DURING a year when Kendrick Lamar and Drake went to war, Brat summer revived club classics, and Sabrina Carpenter redefined the humble espresso forever, the year's biggest hit came from the Virginia-born country singer Shaboozey, who snuck in like a dark horse, topped the charts, and leaves the year as perhaps the most exciting new discovery in music.
No song dominated 2024 more than "A Bar Song (Tipsy)," which recast J-Kwon's 2004 banger as the kind of ode to the curative powers of drinking that Hank Williams Jr. (or, for that matter, Hank Sr.) might have once sung. Beyond that, he also lent his gifts to Beyoncé's world-shifting Cowboy Carter-most notably on "Spaghettii," which also featured Black country music pioneer Linda Martell.
The great Shania Twain also knows something about sneaking in and stealing the show. In 1998, she gate-crashed a pop chart dominated by the likes of Mariah Carey and Will Smith by importing elements of classic rock, Europop, and dance into Nashville. Come On Over, released the year prior, is still the biggest-selling studio album by a solo female artist of all time and has gone on to influence generations of multi-genre crossover stars like Post Malone and Taylor Swift-and, of course, Shaboozey.
On the day "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" officially spent a 12th week at number one, GQ got Shaboozey and Twain together to explain why country is the genre of outsiders, bond over the therapeutic power of drinking songs, and talk about writing for pop's biggest superstars. -RAYMOND ANG
SHANIA TWAIN: You and I are from completely different time periods in the music industry, but you know a lot of old countrytraditional, country-western country. What's one of the first country songs you ever heard?
This story is from the December 2024/January 2025 edition of GQ US.
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This story is from the December 2024/January 2025 edition of GQ US.
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