Merry Christmas from Luke Bryan! Bryan just dropped a new EP, Luke Bryan Christmas. The three-song project, Bryan’s first holiday collection, includes “Winter Wonderland” with Ella Langley, plus “O Holy Night” and “Run Run Rudolph.”
Luke Bryan Christmas comes shortly after Bryan celebrated his 32nd No. 1 hit, with “Country Song Came On.” The song is the fourth, and likely final, single off of Bryan’s most recent album, Mind of a Country Boy out in 2024. The song landed at the top of the charts while Bryan was on his Country Song Came On Tour.
“Anytime I’m having a big party on stage, and watching fans have fun, and escape the stress of their lives,” the 49-year-old ttells Billboard, explaining why he likes the song so much. “I got a special place for party songs.”
The Story Behind “Country Song Came On”
Bryan didn’t write “Country Song Came On,” which instead was written by Dan Alley, Ryan Beaver and Neil Medley. But Bryan says it sounds as much like him as if he had written it himself.
“From the time I was 16 years old till I got my record deal, I [played] most of my concerts in little bars and honky tonks,” Bryan tells Billboard. “So I spent a good 12, 13 years playing in those environments and playing the Merle Haggard songs and the Waylon Jennings songs and the Keith Whitleys and all that. So it’s nice to find one like this that really is authentically me.”
Bryan is working on a new album, which he says will be different than Mind of a Country Boy.
“It’s nice to kind of depart from what they expect and give them something new,” Bryan tells Country Countdown USA. “Now they’ll be wanting, hopefully, the next chapter of my singles, and keeping them guessing, and me trying to stay on top of my game.”
Ella Langley Find Success at Country Radio
Bryan isn’t the only one having success at country radio. Langley is also doing well, with her latest single, “Choosin’ Texas,” already in the Top 40. The song, from Langley’s next album, is written by Langley, along with Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick, and Joybeth Taylor.
“It was a year ago this month I got my first opportunity to write with her,” Langley said, speaking of Lambert, during a recent performance (via Country Rebel). “We were on one of these things called a writer’s retreat, where you take a couple of your favorite people and you just sit down for however many days and write songs. And hopefully some of them are good.”
Langley also shared the unlikely place she and Lambert had the inspiration for “Choosin’ Texas.”
“I was walking to the bathroom and I started to go, ‘She’s from Texas, I can tell by the way he’s two-steppin’ around the room,’” Langley recalls. “And Miranda was walking behind me to the bathroom, a separate one, and she was like, ‘Wait a minute! The [girl] he went with, she’s from Texas, I can tell.’ The girl he went with, you know?
“And from there, I think the song fell out in about 30 minutes, and it’s one of my favorite ones we got off the retreat that weekend,” she adds. “And it’s my first song with Miss Miranda Lambert coming out.”