Cody Johnson, joined by Luke Combs, Carrie Underwood, energizes Bridgestone Arena crowd

Yahoo

16-02-2025

On Saturday evening, 2024 Country Music Association Album of the Year winner Cody Johnson performed for the second of two sold-out nights at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena.
During a performance that never stopped feeling like cowboy lifestyle anthems turned up to 11, he was joined by artists, including Luke Combs, Carrie Underwood and Ian Munsick.
Grammy winner Ashley McBryde and 2024 country chart-topper Drew Baldridge opened the evening's festivities.
Johnson's energy never waned, driving the crowd to wild appreciation of his work. Thus, it offered another clearly defined goal.
One could believe that the "Leather" album vocalist is on the road to joining Texas-born and countrified performers, like Post Malone and George Strait in recent years, to potentially putting a Resistol hat-wearing fan in every seat of Nissan Stadium.
Johnson currently has a top 10 country radio collaboration with Underwood, "I'm Gonna Love You." Combs and the performer have no official duets, but one glance at last week's Mediabase country charts shows that Combs' Post Malone duet "Guy For That" is one spot above CoJo's work with Underwood.
Being just out of reach of another marker of peerless acclaim, being nominated for or winning either the Academy of Country Music or Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year award, is also now clearly on Johnson's mind. Underwood has ACM wins in 2009 and 2010, while Combs has CMA victories in 2021 and 2022.
"I want you to know that there was a time when I thought this dream wouldn't happen ... that's why I'm leaving it all here on the stage," Johnson told his crowd of die-hard supporters.
Notably, Johnson's supporters are the type of people who love the United States of America, cold beer, Copenhagen smokeless tobacco, fishing for largemouth bass, going to the rodeo and being able to sing George Jones' entire musical catalog or Jerry Reed's "Eastbound and Down" by heart while partying in honky-tonks.
Johnson also opened the show by performing his "Leather" album anthem, "That's Texas" and the outline of the Lone Star State was tattooed over his heart. That was symbolic of a more significant theme of the evening.
Southern and Western cultural and musical traditions were sung to as unwritten codes of life as law. Thus, choruses that felt like beatified platitudes are instead much more realities that define core core existences.
To wit, openers Drew Baldridge and Ashley McBryde represented how transmitting grit via equal parts power and panache speaks well to the demographic of people in Bridgestone Arena on Saturday evening.
Two months ago, McBryde released "Ain't Enough Cowboy Songs" because of a belief that the shiny idealism attached to a diligent work ethic had worn dull in America. Couple that with 2022's hilarious "Brenda Put Your Bra On" and 2023's stellar ballad "Light On In The Kitchen" being filled with time-tested middle American roots-driven aphorisms and the deservedly well-regarded live performer is onto something.
At various points of her career, McBryde's been deservedly well regarded for doing so much, so right. However, it's in this chapter of her career in which she's a newly-minted Grand Ole Opry member where her ability to sing as if the culture that surrounds country music — which ultimately doubles as one that governs much of American life — can solve everything.
Insofar as Baldridge, consider the same 13 years it took him to gain, lose, then regain and supersede his footing in mainstream country music as a No. 1 artist via 2024's "She's Somebody's Daughter." It is the same amount of time it took McBryde to gain and then expand her reach as a 2023 Grammy winner with Carly Pearce for "Never Wanted To Be That Girl."
Like McBryde, he's an Illinois-born Midwesterner rooted in traditions that double as rules of law and life. Thus, singing his new radio anthem, "Tough People," sounds like it all rings authentically true.
The evening's biggest superstar was Johnson's voice. Though he perpetually demurred away from the notion, he's a starched pearl-snap shirt and cowboy hat-clad tent revivalist who, in vibe, comes off as if he has a lot in common with the "Rattlesnake Preacher" Ashley McBryde sang about to open her set.
Bridgestone Arena is an enormous tent.
Five minutes into the set, Johnson's crowd of followers began singing along to him.
Thus, when he launched into 2019's "Nothin' on You" and his band, the Rockin' CJB, laid deep into soulful vibes reminiscent of Chris Stapleton's take on "Tennessee Whiskey" and Keith Urban's "Blue Ain't Your Color," Johnson as a crooner arrived on the scene. As a crooner, Johnson may have one of the underrated best vocal styles in music overall. When he grounds his feet and sets his mind to it, he unleashes a stunning instrument that leaves his crowd in awe.
Head longer into his set and when Ian Munsick, Carrie Underwood and Luke Combs, three other uniquely top-tier vocal stylists, aided Johnson onstage, the broader value of the connective power of his artistry became apparent.
In the past five years, Johnson's made a savvy effort to open the door of his writing room to quality songs from Nashville writers. When "Nashville writer" means Wyoming native Munsick and the song in question is the prairie-borne love song "Long Live Cowgirls," it's an instant classic. When "Nashville collaborator" becomes CoJo's dream choice of working with Underwood, it's the belt-buckled belter "I'm Gonna Love You," a surefire chart-topping performance that also doubles as offering an honest and sustainable adult contemporary crossover road to continued success.
Johnson's second encore saw country music's most beloved bearded, bottle-swilling and barrel-bodied cousin, Luke Combs, hit the stage. He and Johnson singing "Beer Never Broke My Heart" doubled down on the evening serving as the coronation of yet another uniquely peerless superstar to country's mainstream scene.
Johnson's superstardom will sustain itself because he embodies a culture and genre bigger than his Texas-tattooed heart.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Cody Johnson, joined by Luke Combs, Carrie Underwood, energizes Bridgestone Arena crowd