Tucker Wetmore scores his first No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart as “Brunette” rises two spots to top the chart dated May 30. The song drew 30.8 million audience impressions May 15-21, up 11% week over week, according to Luminate.
The track is Wetmore’s third Country Airplay top 10. “Wind Up Missin’ You” and “3,2,1” each rose to No. 2 last year in January and December, respectively.
Written by Chris LaCorte, Coop McGill, Josh Miller and Blake Pendergrass, “Brunette” reaches No. 1 in its 23rd week on Country Airplay, after Wetmore performed it on the Academy of Country Music Awards May 17. That pace is nearly even with the chart’s 36-year average ascent, but it stands out in the modern era. No. 1s have averaged about 30 weeks to reach the summit in the last decade, and nearly two-thirds have taken longer.
For Scott Roddy, brand manager of Audacy’s KSON San Diego, early belief in “Brunette” began outside the station. “It started when I saw the crowd’s reaction to ‘Brunette’ at two different concerts,” he tells Billboard. “Then I saw the streams and immediately jumped on the opportunity.”
“Brunette” has totaled 203.1 million on-demand official U.S. streams to date. Wetmore’s catalog has generated 1.7 billion streams overall.
Adds Audacy country format captain Tim Roberts, who also leads programming for WYCD Detroit, “We had Tucker here on our WYCD Hoedown Festival show when he was brand new, so we could see how the audience was loving him from the beginning. And like Scotty, the immediate streaming data on the song was proof positive they were gonna eat it up! Besides, a tempo record less than three minutes is a gem.”
The song hit even closer to home for Connoisseur’s KBAY San Jose, Calif., operations manager J. Love. “The record connected instantly with our audience,” he says. “Honestly, my wife sings it every single time it comes on.”
‘Be by You’ Reaches the Top 20
Elsewhere, Luke Combs climbs into the Country Airplay top 20 with his newest promoted single, “Be by You” (24-19; 10.2 million, up 20%). The song follows “Sleepless in a Hotel Room,” which became his 20th No. 1 in April, leading for five weeks. They’re from his album The Way I Am, which arrived, also in April, as his fifth leader on Top Country Albums. The set has also yielded the Country Airplay No. 1 “Back in the Saddle” and the No. 2-peaking “Days Like These.”
