Top Five Country Music Friendships

• Carly Pearce and Ashley McBryde

  These two friends will forever be linked not just for their duet “Never Wanted To Be That Girl” but because they won a Grammy for the performance in 2023 for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. When we interviewed McBryde recently, she told us of her friendship with Pearce, “We are opposites, especially in the way we enter a room. Carly always seems to me to be very well put together and has thought out what. She’s about to say. I’m more likely to come in a room and be like (loud burst) ‘Blahhhhh’ and be kind of all over the place. I think that’s why we got along so well. But that friendship started as a songwriter wanted. I wanted to write with Carly; I wanted to sing something with her.”

• Kane Brown and Chris Young

  These two sealed their friendship with a collaboration called “Famous Friends,” which Young co-wrote. The collaboration’s video for “Famous Friends” won the 2021 CMT Music Award for Collaboration of the Year. Early in his career. Kane told us about being a fan of Young’s music. He said, “I probably did as many Chris covers as I did other people’s covers. And then when I got signed with Sony, it was the same label that Chris was on, and they knew I loved him right off the bat.”

• Blake Shelton and Reba McEntire

  Blake told us what Reba McEntire did for him early in his Nashville career: “The ACM announcements/ nominees three years ago (2009), way before they were asking me, host, she agreed to go, and Reba doesn’t do this; she agreed to be on CBS’ Early Morning Show to announce the nominees for the ACMs if they would let me be on there with her. Normally, they send a couple of new baby acts to go do that because nobody wants to wake up that early and go do that, but Reba did that for me. If there’s ever a time she can lend a hand, she’s always been that for me.”

  Reba sat in Shelton’s chair in “The Voice” semi-final in May. She is a Season 24 Coach.

• Morgan Wallen and HARDY

  These guys have been friends since the beginning of their respective careers in Nashville. HARDY told us about when he first met Morgan after he heard Wallen’s debut single, “The Way I Talk.” He said, “I think it was like Top 30, and I was just a huge fan of the song, and I had not met him before, and it was just kind of the publisher route,” HARDY explained that he called his publisher and asked to be contacted with Morgan’s booker asking to write with him. HARDY said, “And two weeks later, he was on the schedule, and I got a text at like 10 am, and he was like, ‘Hey, this is Morgan Wallen, what’s your address?’ and he just showed up to my house.”

• Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson

  Lainey and Jelly Roll are not just friends; they have an award-nominated collaboration together, “Save Me.” Jelly Roll recently told ET of his friendship with Lainey, “That’s just my sister. That’s how I look at her.” He added that there’s such a kinship with Wilson and noted that and the fact that they’re both where they are in our careers right now, at the same record label, with a song together that’s “Just on fire.”