If you’re familiar with Lewis Capaldi, you know he mostly writes sad songs about love.  But the Scottish singer balances out all that melancholy in his real life with wacky, self-deprecating behavior. The video he just posted is a perfect example. In the vertical clip for his song “Hold Me While You Wait”, he walks around the Glastonbury Festival grounds wearing a cardboard sign saying “Hold Me”. 

The video itself is touching, with Lewis hugging family, friends, and fans. One little boy sheds tears of happiness over meeting him. But thanks to captions at the bottom of the screen, we get some insight into Lewis’ thoughts on what’s happening – what his song is about, who some of the huggers are, and even a request for one fan to not sue him after he accidentally hits her in the face.

Fans of the Weekly Pop 40 know that Lewis’ song “Someone You Love” is flying up the chart – find out where it landed this week by listening to the countdown now and check back every Thursday for a brand new chart of the 40 pop songs you listen, heart and share the most every week! 

Drake dropped "Scorpion" last summer, but he just couldn't leave THIS summer alone. Pretty much out of nowhere, Drizzy unleashed a new compilation of 17 tracks that never got an official release, and some of them contain some pretty high-profile features: J. Cole, Rick Ross, and more.

And he aptly named it “Care Package.”  Drake, you’re funny.

The album gathers up random tracks from throughout his career, including songs that were never given official release, (such as “Can I,” which was previously leaked), and “Dreams Money Can Buy” (which dropped between "Thank Me Later" and "Take Care”).

The bulk of the tunes had only lived on Drake’s SoundCloud or YouTube accounts. Then, with a surprise announcement only one day before its release, Drake went to Instagram and said, “"Available on all platforms. Some of our most important moments together available in one place. Care Package.”

It’s like a career-spanning greatest hits that never were, and it’s our ALBUM OF THE WEEK*. Listen on-demand, as much as you want!

Dierks Bentley played the Today show August 1^st, which happens to also be known as “Dogust,” aka National Mutt Day, aka the official birthday of any pooch whose birthday is unknown. He performed on the plaza for thousands of screaming fans, and then fate stepped in and he went inside to talk to the Today crew.

To celebrate Dogust, they also had the founder of Muddy Paws Rescue in New York City on the show with some pups who were looking for forever homes. So there’s Dierks, holding an adorable little 8-week-old border collie mix named Goose. Or Garrett. Nobody’s sure which is which. But Dierks feels a connection with the little guy and says, “my kids have been hammering me for a third dog.” And he says his nickname for one of his daughters is Goose, so it’s obviously meant to be. So he calls home and talks to the wife, and… yep. Goose (the name he’s going with) is now a Bentley.

You know, there are a ton more shelter dogs who need forever homes. Can we help you find one perfect for your pack? https://www.petfinder.com/

Happy Dogust, y’all.

You’ve heard the new all-girl super group The Highwomen, right? And their debut song “Redesigning Women?” If you haven’t, you’re missing out, and you can remedy that by listening to our Nashville Now and #WCE Country stations, among others.

What you need to know is that four very talented women – Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, Natalie Hemby, and Maren Morris -- wanted to start a movement, a project that supports and gives voices to the women struggling to find success in country music. Brandi said the idea was to fix the problem from the inside, not to battle it. And the name has two meanings – one, a nod to The Highwaymen (made up of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson), and the other meaning “high, like exalted. Above the fold,” she said in an interview.

And along with the four core members, we can expect collaborations from women across the musical spectrum, including songwriter Lori McKenna, Sheryl Crow, Miranda Lambert, and maybe some “feminist-adjacent” men, like producer Dave Cobb and Amanda’s husband and performer himself Jason Isbell. 

It looks like their biggest fan is Dierks Bentley, who, armed with a pipe and a smoking jacket, performed a dramatic reading of the lyrics. Watch here (and then watch it again)

The guys in Sister Hazel (and their crew) are basically heroes right now. 

It started when a crew guy heard a noise on the tour bus and told the tour manager, who was all, yeah, it’s probably the air compressor problems we’ve been having. But no. He went out and heard something too, so he shut down everything on the bus and heard.. meowing. WHAT. 

The guys tracked down the noise to the front battery compartment of the bus, where they found kittens. Six of ‘em. All little bitty and missing their mama.  A call to the bus company revealed that mama cat lived in an abandoned bus on the lot and had just had those babies a couple of weeks ago, and she must have moved them over to the Sister Hazel bus. Check it out here! 

That means they were under there when the bus left Nashville last Wednesday night, through a nine-hour drive to Florida, where the bus sat all day, and then through another six-hour drive to Ocala, where they were found Friday afternoon. Those babies are survivors! In fact, if I were going to name them, the choices would be obvious: Gloria Gaynor, Destiny’s Child, Beyonce, Bee Gee, Hank, and Tiger (as in “Eye of the..”) (think about it… there it is).

The good news is that someone at the venue happens to run a rescue and she gathered them all up and took them in. They’re all doing just fine and they’re called the Hazel Heads. There’s one boy and 5 girls, and they’ll be ready for adoption in about 9 weeks, so if you’re interested, reach out to Melissa Bell’s rescue. 

Nice work, Sister Hazel team.

If you haven’t seen the bottle cap challenge yet, you’ve probably been living under a rock. The idea is to deliver a perfect roundhouse kick to the top of a bottle, knocking the twist cap off without knocking over the bottle. 

This list of challengers in the country music world who’ve made the effort is relatively small, but fun. Like Blake Shelton, for example, who tried it on a bottle of his own brand Smithworks Vodka… and the results are funny, but not great. 

Songwriter and comedian Joe Denim put his own “spin” on it, also using a bottle of Vodka (his was Tito’s), but instead of a roundhouse kick, he did a roundhouse… uh.. guitar. Watch here.

Blanco Brown (of “The Git Up” fame on our Nashville Now station) tried it TWICE. Well, kind of. He was trying to follow Mariah Carey’s example of knocking it off with a high note (I call shenanigans). First, with a plastic water bottle.

And then, with glass. It still didn’t work, but props for hitting the same note, dude. DANG. Check it out here. 

A quick search of #bottlecapchallenge on Instagram shows there’s no shortage of people trying this, so it’s just a matter of time before we get them from other people. You know who should do this? Carrie Underwood. She’s super fit and with those legs she could do any dang thing. Come on girl, get on this!