Country artists who transition from hitmaker to nostalgia act speak

The past few weeks have been Sugarland‘S Kristian Bush went on a nostalgia trip and attended concerts there U2, The dead, The English beat And Unyielding.

But that series of shows was more than just a personal walk down memory lane. Bush also did some professional research in anticipation of Sugarland’s 18-day concert Small big city‘sTake Me Home Tour, kicks off October 24 in Greenville, SC

“I’m trying to introduce myself to nostalgia and how it makes me feel as a fan,” Bush says. “I’m starting to get my feet in the mud and dirt of what it’s like as an artist.”

The transition from hitmaker to nostalgia act is probably the hardest part most artists make during their career. It’s a difficult rite of passage, similar to losing a parent; few want to experience it, but almost every artist does.

What complicates the process is that the beginning of that change in career path is not clear from the start. Terri Clark recalls a five-year period when she struggled to understand what was happening, inadvertently quoting from her own “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.”

“There’s a lot of ‘woe is me’ for a while, I think,” she says. “You feel forgotten, as if what you did didn’t matter.”

Of course it mattered. But once the transition to the legacy act begins, the way it matters changes. Instead of keeping current songs in hot rotation, the artist’s new material collapses during consumption, while the old music remains as gold material or in nostalgic playlists. Fans still come to the concerts, but they are mainly there to hear what Garth Brooks calls ‘the old stuff’. The new stuff tends to generate the weakest response.

“People want old clothes from a new store,” Bush suggests metaphorically. “They don’t want new music from their old band, but they do want a new show from them.”

Navigating that shift challenges an artist’s self-confidence and sense of purpose. The longer they were at the top and the more successful they were during that period, the harder it will likely be for them to make the transition. Some eventually learn to appreciate the time spent in the top 10 as an uncommon privilege and see their past hits as an asset they can use in the future. Others never fully accept the change in status.

“I remember working on shows with (Merle) Feral And Waylon (Jennings), and those guys,” Tracy Lawrence say. “They were mad at us, you know. They blamed us for being dominant on radio for years. And then suddenly a young country wave comes along and they don’t get any airplay anymore. They weren’t happy about it and kind of blamed us for it. The only one I can remember not doing was (George) Jones. You know, George embraced it. He did ‘(I Don’t Need Your) Rockin’ Chair’ and had us all go on tour with him and all this stuff. It was just a completely different experience. And that really stuck with me because I realized that we’re all going to go through this cycle.”

The phenomenon was denounced John Anderson‘s 1982 single “Would You Catch a Falling Star,” where an artist’s hustle and bustle are all shrunk. “Nobody likes you when you’re sad,” says the Bobby Braddock-written classic suggests that the legacy character struggles to revive a moment that is no longer accessible. The audience in that song has determined that the artist’s peak commercial period is over, even if the artist hasn’t recognized it yet.

“At what point do you decide you are nostalgia and at what point does the outside world decide you are nostalgia?” asks Bush. “There is an internal meter and an external meter, and pain (is) involved in the distance between the moment the two touch.”

The system prepares artists for such a demise. The music industry manages to make stars, pampering and soothing them while they’re hot. It’s good for the executives’ access to power in the short term, but it’s bad for the artists’ mental health in the long term. In the most striking example Elvis Presley was famously shielded from the public by management and its entourage known as the Memphis Mafia, but was ultimately destroyed by its own success.

“When you’re in the middle of it, the ego gets in the way, and there are all these people around you who are in that inner circle who protect you from the world and let you get away with things that normal people don’t get away with,” says Lawrence. “It’s really hard to have a good, honest perspective when you get caught up in it because you just kind of get carried away with yourself. When we come out the other side, not everyone comes out.”

Lawrence, Clark and Bush have all turned the corner. If they did not feel comfortable being classified as a legacy, they would not have agreed to interviews on this topic.

Bush has made a point of asking nostalgic acts he knows from the pop and rock world about their experiences with the change. One of them told him that his professional life after accepting the switch has been great: he has a loyal core audience, knows what his fans will accept and regularly sees happy faces in the audience. The “legacy acts” who deny their position, he added, are simply miserable.

After adapting to the shift in their careers, Lawrence and Clark were able to parlay their expertise into hosting roles on network gold shows. Both are currently nominated for the Country Music Association Broadcast Awards for Weekly National Personality of the Year for Silverfish Media Honky Tonkin’ with Tracy Lawrence and that of Westwood One Country Gold with Terri Clark. She ended her tenure on the show in early September; Laurens said Billboard only that he plans to pack his Honky Tonkin’ connection in the coming year.

Lawrence and Clark both handled the transition musically. He tackled it in “Price of Fame,” a 2020 collaboration with Eddie Montgomery with which Lawrence wrote 3 doors away singer Brad Arnold. Clark embraced it this year Take twoa project that reformulates her previous hits into duets with, among others Cody Johnson, Laine Wilson And Ashley McBrydewhose appreciation for Clark underscored the importance of becoming a legacy. Trisha Jaarwood had told Clark that when artists realize it’s time to stop competing with younger acts and start serving as mentors, life becomes easier. McBryde, in the early stages of her national career, may have been the first artist to tell Clark that her music had been an influence. Take two reinforced that message.

“Not only do you embrace where you are now, you get all that validation and make new friendships with some of the younger artists that you influenced as they were growing up,” Clark says. “That to me is a full recognition of the fact that it is a body of work, and that the lifespan of your work is not just about five or ten years. It’s about the whole journey.”

It turns out the journey can be even more satisfying after the hits stop coming.

“I’m much calmer than I used to be,” says Lawrence. “I don’t need as much validation as I used to.”

As a throwback, the former stress of trying to find and continually market new hits is giving way to nurturing the existing fan base, which can become more of a community. Whether these fans come to relive past glories or simply enjoy the music they love, they tend to be a supportive crowd. Entertaining them becomes a different experience once the artist accepts that their legacy is enough.

“They relate to certain events and milestones in their own lives with one of your songs, and you really have to stick with that and not make it about you,” says Clark. “Make it about them. Then it is not difficult for me to sing these songs, when I see how excited people get.”

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