Number of country crossover songs on the Billboard Year-End Charts

The following section examines the number of country songs appearing on the Billboard Year-End Charts between 1990 and 2024 in order to demonstrate the increasing frequency of country music’s presence on the mainstream charts. In the early 1990s, country music had little visibility on the Billboard Year-End Charts,despite the dominance of major stars like George Strait, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, Brooks & Dunn,and Garth Brooks on Country Radio. Garth Brooks, for instance, arguably the best-selling solo artist across all genres in the US throughout the 1990s, never placed a song in the Billboard Year-End Charts during that decade. However, in the late 1990s, artists like Shania Twain and Faith Hill achieved significant mainstream success, bringing country music to a wider audience. In 1999 and 2000, ‘Amazed’ by Lonestar (produced by Dann Huff) and Faith Hill’s ‘Breathe’ (produced by Byron Gallimore) climbed the charts. ‘Breathe’ even finished at No. 1 on the Hot 100 Year-End list for 2000 (Billboard 2000). The period from 2000 to 2004 saw country artists like Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson, and John Michael Montgomery secure positions on the Billboard Year-End Charts, though never in great numbers. The late 2000s brought renewed crossover activity led by Taylor Swift with hits like ‘Teardrops On My Guitar’, ‘Love Story’ or ‘You Belong with Me’. In 2010, Lady A’s ‘Need You Now’ reached No. 2 on the Billboard Year-End Charts. The rise of ‘bro-country’ in 2011 brought an explosion of country songs on the Billboard Year-End Charts. ‘Cruise’ (2012) by Florida Georgia Line featuring Nelly became one of the biggest country singles in streaming history (The Hollywood Reporter 2012). Despite prior momentum, country crossover visibility declined in 2015 and 2016, with only four songs appearing on the Billboard Year-End chart in 2015 and just three the following year. The temporary decline in crossover entries around 2015 and 2016 suggests that the trajectory is not strictly linear, but cyclical, with periods of expansion and contraction. This dip may reflect transitional shifts in radio programming, the decline of ‘bro-country’s initial wave, and the early-stage impact of streaming before its full integration into chart methodology. Between 2017 and 2020, new digital platforms like TikTok and the continued dominance of playlist culture reshaped how country music charted and circulated (TikTok and Luminate 2025). These shifts introduced a new mode of discovery, especially for younger audiences. One of the most influential songs of this period was ‘Meant to Be’ (2017) by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line. While Rexha was primarily known as a pop artist, the collaboration topped Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart for a record-breaking 50 weeks, the longest reign at the time, and signalled a dramatic shift in what could be classified as a country hit (Sanneh Reference Sanneh2021, 212). In 2019, Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ (featuring Billy Ray Cyrus) further disrupted genre norms. The original version was initially included on the Hot Country Songs chart, but the track was later removed by Billboard, which stated that it did not sufficiently embrace elements of today’s country music, before the Billy Ray Cyrus remix was released and subsequently re-entered the country category, highlighting the contested boundaries of genre classification. This sparked widespread criticism and debate about genre classification, racial bias, and gatekeeping in the industry (The Economist 2023; Molanphy Reference Molanphy2019). The momentum of genre-mixing collaborations continued through 2019 and 2020. Kane Brown collaborated with EDM producer Marshmello on ‘One Thing Right’ and with Khalid and Swae Lee on the pop-trap-country hybrid ‘Be Like That’. Gabby Barrett’s breakout hit ‘I Hope’ gained even more traction when re-released as a duet with pop artist Charlie Puth in 2020, earning success across both country and pop charts. Similarly, Dan + Shay’s ‘10,000 Hours’ with Justin Bieber debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Year-End Charts that year. The years following the COVID-19 pandemic were transformative for country music’s mainstream visibility. With touring paused and in-person promotion curtailed in 2020–2021, artists increasingly needed to turn to streaming and social media platforms to connect with fans. This shift appeared to accelerate country music’s crossover into the digital mainstream. Morgan Wallen’s sustained chart presence remained a constant throughout this period. By 2023, Wallen had charted eight different songs on the Billboard Year-End Charts, including massive hits like ‘You Proof’, ‘Last Night’, and ‘Thinkin’ Bout Me’. As audiences leaned further into on-demand listening, the Billboard charts began to reflect the influence of TikTok virality and streaming playlist placement. Songs like Walker Hayes’ ‘Fancy Like’ (2021) went viral thanks to TikTok dance trends, becoming one of the year’s biggest crossover hits (Hayes Reference Hayes2021; McCarthy Reference McCarthy2021). Similarly, Zach Bryan’s ‘Something in the Orange’ (2022) demonstrates that minimalist productions can still connect with audiences in a digital music landscape (Lippe Reference Lippe2024). The 2024 Billboard Year-End Charts saw unprecedented country presence, not only in volume but in stylistic diversity and influx from creatives outside of Nashville:

1. (1) Shaboozey’s ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’, a song drawing on country, hip-hop, and alternative influences, reached No. 2 on the Billboard Year-End charts and gained traction across multiple listener demographics, becoming a cultural phenomenon with global airplay, illustrating the fluid boundaries of contemporary country crossover (Pareles Reference Pareles2024).

2. (2) Pop and hip-hop artist Post Malone transitioned into country music with the release of his debut country album, F-1 Trillion. Led by the massive success of the chart-topping single ‘I Had Some Help’ (featuring Morgan Wallen), his crossover highlights a growing trend of established artists from other genres successfully entering and redefining the mainstream country landscape.

3. (3) Pop star Beyoncé’s country project Cowboy Carter (2024) generated widespread cultural attention and debate regarding genre classification, further underscoring how high-profile artists can challenge and expand the perceived boundaries of country music (Weidmann Reference Weidmann2025).

4. (4) Dasha, an emerging artist with a strong presence on social media platforms, charted with ‘Austin’, a viral TikTok-driven hit produced largely outside of traditional Nashville structures, pointing to the growing role of digital platforms in facilitating crossover success (Levine Reference Levine2024).

The highest-ranking country crossover songs

In addition to the overall rise in country music representation on the Billboard Year-End Charts, a focused look at the top 25 highest-ranked crossover songs between 1990 and 2024 reveals both specific breakthrough moments and notable chart success. Figure 2 illustrates which songs reached the highest year-end chart positions in order to demonstrate which crossover releases achieved the greatest level of sustained mainstream visibility. In Figure 2, several titles are shortened for space; specifically, ‘Meant to Be’ denotes the Florida Georgia Line and Bebe Rexha collaboration, while ‘Cruise’ refers to the remix featuring Nelly.

Figure 2.

Top 25 highest-ranked country crossover songs (1990-2024).

Figure 2. Long description

The chart features a vertical list of 25 songs on the Y-axis and a horizontal X-axis representing Billboard Year-End Rank from 0 to 20. A lower rank number indicates a better performance.

Data points are represented by blue circles containing the rank number.

* Lonestar - Amazed (1999), Faith Hill - Breathe (2000), and Morgan Wallen - Last Night (2023) all achieved the highest rank of 1.

* Lady Antebellum - Need You Now (2010) and Shaboozey - A Bar Song (Tipsy) (2024) are ranked at 2.

* Shania Twain - You’re Still the One (1998) and Bebe Rexha - Meant to Be (2018) are ranked at 3.

* Post Malone - I Had Some Help (2024) is ranked at 4.

* LeAnn Rimes - How Do I Live (1998) and Taylor Swift - Love Story (2009) are ranked at 5.

* Sam Hunt - Body Like a Back Road (2017) and Luke Combs - Fast Car (2023) are ranked at 8.

* Florida Georgia Line - Cruise (2013) and Maren Morris - The Bones (2020) are ranked at 9.

* Taylor Swift - You Belong with Me (2009) appears twice at rank 11.

* Gabby Barrett - I Hope (2020) appears twice and Morgan Wallen - You Proof (2023) are ranked at 12.

* Zach Bryan - Something in the Orange (2023) is ranked at 13.

* Carrie Underwood - Before He Cheats (2007) is ranked at 14.

* Rascal Flatts - What Hurts the Most (2006) is ranked at 15.

* Bailey Zimmerman - Rock and a Hard Place (2023) is ranked at 16.

* Luke Combs - Forever After All (2021) is ranked at 18.

* Morgan Wallen - Wasted on You (2022) is ranked at 19.

While the highest-ranking songs are distributed across multiple decades, the broader pattern reveals a strong concentration of entries in more recent years. In particular, the majority of songs ranked between positions 6 and 25 appear after 2017, indicating a marked acceleration of country crossover success in the streaming era. This shift suggests that crossover is not a new phenomenon, but one that has intensified significantly in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Several artists appear various times on the Billboard Year-End charts, underscoring their enduring crossover appeal. Shania Twain is featured with both ‘You’re Still the One’ and ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’, each produced by Mutt Lange, who also produced AC/DC, Def Leppard, and Bryan Adams (Wikipedia 2025a). Faith Hill makes several appearances with ‘This Kiss’ (1998) and ‘Breathe’ (2000). Taylor Swift is featured with ‘Love Story’ and ‘You Belong with Me’, two major hits from her country era, released before her full transition into pop music. More recently, Morgan Wallen’s tracks ‘Last Night’, ‘You Proof’, and ‘Wasted on You’ have earned strong placements on the Year-End rankings. Additionally, ‘I Had Some Help’, a duet with Post Malone, appeared on Malone’s 2024 country album. Producers like Dann Huff, Joey Moi, Mutt Lange, and Byron Gallimore can be traced throughout the list, each contributing to sonic shifts that appeared to have a significant impact on its commercial success. Dann Huff is associated with polished, mainstream-oriented country productions that incorporate rock instrumentation and pop texture, leveraging his background as a session guitarist (Weller Reference Weller2025). Joey Moi, known for his work with Nickelback prior to his move into country, brought a more compressed, rhythm-driven, and highly commercial production style. He has been instrumental in crafting the record-breaking, radio-dominant sound of artists like Florida Georgia Line and Morgan Wallen (Tingen Reference Tingen2024). Byron Gallimore, by contrast, represents a more traditional Nashville production lineage that was most successful in the 1990s and early 2000s. Gallimore was the primary sonic architect for country stars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, while also drawing influence from pop music. A common pattern emerges with producers such as Dann Huff, Joey Moi, Mutt Lange, and Byron Gallimore: each introduced elements into country music that were not traditionally associated with the genre. These stylistic shifts often felt like a clear break from established norms and, at times, even provoked debate over whether the resulting sound could still be considered ‘country’. While the highest-ranking crossover country songs span more than three decades, the broader top 25 reveals a pronounced clustering in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Nearly all songs ranked between positions six and twenty-five appeared after 2017, indicating an acceleration of crossover success in the streaming era. This pattern suggests that structural changes in music distribution and promotion have expanded country music’s access to mainstream chart spaces. Table 1 serves as a point of departure for the following sections by showing the chart positions, release years, and credits of the songs, including artists, songwriters, and producers, whose names can be traced across charts in later sections. The table is organized chronologically to illustrate how high-ranking country crossover songs have evolved over time, making visible the increasing concentration of successful entries in recent years.

Table 1.

Top 10 country songs on the Billboard Year-End charts ranked chronologically (1990-2024)

Table 1. Long description

Fallback

Top 25 country crossover artists

Figure 3 shows the Top 25 country artists ranked by the number of songs they placed on the Billboard Year-End Charts between 1990 and 2024. These data provide another lens on country music’s crossover success through sustained artist presence.

Figure 3.

Top 25 country crossover artists.

Figure 3. Long description

The X-axis is labeled Number of Songs and ranges from 0 to 21. The Y-axis lists 25 artists. The data bars are orange and decrease in length from top to bottom.

* Morgan Wallen: 20 songs

* Luke Combs: 17 songs

* Taylor Swift: 13 songs

* Luke Bryan: 11 songs

* Tim McGraw: 11 songs

* Jason Aldean: 11 songs

* Kane Brown: 11 songs

* Carrie Underwood: 10 songs

* Kenny Chesney: 10 songs

* Florida Georgia Line: 10 songs

* Blake Shelton: 8 songs

* Faith Hill: 7 songs

* Toby Keith: 7 songs

* Lainey Wilson: 6 songs

* Lady Antebellum: 6 songs

* Zach Bryan: 5 songs

* Lonestar: 5 songs

* Lee Brice: 5 songs

* Thomas Rhett: 5 songs

* Bailey Zimmerman: 5 songs

* Dan + Shay: 5 songs

* Jelly Roll: 5 songs

* Shania Twain: 5 songs

* Sam Hunt: 5 songs

* Zac Brown Band: 4 songs

Leading the list is Morgan Wallen, with an unmatched twenty crossover songs charting on the Billboard Year-End lists in just a few years, more than any other country artist in this thirty-five-year period. With the release of his 2023 album One Thing at a Time, Wallen had placed eight songs on the Billboard Year-End Charts, making him the most commercially visible country artist of the streaming age (RIAA 2023, 11). Emerging in the late 2010s, Wallen rose to massive prominence in the early 2020s, becoming a dominant figure in both country and mainstream music. Wallen’s success was nearly derailed in early 2021 when TMZ published a video of him using a racial slur. The backlash was immediate: country radio stations pulled his music, CMT and CMA cut ties, and his label Big Loud suspended his contract (Sanneh Reference Sanneh2021, 214). Spotify and Apple Music removed Wallen from their editorial playlists. Despite the industry’s swift distancing, Wallen’s fans showed strong support. His sales surged by over 100% the following week, and Dangerous became the best-selling album of 2021 (Rich Reference Rich2025). In April 2024, Morgan Wallen was arrested and charged with three felony counts after allegedly throwing a chair off the rooftop of Eric Church’s bar, Chief’s, in downtown Nashville (Tressler Reference Tressler2024). Controversies involving country artists have not been uncommon in past years. For instance, the 2023 removal of Jason Aldean’s ‘Try That in a Small Town’ from CMT due to allegations of racist connotations sparked intense public debate and, paradoxically, often led to spikes in sales and streams (Axios 2023). Luke Combs has become one of country music’s most commercially successful artists of the 2020s, second to Morgan Wallen in terms of crossover chart presence, with seventeen crossover entries on the Billboard Hot 100. His 2023 cover of Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’ was not only a chart success but also a cultural moment, leading Chapman to win Song of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards (del Rosario Reference Del Rosario2023). Taylor Swift, though now a global pop icon, remains one of the most important figures on this chart. With fourteen songs on the crossover tally, her early catalogue (‘Love Story’, ‘You Belong with Me’) played a key role in country music’s surge in appearances on the Billboard charts. Beyond the top-tier artists, the chart reveals a broad middle layer of performers who have sustained consistent mainstream visibility over time. This group includes both established figures of the 2000s and 2010s as well as more recent entrants, pointing to a continuity of crossover participation across generations. Taken together, this distribution highlights the genre’s expanding stylistic and generational range, where legacy acts and newer artists coexist within the same commercial space.

Country crossover songs on Billboard Year-End Charts by artist gender

Figure 4 categorizes all country crossover songs that appeared on the Billboard Year-End Charts from 1990 to 2024 by artist gender: male, female, or mixed-gender collaborations. This might help to explain how gender representation has shaped, and been shaped by, country music’s mainstream crossover success. This analysis helps to contextualize how gender representation may function both as a contributing factor to, and an outcome of, country music’s mainstream crossover success.

Figure 4.

Country crossover songs on Billboard Year-End charts by artist gender.

Figure 4. Long description

The X-axis represents the Year from 1990 to 2024. The Y-axis represents the Number of Songs from 0 to 30. A legend in the top-left identifies three categories: Male (blue), Female (pink), and Mixed (gray).

* 1990 to 1996: Very low activity with 0 to 2 songs, primarily by male artists.

* 1997 to 2004: A period of growth peaking at 12 songs in 2000. Female artists (pink) show significant presence, often equaling or exceeding male artists.

* 2005 to 2008: A decline in crossover songs, dropping to between 2 and 5 per year.

* 2009 to 2014: A resurgence with a peak of 16 songs in 2011. Male artists (blue) begin to dominate the total count, while mixed artist types (gray) become more frequent.

* 2015 to 2018: A temporary dip followed by a sharp upward trend starting in 2017.

* 2019 to 2024: Rapid exponential growth. The total number of songs reaches 18 in 2020 and 2021, then jumps to 25 in 2022 and peaks at 29 in 2023 and 2024. In this final period, male artists (blue) account for the vast majority of the total, with mixed and female artists contributing small portions at the top of the bars.

From the late 1990s into the early 2000s, female country artists played a pivotal role in country’s mainstream breakthrough. Artists such as Faith Hill, Shania Twain, and LeAnn Rimes dominated both the country and pop charts during this period: ‘Breathe’ by Faith Hill (2000) became the top year-end song. ‘You’re Still the One’ (1998) and ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’ (1999) by Shania Twain and ‘How Do I Live’ (1997) by LeAnn Rimes became huge global hits. The Dixie Chicks also achieved crossover success with several songs between 2000 and 2003, such as ‘Cowboy Take Me Away’ (2000), ‘Long Time Gone’ (2002), and their Fleetwood Mac cover of ‘Landslide’ (2003). Young female artists such as Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood dominated the country charts later in the 2000s. Interestingly, 2010 stood out from other years, with female artists leading the chart, apart from gender-mixed groups Sugarland, Lady A, and The Band Perry and Jerrod Niemann as the only male solo act to appear. Taylor Swift appeared three times, as well as Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert. The rise of ‘bro-country’ in the 2010s (with acts like Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean) coincided with a sharp drop in female representation. From 2015 to 2019, no female-led country songs appeared on the Billboard Year-End Chart. This five-year drought is especially striking considering the genre’s growing mainstream popularity in that same period. Scholars like Jada Watson (Reference Watson2020) and Beverly Keel (in Keel and Andsager Reference Keel, Andsager and Lassiter2004) argue that radio programming practices often sidelined female voices on country radio, even as women found more success crossing over into pop (Keel and Andsager Reference Keel, Andsager and Lassiter2004, 87; Watson Reference Watson2020, 31). The year 2020 marked a noticeable, though short-lived, return of female voices to the crossover space. Artists such as Gabby Barrett (‘I Hope’), Maren Morris (‘The Bones’), and Lainey Wilson gained significant streaming traction and chart visibility (Wikipedia 2023; Wikipedia 2024). However, this resurgence did not appear to cause a sustained structural shift. In essence, it seems to be a temporary deviation within a broader trend of male dominance. One possible explanation lies in the changing dynamics of the pandemic-era music industry, where streaming and social media briefly weakened traditional radio gatekeeping. As consumption patterns shifted toward on-demand platforms, female artists may have experienced a short-term increase in visibility that was not fully sustained once industry structures stabilized. In this sense, the 2020 peak can be interpreted as a momentary distortion enabled by exceptional market conditions rather than evidence of a long-term rebalancing. The subsequent return to predominantly male-led entries reinforces the notion that gender disparities in country crossover success remain structurally embedded, even amid periods of apparent change. The gender-based analysis of crossover success therefore reveals a paradox: while many of country music’s most significant mainstream breakthroughs were driven by female artists, recent years have seen male performers dominate the crossover landscape.

Trends in country collaborations on the Billboard Year-End Charts

Collaborations have become a central mechanism through which country artists access broader audiences, particularly in the contemporary crossover landscape. This trend can also be noticed in other genres. While a deeper analysis of collaboration strategies would require platform-specific streaming analytics and listener data across multiple services, such an analysis lies beyond the scope of this study. The present findings nevertheless demonstrate that collaborations function as a recurring structural pathway through which country music achieves mainstream visibility. The rise in collaborations appears to have played an increasingly important role in the growing popularity and mainstream visibility of country music on the Billboard Year-End Charts, particularly in the past five years. While collaborations existed in earlier decades, they remained relatively rare until the late 2010s. A look at the data shows a sharp increase beginning in 2020, with 2021 and 2024 both marking an all-time high of eight country crossover collaborations (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

Annual number of collaborations in country crossover songs.

Figure 5. Long description

The bar chart features a horizontal X-axis labeled Year, ranging from 1990 to 2024, and a vertical Y-axis labeled Number of Collaborations, ranging from 0 to 8. The bars are green and represent the following data points.

* From 1990 to 1996: 0 collaborations.

* 1997: 1 collaboration.

* 1998: 0 collaborations.

* 1999 to 2000: 1 collaboration each year.

* 2001: 0 collaborations.

* 2002: 3 collaborations.

* 2003: 2 collaborations.

* 2004: 4 collaborations.

* 2005: 0 collaborations.

* 2006: 1 collaboration.

* 2007 to 2010: 0 collaborations.

* 2011: 5 collaborations.

* 2012: 0 collaborations.

* 2013: 3 collaborations.

* 2014: 2 collaborations.

* 2015 to 2016: 0 collaborations.

* 2017: 2 collaborations.

* 2018 to 2019: 1 collaboration each year.

* 2020: 5 collaborations.

* 2021: 8 collaborations (peak).

* 2022: 4 collaborations.

* 2023: 3 collaborations.

* 2024: 8 collaborations (peak).

The chart shows sporadic activity until a sustained and higher-volume period begins in 2020.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, artist pairings occasionally made their way onto the charts. Examples include Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s ‘It’s Your Love’ (1997), Alabama’s feature on *NSYNC’s ‘God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You’ (1999), and Lee Ann Womack’s ‘I Hope You Dance’ featuring Sons of the Desert (2000), but these pairings were largely treated as isolated novelties rather than deliberate industry crossover strategies. ‘Over and Over’ by Nelly and Tim McGraw in 2004 turned out to be a pioneering blend of country and hip-hop. In 2006, ‘Who Says You Can’t Go Home’ by Bon Jovi and Jennifer Nettles marked Bon Jovi’s debut on the country charts. During this earlier period, such collaborations were relatively infrequent and often treated as novelties rather than as part of a broader industry strategy. As a result, they had limited impact on the overall presence of country music within mainstream charts. Nevertheless, they represent early indicators of a strategy that would later become central to country music’s crossover expansion. It is also important to distinguish between intra-genre collaborations, such as Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s ‘It’s Your Love’ (1997), and inter-genre collaborations, such as Alabama’s feature on *NSYNC’s ‘God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You’ (1999). While both forms involve collaboration, only the latter directly contributes to crossover in the sense of reaching audiences beyond the traditional country market. Collaborations are strategically initiated within the country industry itself. For example, the remix of ‘Cruise’ featuring Nelly was actively solicited by Florida Georgia Line’s team and included alongside the original track, suggesting an intentional effort to expand the song’s reach across genre boundaries. This strategy aligns with Mel Stanfill’s analysis in Rock This Way, where she argues that the industry’s reception of such remixes is often dictated by cultural notions of legitimacy and the structures of genre, which can either validate or police a song’s transformation (Stanfill Reference Stanfill2023, 56). Stanfill states that the goal of a remix is to increase sales. While successful transformations like the ‘Cruise’ remix set records on country charts, they often trigger a commercial ‘bandwagon effect’ which in the case of ‘Cruise’ resulted in a flood of derivative tracks with added rappers that were frequently ‘not deemed as good’. This illustrates how the industry polices or validates these shifts based on market success rather than artistic merit (Stanfill Reference Stanfill2023, 56). The success of ‘Meant to Be’ by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line in 2017, which spent nearly a year at the top of the Hot Country Songs chart despite being led by a pop artist, signalled a pivotal shift in the strategic approach toward collaboration (Wikipedia 2025c). Subsequently, the frequency of country songs incorporating featured or co-equal contributions from pop, hip-hop, and EDM artists increased markedly. For instance, ‘10,000 Hours’ (2020) by Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber, and ‘I Hope’ (2020) by Gabby Barrett and Charlie Puth, demonstrated how pairing country vocalists with pop stars could lead to crossover radio play and major streaming success. Similarly, ‘One Thing Right’ by Kane Brown and Marshmello combined country vocals with EDM drops and trap percussion. Since 2020, there has been a dramatic rise in country collaborations featured on the Billboard Year-End Charts. By 2021, collaborations were no longer outliers. They had become a key strategy for securing a place on the Billboard Hot 100. That year saw a record number of eight collaborative songs chart, a figure matched again in 2024. Post Malone’s 2024 country album F-1 Trillion (at least the first CD) was composed entirely of collaborative tracks with artists such as Blake Shelton, Morgan Wallen, Lainey Wilson, Brad Paisley, Tim McGraw, and Dolly Parton (Tingen Reference Tingen2024). ‘I Had Some Help’ with Morgan Wallen and ‘Pour Me A Drink’ featuring Blake Shelton were the two Post Malone songs that entered the Billboard Year-End Charts that year. 2024 showed a significant number of collaborations between country artists within the genre (see below). While collaborations have become common across the music industry, often driven by algorithmic strategies on digital platforms, their role in country music is still evolving. As the following analysis shows, these collaborations take different forms and reflect varying motivations. The quantity of collaborations across different genres seems to be a notable development in country’s ongoing negotiation with mainstream and cross-genre spaces. While several of these collaborations have been introduced earlier, they are revisited here in order to categorize different types of collaboration and to better understand their distinct functional roles.

A. Country–pop crossovers

1. (1) Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber (‘10,000 Hours’, 2020)

2. (2) Gabby Barrett and Charlie Puth (‘I Hope’, 2020)

3. (3) Keith Urban and P!nk (‘One Too Many’, 2021)

While rare before 2016, when, for instance, Kenny Chesney’s and P!nk’s duet (‘Setting the World on Fire’) failed to reach the Billboard Year-End Charts, these country-pop hybrids now perform strongly, both commercially and culturally.

B. Country–hip-hop or trap-infused crossovers

1. (1) Kane Brown and Marshmello (‘One Thing Right’, 2019)

2. (2) Lil Durk and Morgan Wallen (‘Broadway Girls’, 2022); not promoted to country radio

3. (3) Florida Georgia Line and Nelly (‘Lil Bit’, 2021)

C. Intra-genre collaborations

In 2024 alone, country artists collaborated extensively with each other:

1. (1) Post Malone and Morgan Wallen (‘I Had Some Help’)

2. (1) Morgan Wallen and ERNEST (‘Cowgirls’)

3. (3) Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves (‘I Remember Everything’)

4. (3) Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson (‘Save Me’)

5. (3) Blake Shelton and Post Malone (‘Pour Me a Drink’)

6. (3) Koe Wetzel and Jessie Murph (‘High Road’)

These collaborations may reflect strategic efforts to broaden country’s appeal, shaped by factors ranging from streaming platform algorithms to marketing incentives. At the same time, the distinctions between country–pop, country–hip-hop, and intra-genre collaborations highlight that not all collaborations serve the same purpose. Cross-genre pairings often function as entry points into new audiences and formats, while intra-genre collaborations reinforce existing networks of visibility and consolidate audience bases within country music itself. Taken together, these developments suggest that collaborations have evolved from occasional artistic experiments into a systematic industry strategy. Rather than operating as isolated events, they now represent differentiated tools that enable country music to circulate across genre boundaries, access new audiences, and secure sustained visibility on mainstream charts.

Songwriter contributions to country music’s crossover success

The role of Nashville’s songwriting community cannot be overstated when examining the commercial success of country music songs on the Billboard Year-End Charts. Figure 6 highlights the top 25 most successful songwriters whose work has not only dominated the country charts but also crossed into the mainstream Billboard Year-End charts, illustrating how songwriting concentration contributes to crossover success.

Figure 6.

Top 25 songwriters by number of country crossover songs on the Billboard Year-End charts (1990-2024).

Figure 6. Long description

The horizontal bar chart features an X-axis labeled Number of Songs ranging from 0 to 30 with increments of 5. The Y-axis lists 25 songwriters or songwriting teams. The bars are colored orange.

* Ashley Gorley is at the top with 31 songs.

* Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs follow with 14 songs each.

* Ryan Vojtesak/Charlie Handsome has 13 songs.

* Shane McAnally and Taylor Swift each have 12 songs.

* Rodney Clawson has 11 songs.

* Dallas Davidson and Tyler Hubbard each have 10 songs.

* Rhett Akins, Michael Hardy, Josh Osborne, Chris Tompkins, and Ernest K. Smith each have 9 songs.

* Liz Rose, Taylor Phillips, Kane Brown, and Jordan Schmidt each have 8 songs.

* Brian Kelley, Josh Kear, and Luke Laird each have 7 songs.

* Sam Hunt, Jonathan Singleton, and Wyatt Durrette each have 6 songs.

* Brett James is at the bottom of the list with 5 songs.

An examination of songwriter credits reveals a high degree of concentration among a relatively small group of Nashville-based professionals, underscoring the structural role of songwriting networks in facilitating crossover success. At the very top of the chart is Ashley Gorley, who, as of June 2025, is credited with eighty-one No. 1 country radio hits, and thirty-one of those have crossed over to the Billboard Year-End charts (Wikipedia contributors n.d.). In June 2025, Gorley was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, joining iconic figures such as George Clinton, The Doobie Brothers, Mike Love, Rodney Jerkins, and Tony Macaulay (Eggleston Reference Eggleston2025). Gorley’s fingerprints are on the majority of recent country hits, working with artists ranging from Luke Bryan and Thomas Rhett to Morgan Wallen and Dan + Shay. In an interview on Ross Golan’s podcast And The Writer Is…, Gorley discussed his teenage love of hip-hop and rap, highlighting a musical openness that appears to have contributed to his success in songwriting (Golan Reference Golan2025). Following Gorley are Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs, who both have co-written fourteen songs each that appeared on the Billboard Year-End Charts. While both artists are closely associated with their own repertoires, their presence in this ranking reflects the broader Nashville practice of artist participation in songwriting. Importantly, artist-writers in Nashville frequently contribute beyond their own catalogues, particularly in earlier career stages. For example, Morgan Wallen co-wrote ‘You Make It Easy’ for Jason Aldean, while other artist-writers like Thomas Rhett contributed to songs recorded by other artists, including work for Florida Georgia Line and Cole Swindell. This reflects a pathway common for the country music industry in which emerging artists first establish themselves as songwriters before achieving success as an artist. Many of today’s most successful country music performers, such as Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, Thomas Rhett, Kane Brown, and Sam Hunt, are also credited as co-writers on much of their material. In this context, it is important to point out that co-writing is a central feature of Nashville’s songwriting culture, where songs are often developed collaboratively in structured writing sessions involving multiple writers, each contributing to melody, lyrics, or concept (collaboration also became more popular over time in other music cities and is now considered the industry standard). This system produces a network of writers whose work circulates across a wide range of artists, making it difficult to attribute stylistic or commercial outcomes to a single individual. The majority of songwriters represented in this dataset, such as Rodney Clawson, Dallas Davidson, Josh Kear, Luke Laird, and Rhett Akins, are best understood as career songwriters who consistently write for multiple artists across the genre, rather than being tied to a single performer. Even artist-writers like Michael Hardy (HARDY), ERNEST, and Tyler Hubbard occupy hybrid roles: while they record their own material, they are equally recognized for writing hits for other artists, particularly within the contemporary Nashville mainstream.

Among the top contributors, ranked third, is Charlie Handsome, who worked with pop and hip-hop artists like Drake, Kanye West, Mac Miller, Young Thug, Ariana Grande, Chris Brown, and Chance the Rapper in the past (Tingen Reference Tingen2024). Within the country sphere, however, his contributions are more concentrated, particularly through collaborations with Morgan Wallen and Post Malone. Handsome contributed to Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous (2021) and One Thing at a Time (2023), including the No. 1 hit ‘Last Night’. He also co-produced Post Malone’s country album F-1 Trillion (2024). Other names in the Top 25 underscore the collaborative ethos of Nashville. Shane McAnally has worked with artists like Kacey Musgraves and Sam Hunt (Moss Reference Moss2022, 161–165). Taylor Swift is another key contributor. Her self-written country songs from 2006 to 2012 laid the groundwork for her crossover dominance. Liz Rose, Swift’s early writing partner, also ranks highly. Taken together, these patterns suggest that crossover success is not solely driven by individual stardom, but by institutionalized songwriting practices within Nashville’s publishing ecosystem, where emerging artists often secure publishing deals prior to recording contracts (Kawashima Reference Kawashiman.d.). While some writers maintain particularly strong affiliations with certain artists, the overall system is characterized by fluid collaboration, shared authorship, and stylistic exchange. As a result, it becomes difficult to disentangle the influence of individual songwriters from that of the artists who perform their material, as both operate within an interconnected creative network that underpins Nashville’s commercial output. In cases where songwriters are closely associated with a particular artist, disentangling their respective contributions requires an analytical focus on cross-artist writing activity, recurring stylistic features, and collaborative patterns over time. If a songwriter’s stylistic or structural tendencies appear consistently across multiple artists, this suggests an independent creative influence, whereas more isolated collaborations may reflect a stronger alignment with a specific artist’s identity. Ultimately, this analysis highlights the songwriter’s role as the foundation for commercially successful songs, where the synergy of melody, lyrics, and harmonic structure serves as the fundamental engine for a track’s commercial and emotional resonance.

Producer contributions to country crossover success

Figure 7 shows the Top 25 producers whose work consistently appears across crossover hits in order to demonstrate how producers, often serving not only as executive overseers but also as creative architects, have shaped the sound and commercial reach of contemporary country music. Responsible for bridging the gap from raw songwriting to the final recordings, producers are instrumental in defining a song’s commercial success.

Figure 7.

Top 25 producers by number of country crossover songs on the Billboard Year-End charts (1990-2024).

Figure 7. Long description

The y-axis lists 25 producers, and the x-axis measures the number of songs from 0 to 30 in increments of 5. The bars are orange and decrease in length from top to bottom.

* Joey Moi: 30 songs

* Dann Huff: 26 songs

* Byron Gallimore: 19 songs

* Nathan Chapman: 12 songs

* Michael Knox: 11 songs

* Buddy Cannon: 11 songs

* Jay Joyce: 10 songs

* Tim McGraw: 10 songs

* Scott Hendricks: 9 songs

* Zach Crowell: 9 songs

* James Stroud: 9 songs

* Scott Moffatt: 9 songs

* Paul Worley: 8 songs

* Jonathan Singleton: 8 songs

* Chip Matthews: 8 songs

* Keith Stegall: 8 songs

* Shane McAnally: 8 songs

* Taylor Swift: 8 songs

* Toby Keith: 7 songs

* Jeff Stevens: 7 songs

* Mark Bright: 7 songs

* Norro Wilson: 7 songs

* Mark Wright: 5 songs

* Frank Rogers: 5 songs

* Derek Wells: 5 songs

The producers identified in this analysis are not necessarily representative of the entire country music production landscape. Rather, this chart highlights those whose work has most frequently crossed into the Billboard Year-End Charts, thereby emphasizing a subset of producers whose stylistic approaches appear particularly conducive to crossover success. While many producers operate successfully within more traditional or genre-centred country frameworks, the figures highlighted here tend to be associated with projects that extend beyond core country audiences, suggesting a distinction between ‘in-genre’ expertise and crossover-oriented production strategies. Consequently, this group does not represent the entirety of influential country producers, but rather highlights those whose production approaches, artist collaborations, or strategic positioning have enabled songs to achieve success on the mainstream charts. Over the past three decades, the increasing presence of producers with backgrounds outside traditional country music has played a central role in reshaping country music’s sonic and commercial landscape. Joey Moi, originally from Canada, transitioned from rock production with Nickelback to become one of country’s most chart-dominant producers. His work with Morgan Wallen, Florida Georgia Line, ERNEST, and HARDY accounts for thirty country crossover entries on the Billboard Year-End Charts (JoeyMoi.com 2024; Tingen Reference Tingen2024). He brought a more polished, high-impact production style into country music, characterized by a blend of rock, hip-hop, and country that became a defining element of the contemporary country sound of the 2010s with Florida Georgia Line and the record-breaking success of Morgan Wallen in the 2020s. Close behind is Dann Huff with twenty-six crossover songs. Huff, who played guitar on Michael Jackson and Michael Bolton records, was pivotal in shaping the sound of acts like Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, Kane Brown, and Thomas Rhett. Huff was the production force behind Lonestar’s hit ‘Amazed’ (1999). Huff’s background as a session guitarist for pop and rock artists informed a hybrid production style that blends traditional country instrumentation with rock and pop influences. Byron Gallimore, who produced Faith Hill, Jo Dee Messina, and many of Tim McGraw’s career-defining hits like ‘Live Like You Were Dying’ and ‘Humble and Kind’, comes next with nineteen crossover entries. Gallimore, in that regard, represents a slightly different trajectory, rooted more firmly in Nashville’s traditional system while achieving crossover success. Nathan Chapman, who produced Taylor Swift’s first four albums, has contributed twelve crossover songs, including notable hits such as ‘Love Story’ and ‘You Belong with Me’. Both Gallimore’s and Chapman’s productions meticulously balanced country instrumentation with pop appeal, modernizing the sound while preserving its heritage. By producing Faith Hill and Tim McGraw in the 1990s and 2000s, Byron Gallimore helped expand country music’s global reach. Michael Knox, Aldean’s longtime producer known for his rock-leaning production, is responsible for radio hits like ‘Dirt Road Anthem’ and ‘Burnin’ It Down’. Michael Knox developed a rock-influenced country sound marked by heavy electric guitars, mid-tempo grooves, and anthemic structures. Buddy Cannon is more closely associated with traditionalist and legacy-oriented country production, having worked extensively with artists like Willie Nelson and Kenny Chesney. His presence on this list suggests that crossover success is not exclusively tied to genre hybridization but can also emerge from artists with strong brand identity and established audience bases. Jay Joyce occupies a middle ground, known for a more experimental and textured production approach that is influenced by alternative rock, particularly in his work with Eric Church, Little Big Town, and Lainey Wilson. The list also includes producers who are themselves artists like Tim McGraw, Toby Keith, and Taylor Swift, reflecting a more modern model where artists increasingly serve as co-producers or executive producers of their own material. Emerging hitmakers like Zach Crowell and Jonathan Singleton have played a major role in shaping the modern country sound. Crowell, best known for his work with Sam Hunt, helped pioneer a modern beat-driven and hip-hop-influenced production style (e.g., ‘Body Like a Back Road’), while Singleton has served as Luke Combs’s producer from 2020 onward. Finally, this list includes foundational names like Scott Hendricks, James Stroud, Paul Worley, Keith Stegall, Norro Wilson,and Mark Wright, whose contributions span decades of radio and chart success. Taken together, these producer trajectories suggest that crossover success is not tied to a single stylistic formula, but rather emerges from a range of production styles, from hybrid, genre-blending sound aesthetics to refined traditionalism. Generally speaking, producers such as Joey Moi or Dann Huff, who lead this analysis, are associated with a more hybridized, genre-blending sound that incorporates elements from rock, pop, and hip-hop, aligning country music with broader mainstream production aesthetics. The recent chart performance indicates a clear shift in dominance toward the polished, crossover aesthetics championed by Moi and Huff.

The influence of record labels on country crossover success

While artists, producers, and songwriters are the creative contributors to a hit song, the strategic influence of record labels, especially those based in Nashville, has played a pivotal yet often under-acknowledged role in the crossover of country songs to the Billboard Year-End Charts. Record labels play a crucial role in shaping crossover outcomes, as they act as institutional gatekeepers that determine which country recordings receive the promotional infrastructure necessary to access mainstream charts. Record labels play a critical intermediary role in shaping which country songs are positioned for crossover success, as they influence artist branding, single selection, radio promotion strategies, and cross-format marketing. This section examines label involvement in country crossover hits in order to demonstrate how institutional decision-making, rather than musical factors alone, can influence which country songs are positioned for mainstream success. Figure 8 lists the Top 10 most frequent labels involved in these crossover hits from 1990 to 2024.

Figure 8.

Top 10 labels by number of country crossover songs on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 (1990-2024).

Figure 8. Long description

The X-axis is titled Number of Songs and ranges from 0 to 35 in increments of 5. The Y-axis lists 10 music labels. The data is presented as follows from top to bottom.

* Warner Bros. Nashville: 36 songs.

* Capitol Nashville: 25 songs.

* Big Loud: 21 songs.

* R C A Nashville: 21 songs.

* Big Machine: 20 songs.

* M C A Nashville: 18 songs.

* River House forward slash Columbia: 17 songs.

* Arista Nashville: 16 songs.

* Broken Bow: 13 songs.

* Curb Records: 13 songs.

The chart shows a significant lead by Warner Bros. Nashville, with the remaining labels following a gradual downward trend from 25 to 13 songs.

While many of the labels identified in this chart, such as Warner Music Nashville, Capitol Records Nashville, and RCA Nashville, are also among the most prominent actors in the broader country music industry, their strong representation in this dataset does not simply reflect overall market dominance. Rather, it highlights their relative effectiveness in converting country releases into crossover successes. In other words, while these labels are influential across both core-country and crossover markets, their disproportionate presence in the Billboard Year-End Charts suggests a particular strategic orientation toward projects that can extend beyond the genre’s traditional audience. At the same time, it is important to recognize that success within the core country market does not always translate into crossover visibility. Many labels and imprints remain highly successful within country radio and touring circuits without consistently placing songs on the Billboard Year-End Charts. As such, this chart should be understood not as a comprehensive ranking of label power within country music, but as an indicator of which institutional actors have most effectively navigated the mechanisms of mainstream chart access, including cross-format promotion, playlist placement, and digital audience targeting. The data set reveals a significant disparity in hit volume, suggesting that a small group of dominant labels exerts a disproportionate influence over the crossover market. At the top of the list is Warner Music Nashville, which appears as the label behind thirty-six crossover tracks, the highest of any imprint in the dataset. Warner has built a reputation for nurturing genre-spanning talent such as Bailey Zimmerman, Kenny Chesney, Dan + Shay, Zach Bryan, Gabby Barrett, and Cody Johnson, whose styles range from pop-country to alt-folk Americana in the case of Zach Bryan, and traditional country in the case of Cody Johnson. Blake Shelton is also part of Warner’s catalogue (Warner Music Nashville 2025). In an interview with MusicRow, Warner Music Nashville CEO Ben Kline emphasized the label’s flexible approach: ‘We don’t define our artists by format. If a song fits on a pop playlist or a country station, or both, we make sure it gets there’ (Kline Reference Kline2023). When Zach Bryan’s ‘Something in the Orange’ went viral, Warner fast-tracked its promotion on multiple DSPs, enabling the song to chart on both country and mainstream charts despite minimal radio support (Billboard 2023). Warner’s team views streaming culture as a space where ‘genre is more of a fluid tag than a barrier’, as Kline (Reference Kline2023) puts it. This flexible, platform-oriented strategy helps explain why Warner Music Nashville appears so prominently in the crossover dataset, as it actively prioritizes songs and artists that can circulate across multiple genre contexts rather than remaining confined to country-specific channels. Following closely is Capitol Records Nashville, long home to major artists such as Luke Bryan, Dierks Bentley, and Carrie Underwood (Wikipedia 2025b). In a 2022 Billboard interview, Cindy Mabe, Capitol’s president at the time, argued that labels must ‘go where the audience lives, and right now, that’s in real-time digital environments’ (Mabe Reference Mabe2022, 8). Big Loud, a relatively new label founded in 2011, stands out for its impact despite its youth. With twenty-one crossover songs, it is the label behind Morgan Wallen, HARDY, and ERNEST, among others (Big Loud 2025). RCA Nashville and Big Machine are also major contributors, each with around twenty crossover songs. RCA is home to Kane Brown, whose collaborations with Marshmello, Swae Lee, and H.E.R. demonstrate the label’s comfort in marketing country artists to non-country audiences. Big Machine, meanwhile, was the launchpad for Taylor Swift and Florida Georgia Line, two of the most impactful crossover acts of the 21st century. Other labels such as MCA Nashville, Arista Nashville, River House/Columbia (home to Luke Combs), and Curb Records (which supported Tim McGraw and LeAnn Rimes during their crossover peaks) have also played central roles. Taken together, these label strategies illustrate that crossover representation is shaped not only by musical measures, but also by institutional decision-making and industry-supported positioning, reinforcing the role of labels as active agents in country music’s mainstream expansion.