TODAY live from Rockefeller Plaza (Friday, July 17).

Click HERE to go to the NPR FIRST LISTEN of Jackson’s new album Angels and Alcohol.

Angels and Alcohol, Jackson’s first studio album of all new music in three years, includes seven self-penned songs including the title track and the album’s first single “Jim and Jack and Hank” released this week to country radio.Angels and Alcohol, his 15th studio album, comes 25 years after his debut landmark album Here In The Real World. Since the release of Here In The Real World, Jackson has released 22 albums including two Christmas albums, two gospel albums, three Greatest Hits collections and a Bluegrass album which included standards and eight original songs written by Jackson.

The new album was produced by Jackson’s long-time collaborator and friend Keith Stegall who has produced every one of Jackson’s 23 albums over the past 25 years with the exception of one album – Like Red On A Rose (Alison Krauss).

Angels and Alcohol is available for preorder by clicking HERE.

Angels and Alcohol Track Listing:

1) “You Can Always Come Home”             (Alan Jackson)

2) “You Never Know”                                (Alan Jackson)

3) “Angels and Alcohol”                            (Alan Jackson)

4) “Gone Before You Met Me”                   (Michael White, Michael Heeney)

5) “The One You’re Waiting On”                 (Adam Wright, Shannon Wright)

6) “Jim and Jack and Hank”                       (Alan Jackson)

7) “I Leave A Light On”                              (Alan Jackson)

8) “Flaws”                                                 (Alan Jackson)

9) “When God Paints”                                (Troy Jones, Greg Becker)

10) “Mexico, Tequila and Me”                     (Alan Jackson)

About Alan Jackson

The man from rural Newnan, GA, who claims he is just a “singer of simple songs,” has sold nearly 60 million albums worldwide and ranks as one of the 10 best-selling vocalists of all-time in all genres. He has released more than 60 singles—registering 50 Top Ten hits and 35 #1s (including 26 Billboard #1s).  He has earned more than 150 music industry awards—including 18 Academy of Country Music Awards, 16 Country Music Association Awards, a pair of Grammys and ASCAP’s Founders and Golden Note Awards. Jackson received the first-ever ASCAP Heritage Award in 2014 having earned the title of most performed country music songwriter-artist of ASCAP’s first 100 years.  He is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry.

Alan Jackson is one of the most successful and respected singer-songwriters in music.  He is in the elite company of Paul McCartney and John Lennon among songwriters who’ve written more than 20 songs that they’ve recorded and taken to the top of the charts.  Jackson is one of the best-selling artists since the inception of SoundScan, ranking alongside the likes of Eminem and Metallica.

Kacey Musgraves spent a lot of time on her latest album, Pageant Material, and inserted some cool moments into the song. The most special moment is at the beginning of the song, “This Town,” in which she placed the voice of her grandmother (aka Memaw), who passed away last year.

“There’s a really special moment that happens in the beginning of this song that you’ll hear and it’s a woman’s voice, and it’s my Memaw’s – Barbara Taylor – she passed away last December. It’s my mom’s mom. She was the most interesting woman ever, and she worked in the ER. Her whole career basically, she was an ER nurse. So, she always had these insane stories of like all these crazy people coming in,” says Kacey. “A couple of years ago, she came over to the house and we were all sitting around. It was my mom and dad and my sister and me and her, and we got her going on the stories again, and I secretly pressed record secretly on my phone, and I got all these stories of all these people coming in and things that she saw. And I had forgotten that I did that.”

Her co-writer, Shane McAnally, urged her to use the recording in the song. “Whenever we were producing ‘This Town,’ I kind of pictured like a radio or like a TV in the background, or like small town conversation. I was going through my voice notes, and…I brought that up. I was like, ‘I have this audio of Memaw talking,’ and he said, ‘What if we put that in the song?’ And it was brilliant, so we found a good part of the story and put it in there.”

For all you vinyl collectors out there, the (pink!) Pageant Material vinyl record is available this Friday.

Canaan Smith is poised to enter the top of the country charts with his gold-certified single, “Love You Like That,” a song that is real in every sense of the word and is an example of how an everyday guy says “I love you” to his significant other.

“I think ‘Love You Like That’ is just a perfect example of how a man’s man can still say I love you without sounding like a girly girl,” says Canaan. “I think the country guys out there, they’re not shying away from singing this song because it’s kind of just like every day dude, just part of our everyday lives is finding the love of your life and that’s a good thing to hold on to. When you find it let them know how long you’re going to love them, long as till the sun comes back and even longer than that, ‘slow as the Mississippi,’ strong as whiskey. Be proud of that love. Be proud of what you’ve got. And I think people are staking their claim and saying, ‘That’s who I am.’”

The Virginia native will perform in Virginia Beach on Thursday as part of Dierks Bentley’s Sounds of Summer Tour.

Easton Corbin’s About to Get Real album bows at the top of the country album chart this week. The new collection, which features his latest hit “Baby Be My Love Song,” sold more than 20-thousand copies to land at No. 1 on the country album chart and No. 9 overall. Kacey Musgraves’ Pageant Material comes in at No.2 on the country chart, followed by Sam Hunt’s Montevallo, which rounds out the Top 3.

Easton says he tries to put a lot of truth and authenticity into his music. “I want people to take away from my music that it’s authentic and it’s real and it comes from my heart. It’s who I am,” says Easton. “I feel like that the country music audience out there, their B.S. meter is pretty sensitive a lot of times, and I think deep down they really know if an artist is real.”

Easton co-wrote three tracks on About To Get Real and once again teamed with producer Carson Chamberlain for the project.

The Mercury Nashville artist recently celebrated the release of About To Get Real with appearances on The TODAY Show as well as FOX & FRIENDS and will continue to hit the road this summer.