George Strait basically owns Texas, so that makes Cody Johnson‘s record-breaking feat at RodeoHouston even more impressive. Johnson closed out this year’s event with a headlining set on Sunday night with Jon Pardi and Randy Houser opening. The show set a new all-time concert-only attendance record of 80,203 fans attended the show at NRG Stadium. The previous record (held by Strait): 80,020, back in 2013.

 

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Keith Urban‘s next album will be a covers album…and, perhaps surprisingly, it won’t be country covers. While at Country Radio Seminar on Thursday, Urban explained what his next project will be. “It’s the first time I’ve ever done an album of covers. There is one original on the record. It’s a thematic record: yacht rock songs. You think I’m kidding, I’m not kidding…Am I terrified? Absolutely.” For those that don’t know, “yacht rock” is a softer rock that was largely popular from the mid 70s to the early 80s – think Ambrosia, Christopher Cross, the Little River Band, etc. One band you probably won’t hear on the album: Player (“Baby Come Back”), who famously sued Keith in 2015, claiming his Player line of guitars and accessories amounted to copyright infringement (the suit was dismissed). No word on when the album would be released.

Could Luke Combs be formulating an exit strategy for his music career already? Luke’s first single, “Hurricane,” came out almost ten years ago, but his career started several years before that. Now that he’s achieved almost everything one can achieve in country music, and he has a wife and three young children, Luke may think there’s more to life than work. On Bert Kresicher‘s “Bertcast” podcast, they talked about how Garth Brooks walked away from country music while at the very top of his game, and whether Luke has considered a similar move. “That day is rapidly approaching. That will happen at some point. I think you have to accept that, and I think it’s okay to not want that to happen…” He added that he wasn’t sure exactly what form the decision to walk away would take. “I wonder if I want to do the slow decline thing and be okay with it. Which I would be if that’s what I decided to do. Or do you just (cut it off and) hit delete? And you’re just kind of like, ‘I’m out for a while.’ And I’m just gone for the next five years.” Check out the complete episode of the podcast here. 

Garth Brooks continues to cement his status in music history. The legend has officially secured his tenth diamond award following the latest certification for his “Triple Live.” The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) officially pronounced the 2018 collection’s status yesterday as 13X platinum, which blows past the ten million-unit threshold required for diamond status. This makes Garth the only artist in history to have ten diamond-certified albums. Coming in a distant second: The Beatles, who have six. The Beatles are still the highest-selling artist in music history, with 207.5-million overall albums sold. Brooks is in second, with 200.5-million.

We can’t imagine any country artist not wanting to play the Super Bowl halftime show, but put Luke Combs down as one who’s come out and said he’d do it if asked. On the “Zach Sang Show” podcast, he was asked if he’d ever been approached to play the world’s biggest stage. “No, never have. Never have. Gosh, like, how does that even happen? I don’t even really know how that even happens, you know?” He would go on to say it’s long overdue for a country act to play the Super Bowl, pointing out, “How many of the top 100 streaming songs in all of music are country? A very high percentage, I think, now. Way more so than in history.” Then, he said what every country fan is thinking. “Super Bowl, come on, dude. We’re all waiting…make the call. One of us is ready.”