This is what Country radio friends have been saying about Post Malone’s F-1 Trillion in my Facebook feed:
- “Mind blowing good. A master class in how to crossover to another format.” — WKHX Atlanta PD Mike Moore
- “Never in my life did I think I’d ever say, ‘Post Malone is going to make a real game-changing country album.’ Holy smokes. This whole thing is a banger.” — Syndicated host Rowdy Yates.
- “Wow! Best album I’ve heard in years.” – Hall Communications VP/programming Bob Walker
- “A thoroughly enjoyable listen from start to finish … Post is well established as a great collaborator, and he delivers with a who’s who of country stars. But to me, he proves his country bona fides on the solo tracks.” – RJ Curtis, Executive Director, Country Radio Broadcasters
- “Super impressive. Hit after freakin’ hit. Recommend!” — Steve Rixx, Station Manager, KJCS (Willy 103.3) Nacogdoches, Texas.
The word “game-changer” came up a few times, too. Even three months ago, after “I Had Some Help” with Morgan Wallen became an instant hit and the song-of-summer to beat, I talked to label people bemused at the notion of Country having an instant core artist — one who really didn’t have to play conference rooms — and the oxygen he might take from developing acts or other core artists.
The reaction is a pretty sharp contrast to 13 months ago when Malone’s last album, Austin, was released. When that album came out, lead single “Chemical” was peaking at No. 6, just short of power. It did better at some of the small-market CHRs I watch closely. In Salt Lake City, it’s still a 50x-a-week record at two of the market’s three Top 40s. But in Billboard, “Chemical” was only No. 13 and Austin only debuted at No. 2.
On the morning that I listened to Malone’s Austin, I noted five possible single candidates. One of them, “Enough Is Enough,” became a hit for SiriusXM Hits 1. But there was never another single worked, and only a few local stations followed Hits 1’s lead. A CHR format which had pounded three Post Malone songs in power at once just a few years earlier now felt no need to do on his behalf what streaming and the label were not.
At the time, the talk of a Post Malone Country project seemed like only a project — a natural next step for an already shapeshifting artist. Pop radio was already in its first summer of Country crossover, but 2024’s rush of hard-to-classify Country/Pop collaborations and cross-pollination was harder to anticipate. It seemed like Top 40 was loaning a core artist, not losing one.
Now it’s clear that Malone has a home at Country for as long as he wants one. Top 40, by contrast, has struggled in recent years for core artists, in part because labels are less able or willing to force multiple follow-ups from a project. I’ve gone from wondering where the Austin singles are to wondering why we never got around to “Bodyguard,” or anything else from Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.
Country’s ratings have been uneven, even amid the musical excitement, but they’re still the envy of CHR in most places. The excitement of a strong “Song of Summer” field coincided with good late spring numbers for Top 40, but those have flattened in many places, particularly because there hasn’t been as much new music since Memorial Day. Pop still doesn’t know where its next five hits are coming from; now Country has them on one album.
As has been noted here on occasion, Country already had core artists and exciting newcomers. It has a record/radio relationship that has evolved with streaming, but remained relatively steady, at least by comparison. It has 81 songs in play above the 100-spin level; Top 40 has only 64. Next week, a barrage of Malone titles could break up the wedge of Top 40 hits atop Billboard’s Hot 100 that I’ve enjoyed seeing so much this summer. Streaming plus some Country airplay has already made “Pour Me a Drink” a No. 12 charter vs. No. 13 for “Chemical.”
Country also has other collabo-friendly artists, and that has implications, too. The new MGK f/Jelly Roll single, “Lonely Road,” means that an act who gave Alternative one of its biggest hits of recent years, and CHR one of its few rock crossovers, has instead made a record that rock radio won’t play, and which adds to all the Country-flavored hits that Top 40 and Hot AC have to triage.
The Country/Pop Venn diagram’s area of overlap has gotten wider because it’s the easiest coalition to form right now, especially in terms of helping a song on the Hot 100. The artists such as Teddy Swims or Noah Kahan or songs like Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” that form other multi-format coalitions are still the exceptions. At a time when it would be great to choose hits from multiple formats, finding crossovers from elsewhere is becoming harder.
It’s imperative for Top 40 now to take full advantage of Chappell Roan mania. “Hot to Go!” is finally picking up speed at radio after months of hiding in plain sight, which probably just means that stations should already have been playing “Red Wine Supernova” or “Pink Pony Club” as well. As reader Matt DelSignore notes, some already are. KMVQ (99.7 Now) San Francisco is playing three songs over 60x a week. KBFF (Live 95.5) Portland is playing four titles. The new female pop is something that Top 40 and Adult CHR can own.
Figuring out how to acknowledge an artist with multiple cuts, without being callous about artist separation, is also something that all formats should be thinking about now. PDs have long stopped fighting that battle, but if anything wore the excitement off of Malone at Top 40, it was the 2018 overload of three songs in power simultaneously. I now wonder if that created both perma-burn and but also an illusion of being post-peak a few years later. We want Sabrina Carpenter and Roan to excite audiences for a long time.
I went back to my handful of Austin recommendations from a year ago. “Too Cool to Die,” the song I put on my Big Hits Energy playlist, felt even more like “Circles” redux. “Texas Tea” held up better. I liked “Enough Is Enough” on the radio last fall, but it was also at the time of Malone’s guesting on “Dial Drunk” — a double dose of the same downer lyric.
While that may convince you that radio was right to not do more with Malone’s Austin, I also write that with the knowledge that it’s hard for any album we haven’t listened to for 13 months to compete with the love that F1-Trillion is getting now. Even one more hit would have created more excitement, or at least taken the onus off another song lingering too long because there was nothing to replace it.
Whatever issues Malone in Country may create for that format and its still-often-hard-to-negotiate chart will be mostly good problems to have. If Country really runs out of space for existing hitmakers, there is always the Garth Brooks-era option of swapping out a gold or recurrent title. F1-Trillion was already in the works when pop radio had to make its choice about Austin and it’s unlikely Top 40 would have kept Malone as an artist any more than Rhythmic Top 40 did. But protecting the core artists we have now remains an issue.
