Entertainment
Marshall to Support Independent Venues With Customer Membership Program
Marshall has announced an initiative to support independent music venues worldwide.
On Monday (March 2), the audio and technology company launched a new membership program, Amplify, with the long-term goal of creating a more sustainable music industry. Through Amplify, Marshall commits an amount equal to 1% of member purchases on marshall.com to support local music communities, starting with independent venues.
Amplify is free to join via marshall.com and offers members benefits including early access to products, free shipping and priority support. Every eligible member purchase made through marshall.com will go toward the initiative.
“For over 60 years, Marshall amplified live music, from local independent venues to the world’s biggest stages,” said Marshall CEO Jeremy de Maillard in a statement. “Small venues are where the next generation of musicians turn first time listeners into lifelong fans. Through Amplify, Marshall is building a long-term model to support the future of live music.”
The Amplify initiative will initially focus on independent venues globally that are selected “for their role in supporting emerging artists and local music communities,” according to a press release. Support can come in the form of backline equipment, funded live events and longer-term partnerships.
“It is a real pleasure to work with a brand that truly respects our DNA and places full trust in us when it comes to both the actions we lead and the programming we curate,” said Cecilia Sparano, communication director at independent Paris rock venue Supersonic, in a statement. “This partnership represents genuine support for the fragile economy of small concert venues, and it plays a key role in allowing festivals such as Supersonic’s Block Party and They’re Gonna Be Big to continue to exist.”
The Amplify initiative is now live. Head here for more information.
Entertainment
Megan Moroney & Ella Langley Become First Pair of Women in Country Music to Top Billboard 200 & Hot 100 Simultaneously
Country music claims a first on Billboard’s charts, thanks to Megan Moroney and Ella Langley.
As previously reported, Moroney’s Cloud 9 debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” rebounds for a second week atop the Billboard Hot 100 songs survey, after it first led three weeks earlier.
Moroney and Langley make history as the first women who primarily record country music to rule Billboard’s premier all-genre song and album charts simultaneously, dating to the Hot 100’s August 1958 inception (after the Billboard 200 began publishing on a regular weekly basis March 1956).
In just four other weeks, men/women/group combinations placed country at No. 1 on the surveys together, just not two women in the same week.
Here’s a recap of the select five frames in which country titles (defined as those that have hit Billboard’s Top Country Albums or Hot Country Songs charts) have topped the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 together:
Date, Billboard 200 No. 1 / Hot 100 No. 1:
- March 7, 2026, Cloud 9, Megan Moroney / “Choosin’ Texas,” Ella Langley
- Oct. 26, 2024, Beautifully Broken, Jelly Roll / “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Shaboozey
- Aug. 31, 2024, F-1 Trillion, Post Malone / “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Shaboozey
- July 22, 2023, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Taylor Swift / “Last Night,” Morgan Wallen
- April 30, 1977, Hotel California, Eagles / “Southern Nights,” Glen Campbell
Also contributing to the chart double-up for women artists, Miranda Lambert is among the co-writers and co-producers of “Choosin’ Texas.” Langley and Lambert co-penned the song with Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor and co-produced it with Ben West. It became the first Hot 100 No. 1 for each talent; Moroney earns her first Billboard 200 leader.
Further sharing the achievement, Cloud 9 and “Choosin’ Texas” are both Sony Music Entertainment releases, the former on Megan Moroney / Columbia / Columbia Nashville / Sony Music Nashville and the latter on SAWGOD / Columbia (with country radio promotion by Triple Tigers).
Following the release of Moroney’s Cloud 9, “Choosin’ Texas” previews Langley’s album Dandelion, due April 10.
All charts dated March 7 will update on Billboard.com tomorrow, March 3.
Entertainment
5 Must-Hear New Country Songs: LeAnn Rimes, Rodney Crowell & More
This week’s crop of fresh music, includes LeAnn Rimes‘ powerhouse ballad that connects with her current role on the series 9-1-1 Nashville. Rodney Crowell teams with Emmylou Harris and Lera Lynn for a powerful collaboration about finding hope in despair. Elsewhere, Joe Nichols gets vulnerable on his latest release, while Avery Anna and Trey Pendley also offer up new music.
Check out all of these and more in Billboard‘s roundup of some of the best country, bluegrass and/or Americana songs of the week below.
LeAnn Rimes, “Wild Things Run”
LeAnn Rimes returns with a deeply affecting new ballad about exalts a love both passionate and untamed one that manages to silence any doubters. The song, inspired by her role as Dixie on the series 911: Nashville, the song unfolds over an expansive melody, blending it with Rimes’ powerhouse soprano, proving that she remains one of country music’s most dynamic vocalists.
Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris & Lera Lynn, “Go Light a Candle”
After anonymously releasing this song last year, Rodney Crowell teams up with Emmylou Harris and Lera Lynn for an official release. The song centers on finding hope in times of frustration and despair, and keeping in community with those who can offer comfort. Harris, Lynn and Crowell trade off verses and offer up luxurious harmonies on lines that both acknowledge pain and hope for a better future, such as “We’ll taste the bitter tears till the darkness disappears/ While we’re leaning on each other ’til we can hold our own.” Together, they create a stirring song of conviction and hope.
Joe Nichols, “Fighting the Good Fight”
Joe Nichols’ latest pairs a laid-back vocal and instrumentation with vulnerable, personal lyrics about overcoming his own childhood with a parent whose “tough love was a little too rough,” and ultimately finding a way to ensure his own children grow up experiencing a relationship marked by love, kindness and gentleness. As always, Nichols’ rich country vocal shines.
Avery Anna, “Man Downstairs”
Avery Anna follows recent collabs with Sam Barber and Max McNown with her newest release, which initially feels like a moody, post-breakup ballad, but quickly surges into a rage-fueled rocker with careening electric guitar and unyielding percussion. “I hope you have fun with the man downstairs,” she sings in a voice that brings a duality of honeyed sweetness and acerbic rage, making for a release that’s both elegant and assertive.
Trey Pendley, “Like a River”
On his new Podunk EP, Pendley includes this bluesy, romantic track. Over a mesh of banjo, pedal steel and organ, Pendley turns in one of his most soulful vocals to date turning a laid-back melody into a declaration of his adoration for a lover who showed up at the perfect time. “I’ll go where you wanna take me/ Couldn’t go backwards if I tried,” he sings. Straightforward and earnest, this intimate track is nicely delivered.
Entertainment
Mitski Figures It Out & Feels the Love With First of Six Shows at NYC Shed Residency: Recap and Best Moments
Nobody steps on stage quite like Mitski. Most performers greet their audience by either bounding enthusiastically into the spotlight, racing on anxiously or shuffling on inconspicuously. Mitski walks out to the microphone in long, even, deliberate strides, almost as if carried on conveyor belt. Other artists make their excitement, cockiness and/or nervousness to be on stage palpable, but Mitski arrives like she’s been summoned there. It’s not a particularly emotional action, it is merely where she is supposed to be.
It’s a fair first impression from an artist who has engaged in as much push-pull with the concept of pop stardom — and with a fanbase that both lavished her with pop star-level adoration and placed pop star-level demands on her even before she started legitimately achieving pop star-level popularity — as any artist of the past decade. Meanwhile, she has both leaned into and recoiled from her ballooning success at various points in recent years, often with counterintuitive results: When she took a self-care hiatus from performing at the turn of the decade (and then the world shut down anyway), she got bigger than ever on TikTok; when she released an album full of scorching synth-rock singles at the height of her virality, it faded from commercial view with surprising speed; when she followed that a couple years later with an album full of dusty Americana ballads, one of them became her first-ever Billboard Hot 100 crossover hit.
You can almost feel a decision being made, both while listening to Mitski’s excellent new album Nothing’s About to Happen to Me and watching Monday night’s (Mar. 2) transfixing kickoff to her six-night residency at New York multi-purpose cultural center The Shed, that the artist was done trying to figuring out how much to play into or run from audience expectations — she was just going to stride out there and do what she was meant to do. While the performance was not as theatrical or choreographed as some of her recent tours, Mitski’s stone-faced intensity, increasingly powerful voice and purposeful, composed movements still gave the performance a dramatic edge, both in terms of the emotional stakes and the one-way nature of the show. When she dropped the imaginary wall between audience and performer halfway through to finally acknowledge the crowd with a big, friendly “Hello, hiya!” it was more rattling than any of the set’s mini-strobefests.
But while Mitski was certainly not taking requests on Monday night — and left several of her biggest crowd-pleasers on the table, including “First Love/Late Spring,” “Your Best American Girl” and “Nobody,” though she still has five nights left to hit on ’em if she wants — it’s still hard to imagine the complaints anyone could have with such a fully invested and brilliantly considered performance. She has the presence, the catalog and the fanbase to be headlining Madison Square Garden right now, but she’s still likely better served playing for the same sized crowds spread over a week at a multi-purpose art space, where can better control the details of her delivery, and not feel overwhelmed either by the crowds or how larger-than-life herself she has to become to match them. In a venue like The Shed, it feels like artist and audience have found the best way to properly appreciate one another.
“I love you,” Mitski swore to the two thousand-plus fans in attendance after introducing the night’s final song. “I know you don’t believe me, but I do.”
Here are the five best moments from Mitski’s residency-opening performance.
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