Your New Country Crush

This piece originally appeared on February 6, 2025 in Sound Signal, our biweekly newsletter that identifies emerging artists, scenes, and trending tracks, crafted by the world's best writers and curators. Sign up here to never miss our take on what's next in music.

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In the past couple of years, a legion of young male country singers have been using social media — TikTok and Instagram specifically — to attract audiences and become breakout stars. There’s Tucker Wetmore and Max McNown, and the previously Sound Signal-featured Austin Williams and Dylan Gossett. They’ve taken over Spotify’s “homegrown” playlist, a collection of singer-songwriters whose bios refer to their humble, working class roots. These artists’ target demographics seem to be fellow young men, semaphored by way of hunting photos, and videos with acoustic guitars, typically somewhere rural. Often they make their Christianity clear — McNown, for instance, has “Matthew 8:8” at the top of his Instagram bio, and part of Williams’ reads “Jesus is Lord.”

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But where this cohort is bro-centric, another subset has become particularly popular with young women. (Women reportedly make up 52% of country listeners.) At the forefront is newcomer Ty Myers, along with Hudson Westbrook (also featured on Sound Signal in 2024) and Vincent Mason.

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The teen idol is far from a storied tradition. Ricky Nelson, David Cassidy, Hanson, the Backstreet Boys, and Justin Bieber, just to name a few of the most legendary, were solidly in the pop sphere. Country’s had Elvis, George Strait, and Keith Urban, and more recently, yet short-lived, Hunter Hayes. These new kids on the block seem to be taking cues from both genres. Westbrook, Mason, and Myers all have a classic pop country sound, signal their down-home-ness — true country boys — and yet ascribe to the classic pop heartthrob schema. They’re all young: Westbrook is graduating Texas Tech in ‘27; Mason is 24; and Myers, at 17, hasn’t even graduated high school yet. Both Westbrook and Myers consistently post photos and videos with young women fans; Myers, still a minor, has a Pelvis Elvis thing going on and has shared at least one video in which he signs a fan’s forehead. He even looks a bit like ‘60s teen idol Bobby Vee. While Mason does this to a lesser extent, exuberant young women can be seen front and center in photos of his live shows.

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Overall, the crush crew are outperforming their male country upstart peers. Whether an intentional marketing tactic or simply an organic phenomenon, this approach seems to be working especially well for Ty Myers, who just released his debut album The Select, at the end of January. Perhaps it is due to demographics, or the filling of an open space for this kind of personality in country music. Myers has already topped Westbrook and Mason for monthly Spotify listeners, at 3.3M, and is ranking at #197 in the Country category on Chartmetric. Ladies and gentlemen, a new teen country idol has entered the building.